MiniVan Camper Build | Dodge Grand Caravan RT | Van Life

[Music] hey everyone christine icy here welcome back to my channel so this episode is a minivan conversion to a minivan camper my husband bought this van back in november of 2019 you will see footage of him of converting it and making it to the camper it is today there is footage of video and then still pictures to show you the process that he went and he explains a pretty good bit so i'm gonna get out of here and let him explain later welcome everyone this is the start of the conversion of the dodge grand caravan into a travel vehicle basically a mini camper i'm gonna use this to take some trips to state parks stay in a few nights it's not really going to be made to stay in full time but it'll be made to stay in you know three or four nights in a row a couple nights while you're on the road just to make travel more comfortable and allow you to go to places that you can't get to with the big rb so i purchased a 2012 dodge grand caravan 125 000 miles on it keeps the cost down the initial startup costs down that way a lot of advantage of the grand caravan the reason we chose this over a panel van number one this blends in better because it's just a standard minivan and these things are all over the place you do blend in a little bit nicer also with the stone go seating once that's removed it'll give us quite a bit of extra storage underneath you can see this one is in really good shape so it was the ideal candidate to start with so here's the interior straight simple dodge grand caravan things that were a must on this was the rear back up camera the reason that's important is i'm going to install a lock pick so that way we can run the rear camera at all times because once we black out the windows it will then be used as a rear view mirror you can see obviously second and third row seating but this is all going to come out all this second and third row seating is going to come out which gives us access to all the storage and the compartments underneath here and all the storage in the rear so once these seats come out obviously all that storage is accessible and usable for storage inside the camper so i picked the dodge grant caravan for a very specific reason it was a stone go seating in particular because that will give us extra space underneath the seats to give us extra storage the floor space on this is very similar to that on the promaster city it will fit a four by eight sheet of plywood but this has then with stone go seating quite a bit more storage now because the van has more curved walls you lose a little headroom space but the overall seating was what i thought was worth the difference so let's show you around so basically um i wanted a floor plan plan such that we could have a bed and a seat both and it needed to be the bed needed to be able to come up and down very easily i don't want to have to take it up and down pull pins in and out so we built it basically a frame out of square aluminum tube and plywood that we actually shaved down or not plywood two by fours that we actually shave down to make a frame and then the the base of it actually is again square tubing that's riveted and bonded together and then has three quarter inch mdf in the middle of it with then a rubber sheet over top of it plus then the foam over top of that so then we put the fridge freezer up on a platform because we use the stone go seating underneath for extra storage now we have a foot mat here for shoes because when you go places everywhere you go you end up then creating a dirty mess with your shoes so now you have a mat that you can put out and then when you're traveling put it underneath so that's why we have this foot mat it fits underneath there just perfectly and you can see then it gives us access then to the storage here basically you built this just the right height to allow us to flip that up once we get into there we can get into our full storage underneath here the things i store in here are things that we don't use often jumper cables tools for the van things like that dirty laundry goes under here sleeping bag things that we don't get out as often for cold weather [Music] we'll start here at the beginning when you first go in you can see the angle it's a fridge freezer i picked this one specifically because i wanted to have a freezer we eat a lot of protein shakes that's probably our number one meal for lunch so i needed frozen fruit and so forth they needed a way to carry almond milk or coconut milk and the refrigerator part of it so i wanted a freezer and fridge this is one of the ones that has is taller so it actually fits in a small square footprint but still giving you quite a bit of space [Music] we put this stuff up on the platform obviously so we can get underneath there but one of the things we ended up having to do then is put it on a slider and the point of the slider is to bring that refrigerator out this way and lock it in place so that way while we travel the passenger seat can be pushed back and lean back and recline obviously we need to keep my wife comfortable traveling the structure that we made this out of is a two by four structure but it's a metal frame i did the metal frame on purpose so that way it could span the opening for the stow and go seating and be mounted to the mount for the seat that way i didn't have to drill in anything into the van and if this this could all be removed and the van actually turned right back into a minivan so then the other parts of this then are obviously a sink one of the other things we want to be able to do when we travel is brush our teeth take out our contacts wash our face and so forth so we put in a sink it has just an on-demand water pump here and pumps quite a bit of water it runs real nicely obviously this comes out so you can wash your hair in the sink and so forth it's actually long enough you can stretch it out the door although i have an outdoor shower so we don't need that 12-volt lighting and then a microwave we eat a lot on the road we like food so we tend to go out to eat at nice places so we have a lot more leftovers than we do actually cooking so we don't need versus a hot plate or something along that line the microwave works better for us and so i have a 3000 watt inverter which will run the microwave i also have shore power plug-in and i'll show you that so we can run the microwave offshore power if we need to [Music] [Music] so [Music] so for the windows we wanted to black those out basically what i did is i ended up taking then this is insulation like what you would find in uh for an engine bay it's silver on one side reflected which i actually covered them with the felt so it'll be a blackout and then basically we just put then uh an imitation leather then on the inside so they're glued to each side velcro then to the the window so it could be removed if need be although we've never really found a reason to take them out [Music] so some of the other things we added then was a dvd with a tuner and because we have the tuner when we go places we can use the antenna which is mounted behind here in the window to get local tv stations for you know just again local news things that are going on events and so forth the dvd does then hook to the tv now obviously the dodge ram career has its own tv but to use that tv then you would end up having to uh run the