How To Convert a Small Car into a Micro Camper

hey guys welcome back to wilder hope adventures thanks for watching and today i'm actually going to do something slightly different i am currently up in yorkshire exploring the moors and the dales and i am using my ford fiesta as a micro camper i've had a lot of people who look at me in disbelief when i say that i'm using such a small car as a camper but i want to show you how i set it up that i have everything that i need and show you how it's done so that if all you have is a small car as long as you're short like me you can make any car work so let's get started with the basics i have a 2009 uh four-door five-door if you count the hatchback ford fiesta there is nothing special about this fiesta it isn't bigger it isn't longer it isn't taller than any other fiesta out there is your very standard ford fiesta that you would get on any british roads but i have made some modifications to it and i'm going to show you how i set it up from front to back and how i have it set up during the day and then how i set it up for the night there's not much going on with the front seat it's very very simply set up i do keep all my snacks in the door down here all my camera equipment which is my sd cards and my batteries often keep my snacks in the dog leash so i've got actually got my kindle in here right now um and other camera accessories in the door obviously the driver's side isn't going to be much different i've got to be driving i can't move the chair around too much so i'm kind of particular about where my chair sits um but it's on the passenger side we start to see some differences in how i have things set up going into the foot well this is where i keep all my shoes so this isn't a movable container which means i can move it up move it down and usually when i'm driving i just keep it down like this but when i'm i when i need to move the seats forward it can slide up and out of the way at night that makes it more accessible um for me to get to things when i need them during the day and of course i've got to have my diet pepsi anybody who knows me at all knows that this is my addiction right here i don't do coffee i don't do tea in the mornings but i have got to have a diet pepsi or four maybe six um i know it's a horrible habit but this is where this all goes usually i'd have one big case of it it actually makes it a little bit easier to move back and forth and usually i would actually have that sitting on the seat so that i didn't have to constantly move it one of the biggest differences that i have in this car is i have this power outlet here it has an on off switch three ports here two year speed surges here and also two more around the side this gives me a whole lot of options when it comes to charging phones charging uh my cameras charging my tablet my kindle and stuff like that it's a really good one and highly recommend it also comes with an inline fuse on um on the plug-in socket which is right here which is definitely recommended i had one before that didn't have that and i kept blowing fuses in the car moving into the back because of the insurance requirements and the way that cody travels i have to have this set up behind the seat to prevent cody from trying to come forward to keep him in one place this right here is um basically a seat cover but it also helps block that space in between seats and keeps this area a little cleaner i put the rug in here just so that the dogs have a little bit more traction a little bit more comfort when they're laying in the back so this section right here is where the dogs travel so at night um i will take this uh the guard down right here and it will end up just sitting on the dashboard thankfully it just undoes with two different bolts and we'll put it up there easy to find in the morning not not complicated at all which makes it nice but it is always one extra step because of the way my dogs are and some of the legal requirements or insurance requirements in england so now that we've got that down we need to move this which just has a zipper in it and we detach it from the seat right here so now we can move this seat forward which makes this backspace a whole lot longer and i basically move it as far forward as i possibly can to give me the most amount of space like i said before i don't actually do anything with the driver's side because i am quite picky about how my seat sits so we just leave that alone and that's right behind there is where cody lays for the night and he has plenty of space so this is where we get into some of the modification and what i've actually implemented in this car and changed about this car uh compared to most other fiestas what i did is i actually took the the base of the seat out and flipped the seats forward unfortunately in fiestas seats don't lay flat at all they can't even make them lay flat with a lump in them or anything like that so you actually have to take the seats out and lay the seat backs forward and brace them so i'll show you how i do that and then show you the platform that i've built so under the blankets which just give the dogs a little bit of cushioning and protects the wood i've built this platform right here and it's braced up on top of the seats back seats right here and as you can see under here there are no seats i actually use this for a little bit of storage for tent poles but i've actually got the brace which is a piece of wood sitting on the metal protected with a towel so i just made this out of some spare plywood and some spare two by one by twos that i had but because again this only goes to um the back of the seats when they're you know in normal position this needed to be something folding so this folds flat so that when i put the mattress out i've got that little bit more support right there all right i'm moving on to the driver's side again some of these things are here because i have been backpacking i just had to find a place to put them i always try and store some toilet paper in here but underneath we have two five-liter water caddies that fit absolutely perfectly i've never come across anything quite so perfectly in a place that i needed it to um and i'll often have two one liter bottles and potentially my backpacking stove down here as well but it's a space that kind of gets used in several different ways so the way that you see this setup right here is exactly how i travel everything is in the in the back so what we've got uh this is my mattress it's rolled up it is a custom cut piece of foam uh medium density uh this is what i started out with uh fits perfectly between the back door and the seat um with an extra piece of phone that fits right here and this is my duvet and pillow and night clothes sits right here now of course right now you don't see where all my clothes are my cooking stuff is i will show you um just about to get onto that and we'll show you how my i cook my food where i keep my food where i keep my clothes