FULL TOUR - Cargo Trailer to Camper Conversion

me [Music] hi everyone welcome back so in this video i want to do a full in-depth tour of my cargo trailer to camper conversion so this might be pretty boring for you if you're not interested in this sort of thing so i've got another link to a shorter video that's you know just a few minutes goes through the the camper i'm going to link that above but if you really want to get in depth into this then this is the video for you i'm going to try and walk you through each section step by step and if you have any questions or comments please post them below i really appreciate your comments because i think because of you guys i've done a lot of things that i have done to hear a lot of your suggestions have helped me so let's get into it we're going to start on the outside we're going to walk through the outside and then we're gonna jump inside let's start on the trailer itself so the trailer is a six by ten so it's six feet wide ten feet long and the way they measure these cargo trailers is not to tongue that's the actual box so this is the box right here is six by ten why did i use a six by ten trailer well i think that's what you gotta figure out when you're doing these conversions is what do you want for your personal application like for me i'm towing this with a small truck i'm i'm towing it with my ford ranger and i'm doing a lot of off-road off-grid camping and so that was my ideal i wanted small enough basically i got a bed in there a shower a toilet little kitchen i wanted it all jammed in as tight as possible so that i could tow it into some pretty uh fantastic spots when i started with this trailer it was 998 pounds that included everything the frame the the wheels the whole thing so starting from that light trailer i added about a thousand pounds into this so right i'm right around the 2000 2100 pounds fully loaded that's with the 30 gallons of water the six rv batteries i got in there two propane tanks up front here and just loaded up with everything that ready to go so that makes it into a fairly light trailer for pulling pulling with my truck because my truck i think it's rated for 5 000 pounds it can do but when you're pulling off road or especially in the snow like this the lighter the better you can see i don't have my off-road tires on it yet that's a future project that i'd like to do that so the trailer itself uh i insulated all like the the sides the top is all done with r7 insulation so it's got r7 in the walls and then down below i used r14 so basically it's one inch in the walls two inches in the floor and that gives me our 14 in the bottom are our seven on the walls up top you can see i've got my solar panels up there we can get into that in a bit the windows they're just rv windows so i just went to a salvage yard and what i wanted in my rv window is i wanted a flip out rv window so you can see on the bottom half of it just flips out because i didn't like those side to slide side slide ones because i like it to open up my windows in a good rainstorm and not have water coming inside so that's i specifically looked for these windows i would have loved to find some that were insulated windows but i couldn't so those are just your standard rv windows but they flip out so let's go into the front here i'll just show you the front so based on the cutouts like that cut out there from that window i took that piece of aluminum and i used it up front here so up front i've mounted i've welded in a bracket for two propane tanks i know kind of tough to see in there so you got the two propane tanks i welded in this bracket across here and then the selector here and then it runs down there and my propane runs along the bottom i used rigid steel black steel propane line just a little piece of copper in between the two here so this is the cover from that window i used a flip up jack so i could get a lots of clearance right here like when you're off-roading with a trailer when you're breaking over a hill this is kind of the lowest spot it always hits so that's why the flip up jack flips out of the way this is the other cover from this window over here on this side i used it to cover my diesel fuel tank so this is my diesel fuel tank i just wrap it with this plastic it keeps because there's a little vent here keeps the water from going inside so that's my diesel fuel i wanted it outside the trailer i didn't want it inside because it stinks in here i mounted i built this little rack here first off it's basically pretty simple just a couple uprights here and then there's a square and then i mounted this uh i think it's like just a tupperware container on here rubber made sealed sealed up in here i got all sorts of my junk tie straps but here's where i mounted my little fuel filter there down below and then the the power coming in and then from here from this pump out to the diesel heater is a hard line so what i did is i ran i ran all of it in an old garden hose so that hard line is run through this garden hose all the way on the inside of the frame at the top all the way back to the diesel heater way back there so you can see where it is back there so that's that keeps it all protected when i'm off-roading so there you can see the the black pipe for my propane and then the copper up into the trailer for that's for the propane stove in there and for the propane on-demand hot water heater in here i got my conduit you can see the conduit under there that's where how i ran all my wires because i wanted to be able to run them after two so i ran junction boxes and conduit so if i ever want to feed some wires i can do it no problem fairly basic that's my sink coming out