How to renovate an old motorhome?

in this episode of camper rescue we will test if buying an old motorhome and trying to fix it is a good idea or more precisely is it economically a good idea [Music] mateo and camila bought a 23 years old motorhome with a few small jobs to be done as it was their first acquisition of this type they found some surprises as everyone would do after receiving a couple of ridiculous quotations they got in touch with us through our friends we met in the camper to see what might be the problem and if we can help them at all where you had the idea to buy the campervan she got the idea yeah when i was a child i spent all my holidays in a van in a way and then i'm waiting a baby and i hope that she's can enjoy the same experience clearly the biggest problem was the sleeping area after opening the wall we witnessed that one of the sides is completely rotten you could literally break the wood with your hands on the roof we found the source of the problem the cover for the fridge ventilation was completely missing most probably for the last two years the rainwater was freely coming in as the motorhome wasn't used the second problem was exactly the state of the roof and any camper would need some attention even after 15 years this one was desperate after 25 for some reason the hatches were closed with the fiberglass boxes you might have bats of water insulation but you are missing on the ventilation and the amount of light in the camper wood on the platform is weak some strange emergency lighting with an electrical plug unnecessary television antenna all cables which were falling apart in your hands paint is chipping that afternoon we decided to dedicate 15 days for this project apart from what we mentioned already we will tidy up all the cupboards change the floor water taps new lights and few other cool things we hope that with small amount of money we can quickly fix the interior and making really pleasant atmosphere inside and safe from outside let's not waste time and this is your glass and this this build we're using gloves actually [Music] every time you're cleaning mugs huh yeah [Music] oh i see they were making honey here i guess it was like a side project while traveling you just homemade honey the best honey from exploration brothers 100 natural from the best parkings of europe please support our channel buy the honey and subscribe that's half a day gone we remove the hatches and screw the screws everything off from the roof to make this project matea organized the private parking which was much much better compared to diy store parking the not nice thing to work outside is the humidity on the roof so you cannot work straight away while my brother is finishing with the roof i will finish this part it's extremely important to not fall in love with your new motorhome and not to start spending a lot of money or trying to change everything to save some money we will clean these hatches instead of changing them did i wake you up no no i was i was just thinking which direction to go go to the right [Music] sanding off the roof is not a quick job but at the same time extremely satisfying as you see fast genuine results working with tools and batteries is fantastic with a tiny tool we save so much time and actually will make much better job in the campers everything is connected it seemed that we're working on the roof but in reality we have to fix the cables as well yeah it's uh years of airing and modifying quickly without involving yourself to dip you have to always find this balance because i think like just even to clean the sickaflex you can spend like days or weeks to get this perfection or you can just remove a bit more than essential to celebrate hatch installation we had some coffee break started getting a bit messy here huh oh yes it is to speed up our workflow we decided to make a tool stand but this is work in progress while we were editing the video we finished the stand if you are interested to see more details link in the description changing silicon on every joint is the most important thing you want to eliminate any possible change of water infiltration to our surprise we used about eight tubes for the exterior of the camper uv resistant silicones are not cheap why don't you buy new campervan and you buy you use one because this one is the first one of his first experience so we decided not to invest too much money in the first experience no but then we discovered that that that this camper had some problems and we didn't know how to solve them [Applause] and we have found you after cleaning the roof with alcohol we make special rubber based paint which is mostly used for swimming pool and applied two coats all around the camper it took us four and a half days to transform the roof and change all the silicone all around the camper as the final thing we clean solar panels and put them back on the roof how is the roof that's nice really nice and it's white finally we move to the second most important job on this project overhead cabin which we will call mansarda for sure it's not the most comfortable spot to work but what can you do [Music] everything is connected this is good to this silicon and you basically open everything yeah the tricky thing is the mattress is lying down here and you have the air come out so where the air goes into the mattress we're thinking to bring them out here more logically okay [Music] most of the time you have several jobs going on at the same time as everything interconnected you cannot close the panels until you don't have all the wires installed and maybe you cannot install cables until you understand all the electrical system of the camper so at the beginning you are wasting a lot of time for these things between the ceiling and front wall we will leave a small gap where we'll install a strip of lead light i'm quite happy that you can just use it as a belt look you have a hole you choose the right size of the hole you have a cable tie keep it in the pocket you can clean your hands mouth real gentlemen stuff i hear our plan was to use a three millimeter wood panel with one centimeter foam covered in textile to create five separate panels to cover every wall of sleeping area to avoid baggy textile we use some spray glue on both surfaces panels are connected with glue and small screws which are going directly through the textile it's a perfect time to tip clean hatches as well some magic yeah you don't need to buy a new hatch because the magic sponge with some degreaser does the job finally max moved from the paintings of penises to drawings of little and cute animals with smokes [Music] we had some extra space after moving the heating pipe so we will make a bookshelf with some usb chargers for the phones there we've tried three types of dye for fake leather but none of them was doing a good job so we left it in the original stage we finished the main two problems of this camper and we're happy to start smaller but more interesting jobs it's really confusing what's going on here is it 220 is it 12. most of the mess in the camper was created by some random and unnecessary cables all around the walls a part of extremely satisfying feeling from doing these jobs they're actually useful as you start to understand what's going on in the camper some old non-existent systems stickers on the walls strange screws without reason cables in the middle of the cupboards old hooks i would call this type of lights depression lights so try to get rid of them other way you will get real depression you know look at this there was a badass fridge and now it's boring fridge marks yeah the main goal was to change all lights in the camper by integrating led strips and spotlights as my brother described it had depressing light passing new cables it's not too difficult job but since we wanted to control all lights from the entrance of the camper it gave us a few challenges connecting that light lamp to the switch here takes a bit of