t run the van or keep the van power on this way we don't have to runs off than the battery source so as i said for the bed we want to be able to take this up and down easily so you can see it's built on just a frame of one by aluminum one by tube and then two by fours we built the frame and the chassis then with drawer slides so that way it just slides down like that and so to get it up and down um it is as simple as unlocking it it does not lock in the open position gravity holds it there and then it's got a handle to pull up on slides and locks back into place we keep the bedding up here i put in a rod to hold on to the bedding so that way you can keep it up out of the way a pillow fits right behind it and then all your bedding sits here so again you can put the chair out put the bed out of chair mode and lay down nicely [Music] [Music] all right here is the couch bed that i built for the minivan this is obviously just the frame i don't have the sliders yet for the operation of it extending out on the bed but it does slide decently without them to give you an idea of what's going to happen so basically it is just as simple as this part here sides blower there creates a bed not much more complicated than that and then the reverse to put it back together and then for the trunk what goes over the top of the storage basically it'll flip up to have access to the deep storage that the minivan has the other reason i like this design was that it would give us a functional seat in the back some would go places we've went then to the beach into a lake and we've sat and ate lunch and you can just sit and enjoy the lake and sit here and underneath the shade and out of the rain even and sit and enjoy a view and have a nice time to relax so that's why we built it this way the other thing then um with this with the bed with this seat is you can actually access the stow and go seating again by flipping this up and now you've got access to all this which this is a large storage so your suitcase have to be a little shorter but they still fit in fully so a carry-on suitcase no problem fits in there our cooler fits in there so forth so then you can see this is how i built the bed frame basically it's a one by square tube okay riveted and bonded then to some aluminum to hold the corners l angle mdf put on top of that and on top of that on top of the mdf then is then a basically yoga mat that's been cut and then velcroed to it to give a more of a hard surface and then obviously the foam this is a very stiff foam it's only three inches so we can get actually really stiff so you don't actually go down all the way and hit the uh bed frame ever when you're laying on it so after we took our first trip one of the things we realized is that um getting your your clothes out of a backpack or a suitcase every day left them quite wrinkled so i wanted to be able to hang stuff up so we devised the closet back here and so basically we just put hooks in here that allow us then to hang the clothes put in a bungee cord and a strap and it allows them to stay up so they will come up and down with the door and allows you to hang really you can hang two hangers on each so six days worth of clothes um and uh that way the things you want not to be wrinkled cannot be wrinkled [Music] [Music] here is the electrical side of things well the plumbing electrical it has two four gallon water tanks um and then this is basically our fresh water this is then our gray water it uh gray water obviously drains just out of this tube you just open up then the the valve drain it out then into again depending on where you're at into you know onto the ground if you use biodegradable cleaners so forth or into um you know a uh black tank somewhere i also then came up with a hose for the outside same type of thing so that way if you were to be out somewhere in such a way that you know your feet are dirty stuff like that you then can turn on this hose it actually works pretty darn well it gives you a pretty good app so but and we also have then i keep the power cable here because i do have shore power in this so that way you can plug in if you're at a campground you can plug into a regular outlet and run everything microwave included and the battery charger off of that 3000 watt inverter which then will power the microwave plus then the outlet that's there to run the blender on off switch so that way we can disconnect the battery and keep all of the electronics in the back off so it runs just like a regular end and doesn't drain the battery out at all it also has then an on-board battery charger the norco genius there and that allows us then to when we're plugged in keep the battery charged full time so again when you're at a campground when we're at home or if we're not driving a lot in between you plug the van and it keeps the battery fully charged smoke detector carbon monoxide detector obviously some 12 volt outlets and then the [Music] few [Music] so and then for shore power basically i added right in here i added then just a a regular plug here into the front and then it runs through the firewall back into the back and allows you then to plug in the battery charger is always plugged into the outlet but then also you can plug in then the microwave things like that not have to run it off of the inverter and the batteries you know the van we've been in it now two or three different trips and road trips primarily i stayed in this for a week and i was at a campground so obviously you can use their shower and so forth uh works out real nice it was comfortable for one person two people for a full week or longer would be difficult mainly the point of this is to make road trips it's not to be full timers in it a minivan is tough to do that but the minivan gets great gas mileage i get 25 to 26 miles to the gallon with this so we can travel it's an inexpensive way to travel we can spend the night on the road and when we get where we're going rent a vrbo get a hotel room spend a couple nights there and again still use have something to drive around and go out to parks like this during the day and then then pick the next location and take one or two days to tour stay the night at again a rest stop walmart so forth and have a nice place comfortable place to take out my contacts wash my face brush my teeth things like that we sleep nicely in the bed being four foot wide sleeps the two of us just fine and again get a good night's sleep it's comfortable food whenever we want it since it's a refrigerator we're not changing ice we've got you know just all the comforts of home that we need to make traveling nice it allows us to travel in an inexpensive way hopefully getting us to travel even more because it's not costing us thousands every time we try to go for a long weekend [Music] the

Channel: Christine IC Vlogs

Views: 170,099

Keywords: van life, minivan camper, van conversion, van tour, minivan conversion, minivan life, dodge grand caravan camper, van builds ideas, minivan conversion ideas, minivan conversion tour, minivan conversion build, dodge grand caravan camper conversion, 2012 Dodge Grand Caravan, dodge grand caravan, minivan build, minivan camper conversion, minivan camper bed, minivan camper build, minivan camper kitchen, dodge grand caravan camper van

Id: nib4fhnbQUg

Length: 20min 1sec (1201 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020