Is this Overlanding Truck the Best Vehicle Ever?

hey folks my name is alex jackson and this is my 1990 leyland daf t244 expedition truck house named welly this video is sponsored by bespoke post click the link in the description and use my code floor 20 for 20 off your first box i have been building rigs for a number of years now i kind of started just with the tacoma and rooftop tent and moved on to bowler to the toyota heist van which you've actually probably seen in another floor video i sold that van and it took about a year to find a vehicle that was fuel efficient reliable easy to fix easily source parts for and it's like a lot of boxes to check i really really wanted to come in 6bt engine i know the reliability and the power and all that so i was in red deer alberta and it went by a used car lot and there was a leyland daft sitting in a used car lot and i was like what's going on here i started to research it and i found that from the factory this truck comes with a cummins 12 valve in it it checks all the boxes i just got to build a house on the back when the truck started it was just a flat deck truck nothing on it the initial cost of the truck i will tell you it was sixteen thousand five hundred dollars canadian total maybe spent sixty thousand maybe seventy thousand canadian on it what i have here is a 1990 leyland app t244 which is a x british military transport truck the truck itself weighs about eight nine tons factory from the military these trucks have what owners have coined the mustache which it's like two half bumpers up front it looks kind of funny there's a big nato style pintle hitch in the middle i didn't really like it very much so i took that off and i built my own like steel bumper just really really basic i basically purchased the truck because of the engine i know it's very reliable very powerful very torquey and it's actually got really really good fuel mileage i do about 30 miles per gallon in this truck what i did right away just to get a little bit more power is swap out the injection pump to a rotary injection pump i also swapped out the transmission that has a 0.67 overdrive on it so i can now reach almost highway speeds at a reasonable rpm swapped out the fuel tank which is behind this kind of fairing here to 100 gallon tank so i can do theoretically 1300 miles which was pretty great i also wanted the max amount of storage so i started building boxes for hoses and electrical and stuff built all of these out of steel here i built this tire carrier these tires weigh 250 300 pounds so i made this little crane just i hoisted up with this these are old ammo boxes that i've saved from antique stores and i use it for wood storage now this is a receiver hitch i will be able to put either bike mechanic stand in here or a table for cooking outside this is my propane box 20 pound bottle lasts me like a month and a half main toolbox fluids spare parts i got this massive hub nut tool here that i got from a guy in the uk his name is matt payne i built the entire structure myself it's steel frame aluminum skin and then i built the entire structure around being able to carry bikes because my wife is a professional cyclist i can fit four bikes inside of my garage i decided to build the garage on the front of the truck because i wanted to be able to have my water tank where it's kind of best for weight displacement so what i have is 65 gallons here just plug a hose into there and turn on the hose and it fills three filters there filtering all the water that comes up to the top large sediment 10 micron and 5 micron and then my hot water heater this is an isotemp 6 gallon heat exchanging water heater i can heat my water with my inverter but otherwise it just heats while i drive i have this little outlet here so i can just screw in a hose have a shower outside my wife can wash your bike a little bit of extra storage up there and yeah we have shoe storage on the inside of our garage interior garage door so this actually swings open into the living area i also fabricated this roof rack and this ladder drilled out every single corner hole cut it with a zip cut and smoothed it out with a lot of work now i have a yoga deck storage deck up there where you can either hang out or store stuff up top here we have well what was supposed to be 560 watts but it's now 460 watts because i put a 100 watt solar panel in series so it stopped the 180 down charges my 24 volt battery bank inside to 100 amp hour agm batteries wired in series to get me 24 volts with good sunshine i have zero problems staying charged unfortunately in bc it's really really cloudy here most of the time so i've had to be plugged in a lot i just have a basic noco g15000 battery charger that just tends my batteries got a skylight for my bathroom i've got a skylight for my bedroom and two max air fans and that is my chimney and if you look at it closely you realize that that's a little bowl on top of my chimney i built these brush guards with my buddy ray from haven garage some guy had his rope for his tarp