Minivan Camper Build Tour with an Innovative Bed Solution! (Dodge Grand Caravan)

hi everyone we are here in quartzite and i'm here with my new friend ben he's from georgia and he has this really nice setup in his 2016 dodge grand caravan it's a simple build but he has some really good ideas that i haven't seen anywhere else before i'm excited to show them to you so let's turn it over to ben this is a sort of standard layout i've got my bed here this is a memory foam mattress you know and all that stuff and lots of warm blankets and i kept the single this is a 60 40 third row and i kept the 40 part the smaller seat and all the rest of the inside back seats are gone so i have plenty of room what that means in a dodge is is only the dodge not the honda and the toyota is that there's all this extra room here um for storing stuff i just um have butane and paper towels and things like that and they're on junk you know basically but it's great having that extra space that's one advantage the dodge has and the other way i got some freedom around space is i built a bed that doesn't have any legs except just up here in the very front and so i did it by getting some steel i bought this at lowe's hardware um although now i found out where to get scrap steel this stuff costs 20 um 22 dollars a piece on either so 44 for the two i think it was anyway um i think i could get it for 15 for both now um the slats are a kid's bed from ikea and they only cost ten dollars and so i drilled a hole and used tie wraps to hold them to the um the steel so there's no legs under here because the steel's strong right if i used a wood i'd have to use a two by four and that would eat up a lot of my ability to slide tubs underneath so that's how the bed is configured and of course there's no mold or any of that stuff because there's lots of ventilation under the up to the bottom of the bed and then in the back i wanted to keep my storage here where the third row seat folded down and i didn't want bed legs so i have suspended the um this two by four it's hanging by uh rope from the seat belt mounts and there's a hole drilled in it you can see in a knot keeps it from falling down and so i don't have to worry about legs in the back of the bed either so if i get a folding bike or something like that i'll be able to fit it in here without bumping into support structures for the bed so that's the fun part of the build that's a little different most people need legs and you know that's a little less flexible than no legs in terms of how you store things so then back here i have water and these mosquito nets for the windows a chair and so on but lots of room back here and i could i guess even pile it up if i had that much stuff so these cords are useful i i can hang things on them to dry washcloth or whatever and these hooks are great i like my little lantern and before i had a different lantern and i had to turn it 90 degrees i think is right so i can just put one of these velcro loops on things and then it turns it from uh north south to an east west hanging point this is actually sort of the fuse box for my cheap uh backup camera because it's not wireless so it comes to here and then the monitor is there and uh and the power comes from the uh the cigarette lighter behind here and one set of wires goes back to the camera and once that goes up to the monitor it's strictly speaking not a backup camera it's just always on if i have a push button switch on the sun visor and so if i want i use it instead of a rear view mirror or something i could you know i had to mount the camera high because the bike rack's always going to be there and most of these license plate oriented backup cameras put the camera right in the middle and so that wouldn't see anything but the up tube from the bike rack the monitor comes through these wires that tuck behind various pieces of the bodywork to here and you know i put all that in there temporarily and temporarily became permanent obviously there's a lot of wire i could get rid of and so on but that's my backup camera if i need it for mosquito nets i have this standard um magnets inside of duct tape on either side of screen porch screening from home depot or something like someplace like that and so they can just easily go on and off i was just uh aware that that if i wanted to put the velcro tabs on the inside of the windows then i could put my screens up when i'm in some area that's really infested because i went to north dakota and uh before i could even put these on about 300 mosquitoes had gone into the van you know so i i just ended up leaving after a while there's so many mosquitoes whereas this you know you need to put them up like during the day before the mosquitoes come out or whatever so then you can roll down your windows and get ventilation but that's my mosquito screens uh standard stuff all this is uh ideas from youtube right thank you youtube for showing me all these things then i have various bins some of them open some of them boxes some of them with lids but there's i think 12 inches almost here so there's room for different things sliding in of course i have a tool bag and