Look What I Did To My Friends Car || Ultimate DIY Camping Conversion

this video was sponsored by skillshare [Music] in a world with cars one boy set out to become a man by transforming his car from a wagon normally driven by a middle-aged female into an awesome camping mobile that boy was [Music] my friend nathan [Music] you want me to make this look cool it's a subaru outback [Music] white snow red sky reach out for so so high blue eyes [Music] i gotta level with you i've never done anything like this before in my life it's way out of my wheelhouse pun intended thankfully nathan had full confidence in my abilities he knew i'd get it done one way or another don't need that the first thing we had to do was get his car inside my shop unfortunately my shop's not really set up to get a car inside so it was a little trickier than you might think but nathan is an extremely experienced driver so we got it done in the end once it was in the shop he was a little concerned about his bodywork i was more concerned with the interior of this thing like i said i've never done anything like this before cars are just a foreign subject to me so i didn't really know where to start but i figured making some templates so that we get a flat surface to build off of was probably a good jumping off point luckily there were these detachable pieces we could use as templates towards the back of the car but i still had to figure out the front section so i just grabbed some brown craft paper and my plan was to just kind of bend it roughly into the right position and then use a pencil to draw my line i knew this wasn't going to be perfect but i thought if i could get it close well at least it would give me some place to work off of so after making my first initial cuts it was pretty close but it still needed a little work so i trimmed a little down here or there and before too long i had it fitting actually surprisingly nice next i wanted to take that front template and the back template and put them together in one giant template on something a little more rigid that i could be just a tad more confident in so i transferred those shapes onto a piece of rigid cardboard just with a sharpie marker and then i cut it out with a razor blade this would also probably be a good time to calm your nerves about that spare tire you saw me chuck it aside don't worry that will be mounted conveniently on the roof so we won't have to worry about accessing it once we're all done with my template cut out i took it back over to the car just to double check and make sure that it fit like i wanted it to and it did almost perfect i said almost there are a few little gaps but i just took some blue painters tape and taped them right onto the template to fill in those gaps and then my tape will essentially become part of my new template that i can use to trace out my final shape [Music] i'm practically a car guy now then before i started actually cutting pieces out of plywood i wanted to double check and make sure that it was identical on the opposite side i don't know could be different who am i to just assume that both sides of the car are the same but it was next i had to figure out how wide we wanted to make this thing one side was going to be cabinets the other side a sleeping area but how wide do you make a sleeping area well i guess it kind of depends on the person there's got to be somewhere i can get measurements from that's when i snuck up to nathan while he was looking at his smartphone and got measurements right from the source that's right i measured nathan's backside added a few inches to it and that's how i determined the measurements for our sleeping area turned out to be about 25 inches that's right ladies 25 inches finally with our template done and our measurements secured i took the template over to a piece of three quarter inch birch plywood and i traced the shape of the template onto the edge of the piece of plywood then i ran the plywood through the table saw to get the width that i was looking for and finally i cut out my template shape nice and easy with the jigsaw this actually wasn't nice and easy it was kind of a pain so i was really hoping this thing would fit the way it was supposed to so after finishing my cuts i took the piece back over to the car and inserted it and wouldn't you know it fit perfect until i realized a huge horrible mistake now i knew from the beginning that we were gonna have to prop this back end up to make the whole surface level but what i didn't think about was as soon as i propped it up it's gonna throw that scribed side completely out of whack so we thought about it for a little bit pondered and then i quickly realized the only thing to do was to prop it up redo the template and re-cut another piece gosh what a so much for being a car guy so i quickly threw together another template i traced it out on some more cardboard i cut it out with a razor blade and it was back to cutting it down off of a new piece of plywood this part was actually kind of a pain so i really hope it fits man i feel like i'm having deja vu or something but as my father always said why measure twice and cut once when you can measure once and cut twice but he wasn't a woodworker so probably why that doesn't make much sense luckily our second attempt fit very nicely next we had to determine the exact center of the car so that we could get a nice square cut along the edge of our plywood i didn't know how to do this because nothing in this car seemed square we're dealing with all curved and rounded angles but i figured that little ring at the back of the car was smack in the middle so i tied a string around that and then i had nathan hold the other end of the string on the very center of the shifter knob i assumed that was also in the center of the car and then i cut that line with the track saw just praying that this was all gonna turn out okay then i measured the space we had left which was that 25 inch rear end space i allotted for before