and how i constructed this entire thing [Applause] [Applause] and there we have it so this is exactly where i keep everything so on the left hand side i've built this entire platform right here it's attached to the the platform at the front that you saw earlier that the dogs spend there most of the time on when we're traveling on this side i have all my cooking stuff i have paper towels i have a cook pot i have a towel spare bag of stuff fuel for my backpacking stove i have a helinox a chair right here and some fuel for my big stove which i don't have with me this time onto the left hand side i have just a flower tub actually i think this was that i put all my food in um i do buy as i go so this is all my backpacking food right here that i just shoved in and some wet wipes that were also there so on either side i have these little holes that i've actually found fit my crocks very well so moving over i actually managed to find this bag i believe it was tk maxx fit perfectly that this is where i store all my clothes and i was able to find a thing that actually had one to put my dirty clothes in so this is how i store all my clothes it is hinged at the back back here and it's fully supported all the way through so there shouldn't be too much pressure on the seat backs which are brace with taking the seats out i did make sure that i was still legal um it's only the the bottom parts of the seats the seat belts are all still in there um it's just basically this platform that's been built so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna pull the food out we're gonna get dinner going um and use it that's basically what this back platform is so we have to move everything forward to be able to access this again making most use of space but it isn't the most easy thing to do it's not like being in a proper camper you have to compromise a little bit in terms of ease and simplicity so the one benefit about having this platform it's wide open it's plenty airy so that if i'm you know i've got the stones going i don't have to worry about fumes or anything like that this is wooden it's flat and it's level um which always means that i don't have to worry about trying to find a flat space place to cook and it makes a perfect table i can prep on it if i need to um i haven't actually done it use it in that way yet but it's basically a great big working space um of course when it's raining not so great because the dogs still need to be in shade i don't have a whole lot of um protection from this but um at that point that's the kind of time you end up eating peanut butter or peanuts and ritz crackers which i've done on several occasions um but tonight we're we're just eating some mug shots figured that that was give me some of our backpacking food up it's very simple way to to cook i don't tend to do a ton of cooking out of the back of my car i just wanted to be simple canned food with rice or other simple things hello oh i tell ya this camping in the back country back country um especially since the a-road is right there but this camping in the back country this having no care in the world even if it's just for a week between work thai it really can't be beat and that's one of the reasons why i want to encourage you with this video is it doesn't matter what car you have it doesn't matter what vehicle you have you can get out and do this this is this could be your adventure this could be your adventure story um and it only takes a little bit of imagination a little bit of encouragement maybe to get out there but we're about to get ready to set up for full night mode and i'll set the camera up so that you guys can see how i'm doing it [Applause] do you remember me telling you about this wedge pillow goes right in the corner here so that my my pillow has a flat surface to brace against so the next scene that goes in is the pillow right there and then secondly it's the duvet well the question is this is only 65 inches and so am i um but laid out head to toe um i'm only 65 inches but when you add in all this extra space and the fact that i lay on my stomach it doesn't quite work out going from here to here so i actually have an extra piece of foam that means i can lay diagonal so this piece of foam is cut to fit this space perfectly um i do actually end up sticking my feet down this hole quite a lot just because i find it comfortable and then i am able to put the comforter over the top of this and tuck it down to keep my feet warm i took it all the way around and have yet to be cold so that's how my bed set up initially and then we'll finish up here in just a second [Applause] all right and that about does it as you can see kai has her spot right here front seat cody has a huge amount of space right here and we stay around the back i have a full length for me bed where i can sleep very comfortably this is great form very comfortable i have slept really really well in this bed um and this is how i make it work you know at this point yes i can still get underneath there if i need to i will be putting some hinges on that that storage underneath um with some some lock braces just because it can't it will fall down on me event occasionally and that has her i've ended up with a couple of bruises from that um but this is basically how it works and it's worked for me very very very well when i gave up my estate car i knew i had to be able to make it work now if a car was any smaller than a fiesta it would be a struggle unless the seats tip really far forward but for what i need and for what i'm looking for i've made this work so hopefully you can too if you have any questions about this conversion how i've built the box how i built the platform the products that i've used the ideas that i got for it and how i came up with this idea please please comment down below i'm more than happy to answer any of your questions point you in the right direction but good luck with yours i hope that somebody can take some advice and some some inspiration from this go build their camper really they don't need a van they don't need a massive car to get out and explore the world the only bad thing about this no shower no toilet so i am relying on campgrounds on occasion to take a shower or doing the you know the quick baby wipe shower and public toilets for the most part unless i can find a really remote spot just like with backpacking so that's it for this video thanks for watching i hope you found it really useful uh please give it a like and thumbs up um and if you liked it and if you loved it and found it really really useful please consider hitting that subscribe button we'd love to have you as part of the community we want to help you find your adventure story and get out there and create memories thanks for watching

Channel: Wilderhope Adventures

Views: 95,044

Rating: 4.9157896 out of 5

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Id: 4oFatbMMWzs

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020