strung out across the road it was pitch black outside i didn't see it and ripped off my solar panel so that happened and then i built these really nice rails on the top this truck used to have a turret hatch inside of it i had to cut it out and seal it up because it was leaking so bad after i sealed up the turret hatch i had all this ceiling real estate on top so i built this center head unit console kind of deal before i had the whole thing spread out across the window and i couldn't see very well it's out of my view and all combined into one it's it's really efficient and i much prefer it also looks a lot better i wanted a little bit of a cabin warmer feel so obviously i did all wood grain stuff i did fur quarter inch ply for the door panels and wall skins and stuff i built all the kind of like storage units in here so i got storage in here i got storage in here when i ordered my new gearbox for this truck this box had all these daft logos on it so i used one of these for the door on this console and willow obviously has her nice little bed here so she's really comfortable she gets to see the road instead of where she usually sits on the floor i store my ladder right between the living area and the cab just on simple brackets and i just pull that out and hook it on and i have steps let's hop on inside welcome to mikasa [Music] this is one of two fuse blocks that i have my batteries and all my electrical system are right here and then i run two big uh like cables up through here down to here and then run all stuff on the front of the truck off of here because the garage is at the front of the vehicle my bedroom goes on top so what we have is a full queen size bed it's actually an ample amount of space you don't feel claustrophobic or anything like that i did make the decision to put a skylight directly over our heads so yeah anything to open up the space i did shelves towards the front of the vehicle it's more than ample storage for all of our clothing we have a max air fan directly over the bed when it's hot out you just do exhaust and then you can do a intake with the other max air fan so you get really good air circulation through the cab i built storage nooks and shelves everywhere i could just to get everything stored away one of the things i really really like is all the barn wood kind of a compromise between the wife and i she wanted like white ceilings to brighten it up but i didn't want just like plain white ceilings so i put barn wood up there and then painted it white and put some cedar accents in and it turned out really really well obviously i got a fire extinguisher because right here i have a wood stove and i actually built this wood stove myself my grandpa gave me this really really cool cast iron furnace door so i just built a stove around that my flue pipe is actually exhaust pipe this is a cubic mini flue pipe exit pipe wood storage right here and then my garbage is right here garbage and recycling and also just like fire starter and stuff like that we have a wet bath again i used as much repurposed material as i could this siding is actually siding off an old barn the cedar i mean that's canadian cedar there's just a two by six cedar piece that i ripped down and then uh treated it the whole bathroom is completely watertight i sealed the whole thing with like a waterproof uh paint and then went over top of it with that and then siliconed it i have the hot water on a thermostatic mixing valve so it comes out at the same temperature all day long so long as you're hot water i designed this composting toilet myself it's working like at 80 efficiency there's like a little bit of an odor it's not like really bad but it's earthy smell and it's quite noticeable which i don't love so i actually have a airhead composting toilet on order now and i'm going to replace it eventually probably later on this summer these doors they were all pulled out of the 80 year old house and i just cut them up to size i reused these old hinges kind of polish them up a little bit i use a novacool 12-volt refrigerator i was going to buy a dometic cfx something and i was going to buy it secondhand it turned out to be the wrong fridge so instead i found these guys and this refrigerator fit perfectly right here which i was really really happy about and they're designed and i think manufactured in vancouver i used canadian copper for a lot of my railings this is all canadian copper i made a towel hanger out of an old piece of cedar yet again part of the aesthetic which is really really important to me to have a living space that i really love this is like a an old toolbox that i found again in one of the shops and this has all my cutlery an inset sink here so it's just like a bar top sink it's fairly deep so it's it's actually like a perfect size for a tiny space tiny kitchen the counter is repurposed barn wood i went to a barn pile and pulled out a whole bunch of two by tens and then glued them together and then put a bar top epoxy on top and this is the result i have just like a cam chef