and i thought it was high time nathan start doing something so i made him carry this piece of plywood over to the table saw for me get going man this guy then confident that the other side would be identical i used my original piece as the new template and i traced it onto our new piece of ply and then i did the exact same thing i did on the other piece just on the reverse side i cut it down to length i trimmed the whole thing out with the jigsaw and boom goes the dynamite i think you're gonna see me doing a lot of things in this video and wondering where the heck is nathan and why isn't he helping but that's okay i've gotten very good at working all by myself by the grace of god the next piece fit in perfect and our squaring method on that seam seemed to have been accomplished flawlessly i should probably stop and tell you about some of the components going in the car a yacht battery a roof mounted solar panel we've got this thing and this thing oh and of course a refrigerator that's right all that will get in here at some point with our plywood base cut to the right size i could now start fitting it a little better now i knew i had to lift it up on the back so i had to figure out some way to make a tapered base that would keep it level and give us a sturdy surface to build off of so i took some pieces of plywood over the table saw and just using my nice and simple tapering jig i cut them down at a taper that would perfectly match the underside of those base plates and sit flush against the car kind of like this giving us a nice level surface to build off of as well as some additional space on the bottom to add a bit more storage but we'll get to that here in a little bit first i wanted to trim down the back side of both of our base plates to have a nice straight edge to work off of next i had to figure out a way to integrate our tapered brace pieces into our top base plate so i cut down some little connecting brace pieces just out of three quarter inch plywood and i used them to connect those brace pieces together along the bottom kind of the same way you would if you were building a ramp for you to jump your bmx bike off of oh this brings back memories and once again nathan was diligently working hard while i got everything put together because this is going to be on the bottom side and you're not going to see it and also because it's going in the back of a subaru outback so who really cares i just glued and screwed everything together to make it quick and easy and super sturdy then once it was all hooked together i flipped it over applied a little quick and thick glue to each of the top surfaces of those brace pieces and i laid the template smack smackdown on top and then because i'm a fine woodworker i just screwed it right down to the brace pieces through the top of the plot i did use trim head screws though so they're not that noticeable and then i carried it over to the car and slid it in place to see how it fit hey hey look nathan's helping man i'm gonna make a woodworker out of him by the end of this video i swear on my life maybe not my life that's pushing it anyways after getting one side done i did the exact same thing to the other side i secured the base with those brace pieces added some glue and screwed down the top then i carried that over just to make sure we were still going to be able to slide this whole thing into place it was a little bit of a struggle but we got it in it was also our first attempt we'll get better just trust me we're unseasoned at this point so with our two base plates leveled out and fitting nicely in the back of the car it was time to start working on the upper cabinet storage now the idea was to do one long drawer that would pull out the back with built-in cabinets on top of that so i started just quickly making a frame for that drawer i simply took some three-quarter inch plywood added some pocket holes glued it onto the top and secured it in place nice and simple remember this is going in the back of a sugar outback people no need to get too fancy here after getting one side on i glued and screwed in place the back piece making sure that it was nice and square to that first side and then after i got that securely fastened i added my other side gluing and screwing that in place using this little spacer block as i worked my way towards the front to ensure that everything stayed nice and square that will make installing the drawer much much easier this video was sponsored by skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity i just took a very helpful class on video for instagram taught by hallease nerves hi i'm hallease a digital storyteller and youtuber and ever since i bought my first camcorder at 12 i've been making videos whether you want to say a lot or a little filmmaking is a really strong with every class i take i'm learning something new and there are so many great topics to choose from everywhere from animation to photography to everybody my name is thomas frank i am what you might describe as a productivity nerd and in today's class we are going to be building what i like to call a productivity system even if you say productivity funny skillshare has something for you it's curated specifically for learning meaning there's no ads and they're always launching new premium classes to top it all off it is less than ten dollars a month with an annual subscription the first thousand of my subscribers to click the link in the description we'll get a free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity with the frame of our lower drawer basically constructed i decided to set that aside and start working on our upper cabinet boxes now these cabinet boxes will be made as quick and simple as you could possibly imagine back of the car people so i cut down all my pieces on the table saw and took them over to my workbench to start hooking them together and how did i hook said pieces together just with glue and a 16 gauge pin nailer that's right fancy fancy