all kinds of winter clothes and so on i brought more cold weather clothes than i need i suppose i have the passenger seat foot well filled with coats and things so i'm not going to freeze out here where it's already t-shirt weather standard reflectix i guess i'll grab one just for demos but standard reflectix blackout for the windows just jams in of course and it does a little bit of insulation but when i wake up in the morning the thermometer i have inside and the reading of the outside are identical every time so insulation is basically zero but very good for privacy of course back in the back i have a bike rack that i got from craigslist and it's uh it's nice because it gets the bicycle out of the way entirely and so it folds off when i drive and the other thing about it is that since my bike isn't mounted on the roof or anything i don't have any aerodynamic obstructions so it's sort of like that when i'm driving there's very little some extra wind resistance from those the handlebars but i get 30 miles to the gallon on the highway maybe 25 around town something like that so i've been really impressed by the fuel economy i figure 8 to 10 cents a mile when i'm planning a long trip is what my fuel cost is going to be i don't have anything on the roof either and that's good for a few miles to the gallon a couple anyway i'm sure i have a little camping lanterns i cook on a propane stove that i frequently sit set right down here on the on the floor mat and it's only a one burner of course but that's all i need i make single pot meals as a rule typically i'll boil some rice and then add some soupy thing like or some lentils or something and some broccoli if i have it i also like sardines i've got a few large uh what is this a six pack of sardines because um they keep well and i like them so i have a way to get um meat and when you add these to a dish it actually isn't bad right but usually my my meals don't have much oil in them and so then i've got the pot and the spoon i stirred it with and that's it for dishes you know no plates no nothing and of course it keeps trash down because i'm not using paper plates or anything like that this white material on the outside of the van is kind of nice it's called perforated vamp vinyl i bought a roll it on amazon for something like 50 dollars maybe it's a touch more and it i started off on these side windows practicing you peel it off its backing and it sticks on and then you cut it with a single edge razor blade or something really sharp and it does a really good job from the sunny side people can't look in but you can look out just fine and it also probably cuts down on the heat gain you know it's a fifty percent coverage material so that's uh nice stuff i have learned how to take this spoiler off so if i ever redo the perforated vinyl on the back it'll be a lot better i didn't even know how to take that spoiler off when i put all the wrinkles in there but um hey that's what makes it bespoke for ventilation i lower the passenger and driver side windows half an inch or some small bit and that's all i need for me but if i'm trying to oxygenate a cooking stove i don't want to die right so i open always the vent windows in the back and sometimes i'll even just open the sliding door it sort of holds open six inches open and and when i'm cooking i do that just to be sure i'm safe i have a little suaoki um power supply brick battery gizmo the the 150 watt hours and i plug in a usb fan to that and i think my limit without a fan might be about 80 degrees high 70s but i can probably be reasonably comfortable sleeping at say 85 with that fan going it's quite nice and the oaky can power it just fine all night and since my power demands are so low i haven't gotten into solar that helps my fuel economy not having something on the roof but on the other hand if i had solar i'd be able to cook with it and that's what i would like to do that's my um use case you know just get rid of the burning flames in the vehicle and the way i am you know i spill stuff i don't you know it's like probably better for me not to play with fire so i don't know if that'll be enough to get me to put solar on the roof or not we'll see this this is an oral b toothbrush and it's rechargeable and instead of the factory charger i have this little inexpensive um i think this was three dollars on alibaba you can probably buy one uh on amazon for twice that and it's got a usb um power supply and so i just travel uh with it in this cup holder in my front and then i use this sock to to keep it upright because it just really wants to fall over otherwise and so that's how i am able to charge my toothbrush in a moving vehicle here's the usb cable that it plugs into and uh yeah i was happy to discover that that there was a non-uh 5 volt charger for this rather than having to run the inverter all the time because i have a little inverter that plugs into the cigarette lighter in the rear of the vehicle but uh that's a lot of overhead just to charge a toothbrush right so i i like going straight from my usb power and also means i can charge this for my battery pack if i need to without running its