there i've got a little fitting that snaps onto there and goes into one of those portable sewage tanks for when i'm camping in a campground and then same from my shower so just going down the side here so this up here this is the vent for my on-demand hot water heater because it's so cold and just to keep the the heat inside i just put this piece of foam in here for now but i just pop that foam out of there and we can get in i'll show you how that works inside this vent here it's for a marine so that's a marine vent like an exhaust vent for a boat and it just keeps it all protected so no water is going into your trailer again same same window as the other side down below we've got our diesel heater exhausting there there's no muffler on there but man it's still quiet just the way it is is it's quiet you can hardly hear it continuing back this is my water fill right here from my tank so inside i got 30 gallon tank so that's the water fill i also got these stabilizers so i installed these rv stabilizers here and then i added the big pads to them so this is a seven inch pad and then same there rv stabilizer seven inch pad the axle itself before it had the leaf spring on the bottom of the axle and so i flipped that i've taken the leaf spring and i put it on top of the axle and i've added these shocks to it you can see those shocks that made a world of difference this thing would bounce like crazy going down the road before now it doesn't bounce at all i highly recommend shocks so i still got some got to put some off-road tires on there something a little bit wider you can see how how much that sinks in the snow it's not great but that's on the to-do list wrapping around the back here cargo doors not a ramp that's what i wanted so this opens up and then this table pops up like that put your barbecue on there and then what i did is i mounted some lights these are just exterior lights and i just reversed reverse them so they shine back and then you can flip flick it on and you got some light where you're barbecuing at night time okay let's continue around to the other side so just before we go around to the side i'll just show you my solar panels up top so you can see here so there's two solar panels mounted up there they're 170 watts each down this side here so on this side i've got my uh this is my plug so this is a just a 15 amp 110 plug so i just plug my extension cord into there and then i can run it into like say you want to run into the campground or if i want power in here if i'm working inside just an easy way to get that again my rv window i put an exterior light up there and then here for my door latch so this is just a t-handle for a gate it comes with a key and that just real simple open close to prevent someone from locking me in here i just drilled a hole down here and this is where i put my lock that normally will be up here so i just snap my lock in there and now you can't close the door you can't get close to even getting that latched in for my steps i got these rv fold down steps so these are solid steps basically they just fold up into there inside and they'll latch up in there and then what i like about these is especially for where i camp really off-road and all over different terrains is they got adjustable legs so you can adjust it for the uneven terrain and they give you a nice solid step you're not scared about stepping off or slipping or anything okay so now we're at the door let's go inside okay so first of all the front door when you come in so this is the side cargo trailer door i did not insulate it it's still just plywood and then i just put one of those t-handle gate latches as the door latch in here it was just very easy to do and what i do to lock it is i've just got one of these sliding locks let me just slide it and then i drilled a hole in the the d handle here and that that secures it so i'm moving on to the sink area first of all when you walk into the right fairly simple little cabinet up top we've got for our dishes food stuff then we've got a shelf down here then our sink this is a bar sink i think it's just a 17 or 18 inch bar sink and it what we liked about it was that it was deep so it gives you a lot of spot to put dishes when you're washing because since it is such a small sink you need a little bit of depth to it the faucet is for a laundry tub so this is a laundry tub faucet it's plastic i wouldn't say it's super good quality but it's quite cheap and it's light which is good for an rv because there wasn't enough counter space here i put this little drying rack here so basically this just folds down and then you've got a spot when you're washing dishes to dry them so that just folds up and then it latches there underneath the sink i just plumbed it just like you would a house so if you can see back there that's pex plumbing with some of these braided connectors this is an rv um p-trap comes out and then basically i just ran it with tubing straight out the bottom and then i added a little vent over there so down here we just have our pots pans i also installed down here i put the trailer connector so it's all inside all the wires come into this for the trailer and then they go back down out through the floor so now on to the bathroom area so the bathroom area up top there again another cupboard in there we keep our towels uh toiletries and a first aid kit a little shelf over there that where we put the soap while we're using the shower and then just a couple little shelves here for a miscellaneous stuff again you can see the pex lines those are all on the interior i didn't put anything in the wall i didn't put any pex lines underneath because we do a lot of winter camping