He Turned a Rotting RV into the Ultimate 4x4 ADVENTURE Rig!

[Music] how you doing my name is brian reardon i'm from boston massachusetts and this is my 1998 coachman starflight van yeah my love of vans is probably paired up with my love of travel and for the last 15 years for work i've been traveling all over the world doing production if you're the type of person who likes adventure once you start adventuring more and you see more of the world you realize travel and relationships with people that you meet is really the best education that you can get in my opinion so i got addicted to that experience it's just kind of a perpetual state i bought my first four-wheel drive van in 2010 after experiencing where that can take you and the amount of places you can get to i realized i wanted to step it up a little bit and get into a van that i could stand up in have a shower a kitchen and actually have a living space so that i can get out there and have long weekends a week two weeks or potentially live in it full-time in the full-wheel drive ability market there's only a few options i was looking into the sprinters but the fact that they're all-wheel drive i know the limitations of all-wheel drive and i really wanted a solid front axle and with the availability of four-wheel drive kits for ford vans i knew that i wanted a ford chassis when you do the ford conversion you're using f250 parts there's parts readily available so if you ever had something break down you're not looking for something proprietary just a ford truck in the front end with the sprinter option they don't have any real locking options and when it comes to off-roading independent front suspension is never going to be as good and articulating as a solid front axle so when it comes to actually getting off grid and going into places where a jeep can go as long as you have the width and the height clearance this is going to be a much more capable off-grid machine so it's a 98 coachman star flight with a 5 4 v8 gas engine has plenty of power because we re-geared the axles to 513. it has a six-inch u-joint off-road full drive conversion it's their stage two kit fox 2.0 shocks and dynatrac limited slip differential up front we have an illuminess front bumper with some led lights 12 000 pound ward winch i bed linered the whole van including the grille the headlights on the van are projector beam and they're from a company called vantage optics i've wrapped your liner it myself it's really easy to do you just want to practice on a piece of plywood before you start spraying your vehicle everything on the van's been replaced on the exterior windshield wipers the mirrors the antenna every light even the clearance lights are led the porch light on the side is now led i have a 10 foot fiama awning that's brand new the wheels are custom made i need to have them custom made in order to handle the weight of the vehicle and to create the right offset so that the wheels sat where i wanted them to the 37-inch nexons can handle about 3 970 pounds per tire so if you're doing a single rear wheel conversion they're a good option there aren't too many that can handle that kind of weight all of these racks i made and they have an exterior plate and on the inside they have a matching interior plate so it's a sandwich grab on the the body it's not just screws drilled into the fiberglass another really cool feature is this outdoor shower when you're done with your day at the beach it's nice to rinse off and if you're in a really remote location it's nice to just bathe naked outside it's a lot larger of a shower than the inside one all the lights were replaced with led running lights i made the rear bumper it's made out of quarter inch steel it has a set of lights in it one's a turn signal one's a backup light these rear cargo boxes are aluminum they literally weigh three pounds when they're empty and they were a cheap alternative to something like when an illumines would sell for six or seven hundred dollars per box i built these boxes on a swing arm so that i could access underneath the bed the rear ladder i made out of one and a quarter inch steel bar and the rear bumper i cut it in this little hole right here which is like really your first step up onto the ladder so before i did any of the work up here i re-coated the entire roof with rubber and then i painted it with white raptor liner i replaced both of the fantastic fans and i replaced the air conditioner which was an old unit that didn't work and now it's a dometic penguin 2 low profile in the back here we have two roto packs get unstuck axe and shovel 300 watts of solar and a high lift jack so this is all storage jacked so i can change the tire it's got a nice little light in here water filter sawzall and a bunch of tools power hookups and then a bunch of recovery gear straps winches antifreeze foothold for the high lift jack tire puncture kit you could have a mascot you know grosgu relative of yoda he's not steered us wrong yet these seats were green velvet it was just looked like you were in a prince music video the ceiling's all bamboo and i finished off the headliner trim with a gray suede to match the front seats dvd player in the front with a backup camera i also have a front facing camera you can switch with the touch of a button curtains in a van is always a big topic you know it's one of those things like do you buy something that goes in the window and sticks on with a magnet and then you have to stow it or do you put something across the back here but that cuts off the access to the front seat so i built this track and then sew these curtains and then put these little button clasps on so that they shut all the light out now it's too dark you're still able to swivel the seat and keep the seat in the living space and they just deploy really quickly you want to be gone real quick you don't have to steal everything space is limited so they've been great so the concept of the van from inception was always to be a four passenger four seat belt van with the ability to sleep two adults and two children when i was planning the van i knew that i needed to have a legitimate