inverter so my efficiency is a lot better for that oh yeah and here we have a box full of um of winter clothes and i wear these sweatpants at night uh when i'm sitting around in the van they're more comfortable than blue jeans but i've got i guess some of my other shirts and just a whole pile of clothes that i really honestly don't need extra my extra blue jeans all that stuff's in here so that's more of my clothes storage and the grand caravan has two glove boxes you know uh in in a little charger here that i use for my tablet when i'm driving this is only active when the car is moving though but it's you know look here mom unused storage isn't that great what would i change about this van um i can't blame the van for anything if i had bought a a certain trim level i would have gotten tinted windows and i think i prefer that and then i would also have these sliding door windows would be able to roll up and down mine are fixed so my ventilation is limited to the the rear fly windows and the the front windows so i think i'd rather have the ones with the middle that go down in terms of the layout of the van i simply have to improve my vision in my my organizational skills myself i've seen people do amazing things in minivans and i'm a combination of of unimaginative and lazy that has it this is about the right level for me i have thought about adding solar uh partly just to follow the crowd i mean there's so much excitement about solar and so many neat products coming out the main use for me would be to get rid of the butane stove and cook and then i wouldn't have to worry about ventilation and all that for the stove for safety the other use for it would be probably 12 volt warming of my body like the motorcycle tourists they they have heated vests heated socks i think they have they do have heated glove liners i wouldn't need those but anyway the socks and the vest maybe a little heating pad for the bed that would be nice in the in the cold evenings rather than heat the whole van just heat me a little better and i can sit and read or whatever quite comfortably as it is when i sit in my chair here i also have this little folding stool you've seen these at walmart in the paint department i had to look all over walmart and realize they were in the paint department but um i can sit there and put my feet up so i like to sit and read also i think actually i would probably get a tea kettle and then when i make my coffee i wouldn't even have to mess with the um with the stovetop i would just use one of those inductive tea kettles that they sell because i like coffee so yeah that would be some improvements but i'm really happy with the choice of the minivan i love the fuel economy i love being able to park it anywhere a mid-sized car can park i love being able to get into parking decks and i've needed to in fact old parking decks that were quite low i love the way it handles i go through the mountains and so on in fact this road here is would have challenged it was a challenge enough for the minivan let's put it that way so i wouldn't want to have anything less capable than that for a road like this it's also very repairable very well well made i expect it to last a couple hundred thousand more miles so i really like this minivan we'll have to get something bigger to happily live the van life with my wife i've only taken this when i go by myself and it's just great for me but with her along i would want something gosh probably half again more square footage anyway we'll see she'll still stay married if i don't take her on trips but i'm kind of in love with this van too so so i don't want to have two and i'd have to get rid of this to get one for her and me so that'll be a tough decision because then if i take a real long trip and i've gone on 8 000 mile trips if i go on one of those in a great huge van when she's not along with me it'll feel a little wasteful so we'll see how that all plays out thank you ben for sharing your adventure mobile with us uh he's got a really nice rig here very um not super complicated something that i think a lot of us could do but uh you're super happy with it it's exactly what you need right it's great it's great for long road trips very comfortable you know and thank you guys for watching i hope you enjoyed the video let me know in the comments below if you have any questions for ben and i'll make sure he sees them and let me know what your favorite part of his build was i'll see you guys in the next one thanks again sure to check out adventure know-how my new site where you can gain access to a map of all of my free campsites plus monthly bonus videos that you won't find anywhere else learn more at adventureknowhow.com and for links to everything else suv rving related visit suvrving.com links to these sites and more will be in the video description

Channel: SUV RVing

Views: 272,878

Keywords: suv rving, car camping, suv camping, road trip, camping, camper, rv, vanlife, vandwelling, adventure, travel, suv dwelling, rav4, toyota, sleeping, dodge grand caravan, minivan, bed, build, tour

Id: L8jf_n0GaFQ

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021