fancy in order to save space on these cabinets the bottom of the cabinet will be the top of the drawer and the top of the cabinet well will just be a thin piece a quarter inch ply i will put on later i made a nice compartment for the fridge a little shelving unit and then that far section will be a cabinet door while i finished up on the cabinets i convinced nathan to do a little work and start drilling a zillion holes into this stop dancing nathan this isn't your video into the sleeping section of the compartment after drilling the holes i had him hit each hole with a little round over bit you know just to get rid of any splinters don't want him to get splinters in that 25 inch back side of his if you know what i mean by the time he was finished drilling holes i was ready to hook the cabinet together so i had him hold it in place while i just glued and tacked everything down i tacked the top of the lower drawer to the bottom of the cabinet unit and we will put that in place after we secure our drawer slides i wanted to leave the top of that drawer open so we could easily access those slides but before we do that i had to build a drawer so i quickly threw together a very oversized drawer just out of baltic birch plywood now this drawer is going to be a little special it's super long so it's going to pull out creating a table slash cooktop work area so one section is going to have a coleman camping stove and then the other section will just be more storage but we needed a table top it had to be flat so you could work on it if you didn't want it just to be an open drawer so while i figured out how i was gonna make that happen nathan got to work on the electrical setup for the solar panel and yacht battery to make my table top drawer i just took a quarter inch rabbeting bit and i added a rabbeted groove to the inside of each one of our drawer sections this kinda was a dusty job but what are you gonna do with my lip rabbeted on the interior of each drawer space i took this little corner radius marker thingymabob i had laying in a drawer and i traced out the radius of each corner onto the piece of quarter inch plywood then i took it over to my oscillating spindle sander and i just knocked it down right to the line i drilled out a couple holes in each panel so you could stick your finger inside and pull the panel up if you needed to access the drawer and i took them over to see how they would fit in the top of the drawer and wouldn't you know they fit perfect on the very first try sometimes you just get lucky or maybe sometimes you fit them off camera first and don't show your viewers but we won't get into that right now with our drawer built it was time to install our drawer slides now these are these crazy heavy duty industrial side mount drawer slides that supposedly will hold up to 300 pounds and to be honest i don't doubt it they almost weigh 300 pounds so after securing them inside my drawer carcass i slid my drawer in place so that i could securely attach the slides to the drawer itself now i wanted to raise the drawer up off the base a little bit so i just set an eighth inch little spacer block under the drawer and i slowly pulled it out as i secured the slides to the side of the drawer and of course you want to make sure that the drawer is not too tall because we do have to put a top on this thing after i got my last screw in place i tested and wouldn't you know the drawer slid in nice and easy and we were ready to close it in with our upper cabinet and then i just secured it to our drawer carcass with a few more trim head screws right through the top sure you're going to see them but big whoop it was about this time that i just started hating this corner that was going to make up the box to hold the fridge so i decided trimming off one corner of it would make it look a little nicer and you know what it did it it really did then finally i wanted to add a few little strips to the front to keep the fridge from sliding out as well as keep anything tucked inside those little shelves from sliding out while nathan drives around on bumpy roads or more accurately in his case down the rough streets of portland oregon then we tested to make sure the fridge fit in nicely which it did probably because we measured to make sure that it would and then again in an effort to save on room i just added a thin piece of quarter inch as a top to our cabinet box then finally i cut a little three quarter inch square to act as a cabinet door and i secured it in place and added a nice black little pull because nathan deserves the best i love that guy and the very last step was to add a drawer face to this long pull out drawer i just made one quick and simple out of a piece of 5 8 baltic birch then we carried the whole monstrosity over to the car to make sure that it wasn't too tall that would be a huge bummer and we would never ever make a mistake like that in our lives would we i was really building it up there to make you think that it actually was going to be too tall but don't worry i took very strict measurements after our first template debacle and it fit perfect then we grabbed our other base piece and slid that just to make sure we could once again slide it in now that it was much taller with those cabinets and we're getting a lot better at this it popped right into place just as it should look at that drawer pulls all the way out creating a nice tabletop surface with a little storage speaking of storage i thought it was high time we put something in these holes we created when we leveled out those base plates now i used side mounts on that long drawer but i just couldn't bring myself to do it again i had to get some blum under mount drawer slides in here somewhere and 15 inch slides fit perfectly in these little holes so i installed the slides i threw together a few more drawers just with 5 8 baltic birch i installed my little orange clippy things rammed them in place to mark out where that little clip on the back needs to go