Everything I love, hate, and changed about my Westfalia

howdy guys this is sid with campo i'm kind of having a moment because this is my personal rig i bought this rig in college i sold it when i got married because ali and i my wife wanted to buy a sprinter and then we realized that we didn't like the sprinter so then we bought it back from the car collector that we sold it to i'm kind of pumped to tell you about the mods why we chose to keep this rig around there's so many little things they're going to be fun to share with you guys uh do that again and don't hold your hands like a limp dinosaur [Music] first of all take a look at this photo of my wife and i sitting in this rig on our wedding day pretty sweet we fell in love in this thing that's kind of how we like to say it so when we sold it to a car collector who just collected volkswagen banning ins we were pretty heartbroken we knew that we needed something more reliable we were driving like thousands of miles for work at a time my wife's a wedding photographer so we were going all over the western united states that was kind of our our original like the westies break down we need reliability we're getting a sprinter when i originally bought the rig it had 138 000 miles on it i bought it from the original owner super sweet couple they actually cried while i was driving it away obviously there's an emotional connection which kind of ties everybody to vanigan in some sense it's always hard to leave even if the thing burnt up on the side of the road while you were driving it it's uh it's never easy to say goodbye so we didn't we sold it to the this car collector we bought it back once we bought it back from him we really started taking mods more seriously i wanted to keep it all original i didn't want to add big wheels a lift kit all this stuff because i just liked the vibe of the original stock mannequin but then it became this kind of practical thing where bigger wheels and tires are actually safer there's actually more traction you actually need a full-size spare you need a roof pod because you're trying to put all your camping gear in here and it just doesn't fit so tons of mods first of all this one will change the game subtle to some of you not so subtle to others this is cruise control a lot of the rigs didn't come with cruise control i actually added this one cruise control was an ad that we did last summer and that was absolutely essential because i actually in the seated position in the van again my foot i see i sound a little soft when i say this you guys but i i started uh getting a really tight hamstring to the point of where i couldn't like do hikes comfortably and stuff because my foot was always on the gas pedal so we got cruise control so that i could like stretch out and put my leg off to one side sometimes i drive like this just to keep the style right i've actually done this before when the roads kind of open i don't know you can kind of interpret your own uh your own path here but ultimately cruise control on this rig lets you do your thing over here i've got a hole that's waiting for another switch i did this little mod in college expecting to put a light bar and spotties i just went with the spotties here you guys so that's a little led spotties on the front i put electrical tape over it because the light on there is way too bright when you're driving at night the goal behind most of these mods was to try to bring the van up to sprinter modern level without having to go with the sprinter chassis so we upgraded the stereo so we have nicer audio we upgraded the speakers so you just get a better balanced sound system we like listening to music while we drive so that was really important to us the little creature comforts really matter so you know you're driving a classic car when uh you can run the car without the key i had that realization driving up highway one and i just took it out and then i was staring at it then we were still driving down the road and then i was pumped because it was like this thing is officially a classic now it's kind of a funny story actually volkswagen in all of their advertisements showed four people dining in this rig comfortably that's just not possible i'll show you but uh you know it was wishful thinking on their end we got an extra 50 watt solar panel here that folds up stows behind the seat cutting boards you think oh this thing's gonna swivel just just great i'm excited four of us it's raining we're all gonna be able to just you know hunky dory being this thing and yeah you sit here and your rib cage is just kind of jabbing into the steering wheel the whole time even if you have a newer model vanigan the steering wheel is a little smaller but it still just gets in the way it can't actually swivel all the way around so the elephant in the room that feels like an elephant when you're in here is the fridge a lot of people add an extra fridge in the westies so they can ditch their normal fridge we didn't do this for a long time because the normal fridge actually worked great but this sucker's just got a lot more capacity it's a lot more efficient when you run it off the batteries you don't have to worry about propane and all that good stuff these things