and when it gets cold you want to have those inside they'd freeze solid anywhere else this is a little porta-potty we got it's a 365 it's called and what i liked about it is that it's a manual pump it's not a battery operated pump which i didn't want and also it's got a latch on it so there's a hook on the back that grabs onto it and then down here it locks it in place so it can't move and that's what i wanted i wanted something that would latch it right into here so i can just travel it's all locked in here right beside that we've got our shower definitely not a big shower but not bad i think the the base is 24 by 27. again you can see the pex lines and the shower base basically it just runs outside but i don't know how people go without a shower inside their trailer because when you're out and about doing things or who wants to shower outside especially if you're doing winter camping you know when it's minus 30 showering outside is not i wouldn't imagine would be much fun for plumbing my shower i basically just took one pipe you can see i'm just coming straight off the hot water so i don't mix there's no mixer here where you can control the hot and cold it's just full on hot so what i do is i set my um i set my hot water tank my hot water heater that's in here i set it on the temperature that i want and then when you open this up it's just full on and that gives you a nice warm temperature to shower with up top i just mounted one of these little flexible shower holders here so you can just move it around pull it out and it just goes in there and that gives you it sets it we're just exactly where you want it and then it's an off and on shower head the shower rod that goes around i just made it out of three quarter inch or maybe this is inch pvc and then i could get full all the way outside you know like you can match the contours of the trailer which was kind of difficult to do so this is helps me do that and then i can have my shower curtain here get in and out there fairly straightforward basically i've got uh just a shower curtain that wraps all the way around the back to the sides and then this is just uh this is the actual what you'd call the shower curtain to get in and out through here okay let me jump into the water heater how i did that so the water heater it's located right here in between the fridge and the shower it's one of those on-demand hot water heaters and i showed you the vent outside where it blows outside so now i'm going to show you inside but one thing you'll notice there's a little fan down here so this fan is controlled up here i've got a switch that i can turn that fan on and then that causes positive air pressure so that forces the air through and then out that vent so that causes that so there's no carbon monoxide buildup in here but just in case there is there is a carbon monoxide detector in here of course um but it's never gone off it's never even registered anything high so this keeps it so that it's always um it's positively like pushing the air out no matter is what i found before is if you had a strong wind sometimes the wind would blow back in and then it would shut off your hot water heater so this way it never shuts off when you want it to run okay so now i'll just jump down in here you can see where the hot water heater is i'll just move this shower curtain we'll get a better view okay so now we got the shower curtain out of the way i just tucked it up top we can see how this is so this is the door right here for the hot water heater and then you can see my pex lines coming in there so here's the hot water heater in there so basically a lot of these valves you wouldn't need unless you're doing extremely cold camping so that's what for me since i'm doing like we're out there at minus 38 degrees celsius i think it's almost the same fahrenheit when it reaches that temperature but what would happen if you didn't have these all these valves on here is in here is a heat exchanger full of water and the cold air from the outside the this vent here where it's going outside it will freeze this and you'll you'll split it so what i do is we run the shower and then to do that there's a valve on there for my cold it allows water into the shower and then this valve runs allows it into the pipe to the sink or the pipe to my shower here so what i'll do is i'll shut this off shut the other valve off and then down below you'll see there it's kind of hard to see but there's a little valve down there just down here and so you can you can shut it off when you're running the shower but then you open it up and then you can see there's a little tube here so this little tube drains this whole hot water heater so i just open i shut this off shut that off open that up and then i open up this valve up here and it allows it's just like a vacuum break and then all the water drains out of here so then this thing will never freeze there's no water in it any time that i'm traveling or anytime that i'm not using the shower pretty simple system my propane lines there goes out to my tank out front there's my hot water supply i mean supplies right there and then the hot water um coming out of the tank up top you can kind of see it may be a little difficult but that's the vent anyways i'll link you can see the in this i'll link a little video where you can see how i installed this if you want more information about it so that works really well for me i don't like the rv tank like an rv hot water tank i don't like the idea of packing around an extra you know 10 gallons of water for no reason because you can't actually suck any of the water out of it you got to fill up what you're taking out of it so you've always