i drilled my corresponding holes and i slid the drawer in place click and just like that two more storage spaces for nathan to store his socks or underwear hatchets or whatever else you need to go camping all they needed now was some drawer faces this was a little more complicated because the back of the car curves in on the corners but i just slid a piece of ply against that curve and then using a pencil as a scribe right along the edge i just scribed out the exact shape of that little corner radius took it over to my band saw and trimmed it down almost like i knew what i was doing then i cleaned it up once again on the oscillating spindle sander now here's a little trick for installing drawer faces in any application if you know what hardware is going to go on the front you trace out exactly where you want that hardware to land and then once you get your drawer face lined up you just send some screws right through those markings of where your cabinet hardware is going to be then the drawer face is securely attached you open the drawer up you screw it in from the inside with a few screws and then you just pull out those screws you used to attach the drawer face originally and you pop on your hardware no one will be the wiser and you don't have to fumble around with any clamps or double-sided tape or anything like that i don't use this in every application but it comes in handy when you need it so i did the exact same thing to the other side and boy we lucked out with this hardware when the back is shut that hardware is about an eighth of an inch from the back which ensures that those drawers will stay closed while you're driving down the road unfortunately the same could not be said for this long pull out drawer so i decided to install a little clip lock thing this actually is supposed to go on the bottom of a table to hold the leaves together but i thought it would work great to hold this drawer securely i mounted it on the side so you can just flip it open the drawer and lock it in place hey if it works it works oh yeah i also forgot to mention at some point we installed a bottle opener because duh because i know i'm gonna get a hundred questions from people asking how long does it take to put this in and pull it out i thought i would just show you in real time how stinking quick you can take this out and put it back in now i want to do a fancy countdown clock in the corner but i don't know how to video edit very well so this dumb little clip art graphic is the best i could come up with but rest assured i am keeping a timer and i will show you the total time here in just a second wait for it wait for it wait for it and it's out 37 seconds to take the whole thing out of your car and how long to put it back in well we can do that too let's go little clipart clock do your thing now remember we are very practiced at this point because we've been pulling this in and taking it out it is a little heavy but with two people it's really not bad at all it's not screwed in or clamped in it's just held in place by the pressure between those two separate pieces so once you get your left side cabinet piece in place you just grab your little sleeping base plate thing and you slide that right in then while somebody holds the front you just do this do that wiggle here wiggle there shimmy shimmy shimmy shake shake shake and boom it's in okay stop the timer already hello 53 seconds there's a little less my timer skills aren't that great but you get the idea under two minutes to take it out and put it back in can i get a boom although i wasn't involved in this process too much i thought i would show you the simple components that make this whole setup a little more functional there's this solar panel on the roof now eventually nathan's going to get a roof rack so we didn't want to permanently hook this on so i just use zip ties but basically you've got a positive and negative cord coming off of the solar panel to a controller the controller runs down to the yacht battery and then the yacht battery runs back up to the inverter which changes it from dc power to ac power and that gives you power for your refrigerator as well as a little plug in the back in case you want to plug in an electric kettle or charge your phone or do whatever you weirdos do with power when you're camping i've never had much use for it myself and then the cord from the solar panel just gets shut right inside the door like that and last we added a few of these little battery-powered touch led lights in a few handy places one in the back above the pull-out table one inside the sleeping area that you can turn on while you're reading or i don't know what else and they're on a remote and surprisingly bright so you can turn them on from anywhere you want they also have a party function in case you want to get groovy up in here and set the mood lighting seems kind of weird but hey some people like it and with that there was only one thing left to do take it outside and see how she handles so with drinks in hand and my good buddy nathan by my side we enjoyed the great outdoors at long last my wagon loving boy had become a man i knew we should have made it bigger than 25 inches this is ridiculous i'm not going to say it again get your feet out of my face i can't do this again get a bigger car you

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 415,515

Rating: 4.9212346 out of 5

Keywords: Look What I Did To My Friends Car, Ultimate DIY Camping Conversion, van life, camper conversion, car camper, how to, car camping, car conversion, car to camper, car camper build, car camper conversion, car camper tour, car camper trailer, car camper setup, car camper kitchen, car camper tent, car camper bed, car camper conversion sedan, car camper sedan, van life build, car camper conversion ideas, woodworking, subaru outback, subaru conversion, subaru upgrade, camping, fun

Id: Wv2s6KmG4AA

Length: 28min 32sec (1712 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021