passenger seat set up with two seat belts and a car seat so this is actually a ford transit 2-up seat and it's built on a custom steel frame that's bolted to the vehicle's frame in four places all the electronics for the van are underneath this seat this panel can come off and then there's a panel over there that you can get to some of the electronics but for the most part if you were to work on the electronic system you would have to take the seat out with four bolts it's not no big deal but at the heart of the system is a victron energy 3000 watt inverter charger i have five 100 amp hour battleborn lithium-ion batteries so we run a vitamix every day it has a six gallon electric water heater and an induction cooktop there's no propane in the vehicle and the generator is gone so in order to run the the air conditioning we have to be we have to be plugged in in the original rv it was a tv and two cabinets on the side i didn't need a tv and i really wanted the sleeping space so we converted this into an area for two children or a single adult i have had an adult sleep up here it's a little bit claustrophobic height wise but you can fit with your feet diagonally in the corner and your head over here night light or reading light this pad here is an insert for the the bed in the back the whole process of building the van came with a multitude of decisions and there's always that decision whether to diy it when it came down to it i knew i could do the inside but it was more important for me to have that return on investment and have that quality of build it's a really nice piece of mind knowing that everything's built correctly and the longevity and quality is going to bring you that return on investment if you do decide to sell your van in the future so all the woodwork in here is black walnut trim and ceiling and bamboo cabinets the floor is made out of cork which is uh nice because it's sound dampening and it's naturally insulating what's this stuff called german vinyl i forgot the name of it that stuff's amazing though there's a lot of storage in the van tons of overhead space this particular cabinet is actually 12 feet long and goes the full length of the van all the countertops in here are made out of rich light it's a really nice compound eco-friendly it's actually a really condensed paper product we love it it's super durable it's easy to clean if you did scratch it you can wet sand the scratches out this has a electric induction cooktop we have a six gallon electric water heater for the shower and the sink i also have a four-stage water filtration system so that you can drink the water a little shark it's the best lots of storage in the van got all the smoothie parts plenty of space for everything the fridge is an isotherm cr130 plenty of space for all your goods it's a freezer fridge freezer and we can get about a week's worth of food in there it's a really nice 12-volt eco-friendly refrigerator tons of space up here extra storage oh my god honey look they have a hanging closet the guys are like it's four wheel drive the women just want a hanging closet junk drawer all slam latches the van being so small and everything being compact the kitchen's really small so we put a lagoon table mount right here which really adds to your your cook prep surface it just swivels right out of the way when you're in bed mode and you're sleeping at night this is really really handy highly recommend these curtains i made they're all hand sewn they're double layered so that they're black out i didn't want anything that made noise when we were going down the road these curtains don't make any noise at all close really quickly there's little magnets right here to block out the light if you need to clean it you can just pop it off and slide these off this is on a magnet and these are 500 pound drawer slides so this comes out bed's really easy to make just fits right in and i'm 5 11 and i fit this long way no problem at all the cabin heater in here is a wabasso and it sips gasoline right out of the tank it keeps it warm in here in really cold climates but i think if i had insulated the floor would have been a lot a little bit more r value but the cork floor helps a lot it's pretty quick um this goes all the way through so that's pretty handy there's a whole bunch of storage underneath the bed on the side next to the water tank which is a 50 gallon water tank bathroom is not the taj mahal but does the job got rid of the regular toilet and black tank and replaced it with a nature's head composting toilet by having a composting toilet the soil in there lasts about three months the decision to get rid of the black tank and the toilet was actually just because it was the one thing that was kind of inhibiting the length of my stay the van base price was 9000 which was the steel the full drive components installation labor was about 25 000. once i got the van back from you join offroad i drove it back across country and then the first thing i did was gut all the original rv components i found a great outfit in san diego johnson's custom van solutions one builder and one 12-volt specialist and they work on one van at a time took about three months all in all with labor and all the high-end components that are in this van the interior costs around sixty thousand dollars to convert thanks for checking out my van if you want to see more picks i'm on instagram starflight underscore van i hope this inspired you guys to get out there and enjoy the great outdoors and start your own build thanks you

Channel: Mobile Dwellings / Gilligan Phantom

Views: 457,084

Rating: 4.9191961 out of 5

Keywords: 4x4 van, starflyte rv, starflyte van, 4x4 conversion van, 4x4 class b rv, lifted rv, 4x4 rv, lifted van, vanlife, nomadland, vandwelling, off grid rv, off road rv, off grid van, van tour, vanlife tour, rv tour, 4x4 rv tour, the best class b rv, chinook, coachmen rv, lifted camper van, 4x4 camper van, off grid camper van, rv boondocking, 4x4 sprinter, ujoint offroad, 4x4 E350, 4x4 starflyte, four wheel drive rv, tiny home, van life, tiny house

Id: kRHdAIidg9Q

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021