thinking and planning all the cables are hidden looks much more tidy much more clean bombastic inside of the sofa there is no real reason to have it outside as it won't be used for extended periods of time inverter constantly consumes power when it's turned on we will move its switch next to the electrical plug by making a simple extension which will be switching on that inverter this is bathroom light three strips of lead because bottom needs to be bright so you feel it's fresh and clean watch out for your eyes we put filler on the ceiling and we paint tomorrow morning painting sealing is one of the super easy things and it's so refreshing the difference is huge look how wide is that it's the first time we are working in a professionally made camper and i feel like i can complain about the quality of materials they are so thin and delicate we understand that everyone is minimizing the weight of the vehicle but i'm not sure if i do like this tendency by sacrificing the quality in any case the ceiling came out great i'm sure if you will find some time to clean your hatch it's an immediate refresh for your camper without opening the paint just don't be lazy first you use a dry brush and then you have wet brush most of the screws on the camper are rusty and this ones are not an exception [Music] painting plastic part is not the easiest thing and the quality of paint is very important make sure your paint is suitable for plastic parts as otherwise you would need to use a primer just decrease it that's the difference [Music] before painting the dough i've cleaned it and i had doubt if i should paint it at all it came out really well and you could see the clear line we bought the paint already so we decided to paint it anyway the thickness of the ceiling is three centimeters and we couldn't find anything nice with an affordable price to solve the problem we will make a custom lamp from the wood [Applause] [Music] the biggest visual transformation comes from painting the furniture and walls it seems a very simple process but no matter how much you do it it's very difficult to master almost ready it requires thorough preparation and you cannot cut the corners here fantastic there are numerous type of paints for different materials and they need to match between them and you have to respect drying time we did our best and the result was still average so i would say we still need to practice more some of the walls were too damaged so we had to paint them we have two days left we're at our final stage of the build when you do the things you don't see the changes because they're happening slowly in front of you but when people come and see the van it's a lot of changes yeah i hope they look what pipe connections is my biggest enemy on these projects and this wasn't an exception i was really lucky that next to us we had a professional plumber claudio he helped me to create a custom connection from an old watertop by welding it for me it's mind blowing of what you can do with professional tools changing shower top was a nightmare normal watertops are more bulky and fitting in was a real test of my patience at the end i've managed to do it with a rough diy solution and next time something better needs to be invented [Music] my grandfather will be very proud of me on weekends mateo and camilla were helping us so they would have the camp already faster if you have this metal grid in case of an accident you're automatically losing your insurance it was a real struggle to remove it you saved the insurance at the same time camilla was fixing the plate number which lost all the color if the police stops you with an unreadable plate you will pay a fine by painting it the guy saved around 200 euros how's it going here not so good with the spray paint for plastic we improve the look on the mirrors we're doing some glass preparation before painting this area we'll paint the same color white that looks more fragrant yeah and this will be brown color same as mullet like that thing doing a really quality job takes a lot of time at this stage we didn't have much time left so we quickly painted just the bottom part of the camper with a normal diy paint i hope it will last for a little camera driving and parking more than seven meters motorhome it's a real challenge in italy and most of the europe solution was to install this dash cam with a rear view camera activated automatically with the reverse light it's a hassle to extend the cable but i think it's worth the money instead of classic wooden floor we decided to try plastic vinyl with adhesive on the bottom it's lighter and thinner price is more or less the same as a wooden floor installation is very simple and requires good cleaning with a simple cutter the whole procedure took us about 4 hours from start to finish in the future we'll make a video update about this project where we'll share all the mistakes and problems we had on the edges between floor and wall we used brown silicon happy yeah [Applause] probably some people will criticize me for changing partners too often yesterday it was camila today's max try to change partners for other activities checking the fridge checking everything and we're almost done here i'm not sure what happened here but i forgot to reconnect the water pipe under the sink and having an electrical system underneath is not ideal luckily nothing happens you know we are breaking stereotypes here so remember to use gloves we almost finished and after doing some general cleaning all around the camper we moved to the normal parking for last minute things [Music] on the journey we had a small issue ventilation grill for the fridge was lost so we had to change the whole hatch for one thing like this you can lose the the whole grill for 50 euro the plastic with the time you see it look we're making some spaghetti here as last preparation we had to make the mattress a little bit shorter we couldn't do this without help of this nice lady with the dog it's the last day and the guys are leaving for the first trip today ready we finished the mattress and helped to pass cables for a rear view camera to answer the main question is it convenient to buy something really old and fix it there is no easy answer as everything depends if all the systems are working like fridge heating oven biggest role play is the price of the camper as with everything else most probably you wouldn't know everything and you cannot fix all the things in the van so as long as main systems are working and maintained you'll be fine paint and water taps are not extremely expensive for this project we spend about 800 euro in materials and it took us 15 days matteo and camilla fixed the fridge with 100 euro and water valves with 85 it was expensive by not much at the end we bought in a lot of stuff now so yeah we need it we've finished the win looks fantastic i forgot the pipe under the sink thank you for helping a few things not ideal but overall the van looks much better looks great i would say you can live you can travel with it and of course you can spend much more time and improve like smallest details you can spend like months now it's it's really nice and it's functional and you can travel you can live in it so what's your first trip the interland of florence interland of florence oh next time i need the first trip what can be better we're ready for the next lockdown thanks for watching and see in the next one thank you much guys thank you very much no problem thank you ciao [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Exploration Brothers

Views: 201,583

Keywords: camper, motorhome, refit, renovate, camper rescue, exploration brothers, how to refit, how to renovate rv, how to fix rv, how to refit motorhome, van refit, DIY, DIY motorhome, how to renovate camper, budget camper, paint roof, how to paint motorhome, diy motor home, how to, rv improvements, resell camper, rv renovation ideas

Id: XNVLzaa2PUI

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020