are super durable you can get them dirty you can get them wet this phrase is just gonna last you a lot longer than the normal amazon brand we don't feel weird about putting it out in the dirt or in the sand and i've actually left the cord long enough so that we can do that when we're camping at a spot we can just pull this thing out have all the living room in here we've kept the galley pretty stock this is actually the main reason why we came back to the westphalia because this galley setup is just so perfect the height of everything the layout the double burner cooktop the sink it's the perfect size for two cast irons it's got your silverware drawer we've got all of our pots and pans and cups that fall around and we like putting these things in between everything uh they're little traction pads that you can buy on amazon but they just help things not rattle and they don't slide around on washboards and this is where the factory fridge normally goes however we've got a toilet in there now and then we also have another shelf on top we usually put our toiletries and stuff in there this had so much storage when you ditch the stock fridge i love this bamboo table i modeled it after the same table that came with it i just used this the old table as a template and i made this out of three quarter inch bamboo i put a nice quarter inch round over on it it just adds a fun little warm pop to the rig we mounted a fan here because we both love gray noise while we sleep but these sirocco's are just stellar you can point them in any direction i can blow all the cooking stuff out the window if i want to it's a super nice fan to have and it consumes almost no electricity so it's uh it's just like kind of a no-brainer under the seat i've got a west marine 100 amp hour battery i've got a blue c acr this is a battery isolator so that when the car is running i can charge this battery off the alternator but then it separates itself i also have a little shore power plug that i wired in with a little 20 amazon trickle charger i used a really cheap battery isolator at one point and we were driving through montana and all of a sudden i was looking at my battery voltage and it was it was just plummeting and then i started smelling this like burning smell i lifted the seat of the bench up and the whole thing was like just crazy hot and i got hit with like this oven it was like boiling hot in here and this thing i swear the components inside were red hot but they almost ignited this plywood the finish on the plywood actually started to melt and bubble a little bit kind of scary don't use a cheap isolator go for something a little nicer this is a smart charger so it actually will cut the batteries off when they don't need to be charged last year we installed the wabasto air top 2000 stc with zero regrets this thing keeps it 70 degrees in here no matter the conditions outside we've camped when it's freezing outside below freezing with the top up with friends sleeping up here and all of us were super comfortable it was 70. underneath the table there's two storage compartments everybody knows what these are but we've got some snacks in here and we've got the water tank access in here this storage is actually crazy deep and this one's fairly deep you can pack so much food in here you can go off grid for at least a week no problem and then the water tank's 15 gallons so you know if you're just using it for drinking water and occasional dishes you can go a long time there's a full-size closet which is a little bit of a waste of space it was nice to have definitely not necessary kind of wish it wasn't here so that we could have more bed space i don't think there's a better bed set up than the westphalia folding bed you ready for this it's crazy done so the bed is a little bit bigger than a twin it's closer to full but it's not quite as long so it's tight but it's also cozy kind of depends on how you look at it you gotta have the right perspective you guys you can sleep four people in this thing which a lot of people know some people don't kind of blows me away but i'm gonna go up here take a nap you gotta do a couple things first these hinges always just rattle like crazy when you're on the road so i stuff some paper towels in there and it solves that problem this bed up here is actually bigger than the one downstairs so some people end up using this as their primary bed so they can leave the bench downstairs unfortunately this is a two inch pad where downstairs is four this ends up being a little bit less comfortable than downstairs but still there's just tons of room up here it's pretty nice to be able to have sleeping for four in such a small van i threw a 30 watt solar panel on the roof more to be a trickle charger than to really keep the batteries fully up and alive when the fridge was plugged in the fridge actually draws more power than the solar panel can put into the batteries which is why we also carry around a 50 watt auxiliary solar panel that we can throw on the windshield when we're actually camping i replaced the original pop top because it didn't have side windows and we wanted side windows so this is a go westy cotton pop top i also added the go sd struts to it so it can help assist