stove oven intended for outdoor use as a disclaimer i took the regulator off of the back and then i plumbed it right off the tank in my propane box outside my gas is actually on a electric solenoid so when i turn it on it opens and then the gas comes in and then when i'm done cooking i turn it off it closes and no more gas comes inside the cab so the lowest risk of having any kind of gas leaks in here and i do have a gas detector down on the floor back in this corner there was space that i couldn't get to so what i did is i put an insulated box in the corner here i can store fruits and vegetables in there for a small period of time if i need to or any dry goods that i need underneath the counter is actually the dog nook so my dog willow will sleep down there and then right here is all her her food and dog stuff i suppose my mom made the pillows for willow she made my curtains she made the comforter and pillow slips in her bedroom and also the curtains in her bedroom and she is a very very talented seamstress i built this seating area here to the dimensions of the window because i wanted both people to sit kind of same in the window but it turns out that your usual sitting area is actually six feet long and this is four and a half feet so i'm cutting this a foot further back just so i have more leg space because right now it's actually really uncomfortable to sit here for long periods of time it actually slides out and i actually got this idea off of the lost box build i'm going to improve on it so that eventually i can turn it like this and then actually have like a u-shaped bench area right now obviously the table's a little bit too big it's just one of those design things that you don't think about until you start to use it right here are all my electrical readouts my shunt for the 24 to 12 volt converter and then this is the readout of the voltage coming off of the converter and this is my solar controller i've got your basic 40 amp ep ever mppt solar controller 720 watt 24 to 12 volt converter lots of fuse blocks in this because this is a 12 volt fuse block here that powers like everything in the back half of the house and then this is 24 volt and this will actually power the diesel heater that i'll be putting in the truck later on [Music] the biggest lesson that i learned when i started to have to repair stuff is taking the time to do things properly last summer my friend kevin ran an idea asked me to come and build custom van interiors with him and i've actually gained a lot of experience in being precise and methodical and taking the time to do stuff properly like i literally built the entire thing by myself i got like an hour of sanding from my wife and i got some friends to help tack together the initial frame of the truck otherwise everything else was done by me it's like a massive time commitment and i was always just like oh i want to get out by this time so i got to make it happen i got to make it happen and then i'm struggling to get time to to work on the truck between work and training for my pilot's license so i kind of rushed a lot of stuff take your time do your research pick your materials so on and so forth that's really really important bespoke post is a great company that offers themed boxes for people who give a damn check out this great box that they sent us that came with all sorts of camping and survival gear it came with two high quality knives a hand chainsaw a bird call a hammock a golden moss and activated charcoal scrub bar a beach blanket a detailed survival guide and a cool army-like storage box to keep everything in every box has at least seventy dollars in value but it only costs forty five dollars in the box lineup changes every single month bespoke post is very easy to use you just click the link in the description scroll to the bottom of the page and take a simple questionnaire so that bespoke can tailor your boxes to your interests you can skip a month anytime and you can swap or exchange your box hassle-free bespoke is committed to working with cool under-the-radar brands here in the us since the kovit-19 crisis began they have bought over 45 million dollars worth of goods from small businesses to support them through these troubling times so if you want to check out one of these cool boxes head over to the link in the description and use code floor 20 for 20 off your first box thank you for watching have a great week

Channel: FLORB

Views: 293,943

Rating: 4.9400811 out of 5

Keywords: Travel, van life, van dwelling, simple living, van tour, van conversion, florb, dylan magaster, overlander, overland, over land, military truck conversion, truck conversion, 4x4, big truck, diy, self build, expedition, vehicle, expedition vehicle, off road, off grid, offgrid, offroad, canada, overlanding, overland expo, overland build, truck build, flatbed truck, flatbed truck build, flatbed truck camper, overland bound, DAF, Leyland, leyland daf, leyland daf t244, leyland daf truck

Id: p2-MUOd4A_g

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021