got that weight for no no apparent reason so this made it nice kept keeps it nice and light you've got as much hot water until you run out of your main tank as you want and um i really like it and it's fairly fairly cheap to do so i was thinking about doing an exterior shower like running a pipe through over here and have an exterior shower but again with the cold camping we're doing it just doesn't make sense so while i'm running this once i open up the valves everything's shut everything's working i'll close this door so that keeps it sealed and then i'll flip that fan on and that pressurizes this this cabinet and pushes the exhaust gas out of the out of the unit there and that's worked for me but again i don't know if i'd recommend it i think you'd have to do whatever you feel comfortable with okay let's move on to fridge and stove so here's my fridge and stove area so the fridge is a 12-volt fridge which i kind of wanted because i like the idea of just being able to travel with it on and just running it off in my truck while i'm driving um it's very very good on battery usage i think roughly when it kicks in it's it's running roughly two and a half to three amps but it's duty cycling right of course of how cold it is outside and everything to allow enough air to flow through here i had to install a fan down below here i'll show you that when i get into my bench here and how i've got all these things laid out here but again that's just 12 volt fridge and it's a compressor fridge it does have the actual compressor in it i picked it up used it had a few dents on it it was brand new but it had these dents on it so i got it at um from a guy that was planning on using it that didn't up top we've got it's just a two burner stove just picked it up off amazon i like this one because you don't have to light it yourself it's a one of those really called piezo or pisio lighter so you just turn it gas comes on [Music] nice and easy only thing i find with this it gets too hot it's just a little bit too much flame if i could turn it down somehow i definitely would like to do that the cover is again it came with this cover i just took off the sides that flip out because uh it just i didn't have enough clearance behind it the depth of this cabinet right now i think is about 20 inches and then this panel right here is 24 inches just to give you the idea and you can see how the the pan down below the shower pan is like an extra so that was 27 inches so just to give you an idea of how deep this this little cabinet is that i built here got my diesel heater up here great little diesel heater i know it seems to be uh hit and miss with them but this one's been very good and i really feel like a lot of the problems that i i hear and read about with them is because they weren't installed properly so there's some really good videos out there how to do it properly and i'll link to the one to my install but really if you look at my install i i credited another guy that i that i learned most of it from so i've got my little shelf here all my uh cooking stuff here and then up top this is the little drawer so i've got all of the all the things in here like our util utensils all that sort of stuff up above that is cupboards all the way along and how i built these cupboards is this is just a frame this isn't like a cupboard that's been mounted to the wall where you've got a top and a back to it basically there's just a piece of plywood in there that i attached using this aluminum angle iron and then it hangs off of this this frame that i put here and the frame i've got uh where is it over here these aluminum brackets that attach to the roof uh struts or studs the roof studs so up here we've got all of our another little chunk of our food my electronics drone all that sort of stuff that's in there over there we've got our sleeping bags and then we've got a cabinet there that is um my cabinet and then sue's cabinet for clothes back here we've got so these are the benches that we that i built so under here is my water tank and my diesel heater and we can get into that a little bit but one thing that keeps this whole unit from freezing because of i'm basically just running off my diesel heater right now and again like i mentioned it was -38 no problem nothing froze so to keep that going though is this is my diesel heater this is my the heat coming out of the diesel heater and then i've got over there you can see a big vent it's just a big open vent and that allows that allows the air to come in here the cold air in there and then it comes across here and then gets blown out here so this cycle that's happening here keeps all my lines my pump everything from freezing no matter how cold it gets on this side i've got my battery so we can get into that in a bit and then also on this side is i've got storage for this is what extends my bed so this thing slides out of here i can show you that and then it'll get clipped into here and it just provides a little bit of extension so you can sleep this way it's still it only comes out i think i came out a foot maybe a foot out of here or maybe 10 inches so there's still room here to walk and everything but it just extends the bed just enough so i think it extends it to maybe six foot five or something like that here's my table just a piece of plywood with some of these picnic table legs on it they fold up and then i just use some aluminum brackets that it sits down on that sits in place there's some my homemade cushions not great but they work well and then i've got led lights everywhere these are just the rv led lights off of amazon they're great really nice and bright and so i've got the one at the back