up to i think 150 pounds of weight which is about when surfboards are packed on and everything what we have on the roof this swing away was an absolute beast i stole it from a nissan pathfinder i think it was a 1984 pathfinder i had to bend it i had to mod it i didn't steal it i got it from a pick and pull for 25 bucks but it cost me a hundred bucks to get my spare tire it's a full-size spare it's a bfg 215 70 r16 and two jerry's for 10 gallons of extra fuel it's a super bomber mounting setup also just the most satisfying closing click in the world there's a ton of great auxiliary window options for westphalia's personally i didn't have the budget to spend on like a thousand dollar one again vanigan life makes a stellar one that i absolutely love but i had to come up with something different i ordered an aluminum window replacement i think i got it off bus depot or van cafe and then i spray painted it white and i threw bolted ltrack to it i made this window that's super low profile when you take everything off but it's also really nice to have a high lift jack and a shovel right on the side here because i end up using a high lift a lot this thing's two wheel drive it's not four so it comes in handy more often than you'd think it also doubles as a ladder which is really nice i mean this thing is it's just it's crazy bomber up top i've got thule crossbars just two of them with the thule mountaineer pod it's really nice to have a slim pod so that you can still fit full longboard surfboards and traction boards and then i can also get some fishing poles up here too the stock vanity and mirrors are absolute crap they are floppy they get dirty they're just miserable that you can't see anything out of them so these truck mirrors are great you can get them on go westy or whatever they're a little expensive but they've saved me multiple times in la traffic and need i say more i put an inch and a half lift on here from goesti they sell some really sweet springs they set the whole stance a little bit higher it makes for the same amount of travel but more off-road ability inevitably west valleys are going to be heavier on the left and on the right because you've got a water tank over there you've got your galley cabinet over there you've got a bunch of stuff over there that's weighing it down i had to trim out the driver's side spring about an inch to fully space everything out so it's sat level pretty wild but also cool that they sell spacers so that you can do that and make sure that it's riding totally straight so the front of the rig we've got this bull bar that's really just for show you guys i don't think that would stop a deer but i got some i got it for free so i put it on i found the antler while i was hiking i believe it's from an elk uh i guess it's cool i just threw it on there because it fit there is something different about the vanigans about westphalia it's just vanigan's old volkswagens in general that can't be replicated with a modern sprinter even if you're getting an older sprinter you just still don't get the same thing and that thing is and it is untangible but it's the vibe you will not experience driving next to the pacific ocean on a windy beautiful road the same way in this car that you wouldn't a sprinter a sprinter you're going to be you know your ac is blowing you're just kind of in your zone you're doing your thing another sprinter passes by and you're like cigarette yeah nice all right cool yeah sweet yeah cool but in the west valia you're fighting the wind you're constantly engaged you've got mac demarco playing on the stereo you're in the zone you're vibed out you got your shades you got your marine radio telling you what the weather's doing and then a westie passes you or any other old volkswagen and they give you a huge shaka you give them a piece you honk you flash your brights that can't be recreated that's why you get a westphalia that's why we came back to this i know these rigs are just they're known for their unreliability they're known for breaking down they're known for being expensive and it is it is true they break down a lot they are expensive but that's also part of it you never really know if you're gonna make it there or not but when you do it's like this just mind-blowing experience you're just so juiced that you actually made it to the camp spot in one piece so for us again it could be totally different for you but for us we just love the westphalia platform we love the layout we love the vibe we love the culture we love the people that are involved with these westies that's why we kept end up coming back to this rig because we just wanted those fun vibes that just adventure making machine that this thing is it's been an honor to share our personal rig with you i think it's uh i don't know i'm pinching myself this is fun i hope you guys enjoyed seeing it i hope you get some inspiration and uh let me know if you have any questions happy to answer them in the comments below cheers

Channel: Campovans Custom Vehicle Conversions

Views: 304,098

Keywords: Volkswagen, Vanagon, Westfalia, camper, campervan, sprinter, van life, vanlife, transit, promaster

Id: oiKP84e3sqU

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021