and then three up front got a little fan here fantastic fan works great uh it's simple i like that i don't like the controls where you're you know just more things to go wrong i think so then if we go to this side over here sorry hope that was slow enough for you so up top you'll see these are my controls so over here i've got our my solar display i'm missing my thermometer i just had an exterior interior thermometer that's gone and then it's just my capacity indicator of my batteries lets me know how much i've used so that's we've been out here for now two two and a half days almost three days with all the lights on you know water pump running furnace going heater going fridge going and it's nice with this one because you can see what each thing is drawing so this is like you can see how many amps right now i'm drawing so that's with all my lights on my fridge right now is running and my diesel heater so what five to five and a half amps a couple usb charging indicate um plugs up there okay let me show you how i set this up for sleeping okay table folds down just like i mentioned with those legs so you can just lift it up and i just set it on those brackets and i just fold up the legs and then you can just slide out the cushions they just fit in and then the bed extension just comes right out of here just slide it out and then on the bed extension it's got these little latches that clip onto the main thing that holds it all together you just set it on and then you latch it you can just latch it through there and through here and then there's still a spot there's still a spot where you can put your boots or anything and it doesn't block the heat coming from the heater it keeps the floor still nice and warm so that's where it goes folds away pretty good just like that so let me show you what's underneath the benches okay to access the rear benches just through the back doors here so this is the the battery side here you just flip up the cushion now the benches i just put with this piano hinge on there so you can just flip up the the top and under here you'll see so i've got some storage up there that's just for like lighting emergency things like that you can see where the bed extension is in here here's my battery box so i've got four six volt batteries in here i think 520 cold 520 amp hours total at the back here's my electrical so i've got my fuse panel here and then the shut off or breaker circuit breaker for my fuse panel and also then my circuit breaker for or to shut off my solar panel so under here i've got my charge controller and then again another shut off to shut off the panels to it so this here's uh just a surge protector that's where the 15 amp plug from outside comes through straight into here and then from here i've got uh my charger so this has got it can be a supply or it can be a six volt charger or a 12 volt so i've got set up to do 12 volt and then also i'm going to run a plug out to the front so that i can run a 120 volt when i'm in camping in a campground so that's that side and again i put another vent on the side there just to allow a little bit of air in there especially for that charge controller that needs a lot of air it can't overheat so i'll just jump over to the other side so on this side i've got my water tank on my water lines and my diesel heaters over there so let's just flip it up i'll just show you what's in there so we just gotta lift this cushion come on you get off off you go come on off you go okay again piano hinge top of the bench so in here you can see so what i've got is my tank 30 gallon tank my fill for my tank just a vent for the tank and then this is the water line coming out of the bottom i've got a drain for that water line here so i can drain the water out of the tank i also have another shut off right here and a shut off a valve here and what i do with this this is how i fill it with rv antifreeze so i just put this into a container of rv antifreeze open up this valve shut that valve turn on the pump and it just pumps rv antifreeze through the whole system so there's my pump i've got a little filter in there i try to do flexible lines and then i put it on these little vibration pads but still very loud and then here's the diesel heater so this diesel heater it's got a metal cover because i read that sometimes the plastic covers they would shrink or expand because of the heat and then they'd make noise they'd rub so this is a metal it's got a metal cover on top of it and then yeah just your standard diesel heater the shut off for it is up there for when i'm camping this summer i can shut it off so that it's not drawing any power this is the fan for my fridge so when my fridge comes on this fan turns on and sucks the air through through underneath the fridge through there's some vents up top there on the fridge and it keeps it nice and cool but this having the diesel heater here i think is the best system that's kept this all all heated it doesn't freeze in the winter because it's drawing air from this grate through and then across everything and then it's blowing it out through the heater blowing it out to heat the cabin okay so that's it i hope you enjoyed the video if you did hit that like button also if you have any questions or comments please note them below i try to respond to all the comments so i appreciate your suggestions too i think a lot of the your suggestions have helped me in building this so hope you enjoyed the video we'll see in the next one

Channel: waysoutback

Views: 778,166

Keywords: six by ten, Camper, Convert, off road, winter, cold

Id: XKl6shwsxBU

Length: 36min 31sec (2191 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 05 2022