Our New Build! WHY This RATHER Than A Van For Our Next Camper!

well hello there old Chums we've got a very exciting new adventure for you all today but like any good story we need to start at the beginning Once Upon a Time this sensible pair what we got for dinner I got kangaroo stew tonight Bob oh gold and blly Me O so off for Australia to build a camper and travel the remote Outback and this adventure and its Misadventures go go go go go go go go go go go is what gave him the bug for finding the ultimate camper they had one last foray in their beloved Sprinter band to Europe on an epic summer road trip where they had a flipping good time a yes yes but as we all know winter was coming and this was no ordinary winter it's- 32 so I think there's only one thing to do enter the Sainsbury's van they turned this old Supermarket delivery vehicle into an Arctic ready Adventure vehicle and toward Europe's Frozen North where there was plenty of highs and a few lows we broke down again and this time it's bad engy won't even start now and as spring began to bloom these crazy 2 set off on their next adventure taking the stock standard Defender they had converted into an Overland camper all the way to Africa to explore Morocco and dine with the locals it's not every day you get to eat lunch next to a bunch of camels and this my dears is where you meet them about to embark on their newest Adventure we're off today to pick up our new rig any guesses what it might be I reckon it might be the ultimate Overlander I Shel is it's in Scotland so it's an early start so now I'm a bit more awake I've realized that the last time we saw you we were in Spain but unfortunately we ran out of shenen days so we had to hot foot at home and we literally just spent 2 days straight driving but we did make one very important stop off that's right the grillin all you eat buffet get in but I do have to make special mention here of Joe after he saw us visit on the way down to Morocco him and his mate flew all the way to Paris for the day not to see the SS but to visit the grillin what a legend but enough of all the chitchat because I'm sure you're just as excited to see this vehicle as I am so let's show [Music] you everybody meet big B red our 718k pins 6x6 X fir truck and the new love of my life now I can't wait to tell you and show you about this little beauty but I'm going to do it when we get home because we got a long drive home but before we go I have to show you around this place so we're at halfinger Technic and Dale the owner is a connoisseur of all things pins go and halflinger so as you can see he hasn't just got the one pins go he's got quite a few and this is just a few of the selection now this one used to be a Communications vehicle and the bit on the back cost Millions to build and now it's pretty much Obsolete and then you got ones like this and I think this one's called the vector which is pretty much all armor plated and everything like that as you can see on the front with the two windows but who knows what this would have been used for and then he's got this amazing selection of half lingers and they've all got a cool story but I'll tell you just a few so this little beauty was the first one ever imported to the UK and it's super rare this one was owned by Kurt Jurgen the baddy from the James Bond film spy who loved me hence the number plate this is a shne eel there's only 81 of them ever built in the world and this is the only one in the UK it's built using halflinger components but it's trapped so it could work on all of the ski resorts and then this rare old boost is an AC invocar and they were built in the 70s because they could be adapted to suit a wide range of accessibility needs for disabled people so this one has actually got handle bars inside but Dale has them because they're actually made with halflinger engines and these little rippers are even rarer they were made for the Royal Navy and they were used on the aircraft carrier ships to move them around so they've got a longer toe bar at the front and the back so he's got rows and rows of parts and they've got 8,500 lines of Parts on the system he's got another fire truck but this one is only done 8,000 M on it as you can see there's just Parts absolutely everywhere boxes and boxes so if you need a pins G or any parts for a pins go then Dow's your man now I could say all day showing you around this place cuz it's an absolute gold mine but we need to get this little beauty home so I can show you around it but I need to take a minute to thank this week's sponsor Sur shark because with their sponsorship it makes things like this possible so surf shark is a virtual private Network and it does loads of useful things but the things you really need to know about is it encrypts all of your information and it allows you to change your virtual location which keeps you safe online and protects you from big companies and cyber criminals now as you might have guessed it's a bit of a rare old Beast and the fact that they were made in Austria makes it a bit tricky to find information on them but using surf Shar means we can change our virtual location to Austria so we can find plenty more information another downside to her being rather rare is that she came with a hefty price tag so it was a huge Comfort to me to know that I was completely safe online when I was doing the transactions to pay for her and that's because surf Shar creates a secure network which means that no one can track me and no one can hack me so it keeps all my personal information my money and me safe online and another perk to Surf shark's VPN compared to others is you can use them on unlimited devices and you can try it risk-free with a 30-day money back guarantee sir Shar have also given us a great deal for you guys you'll get an extra four months for free if you use the code true blue at the checkout I'll put a link in the description or you can click this QR code just here but it's been a big old day and John's just coming down the drive so I'll see you guys in the morning I slept in here last night didn't I didn't really Jess weren't Keen but now she's home let's give you the low down so we thought we'd give you a bit of a history lesson because before we saw this we didn't know anything about pins gowers now pinsa started in 1971 in Austria and this is where this was made and then they moved it to the UK in 2000 and then they stopped produ in 2007 and as you probably picked up yesterday these were originally made for the military because they're one of the most capable off-road vehicles of all time and that's why the fire service took them on to get to the hard to- reach places now a little fun fact for you because you know I love them the name pins actually comes from an Austrian Castle breed who are kept on high terrain and are known for their sh footedness so they come in 4x4 versions or 6x6 versions like this and various different body types as well so they do ambulances they do soft top cargo and even gunning Vehicles like you saw yesterday so this is the chassis cab style and she's only 1.83 meters wide and would you believe she's only 4.95 M long which is pretty much exactly the same measurements as the Landy so as you can see they're pretty basic inside and because they were made for the military that's the way they needed to be simple but easy to fix so you got no electric windows no Central locking and definitely no air con now one of the reasons you get so much space in these is because the engine is here in the cab so you haven't got all that wasted face of your front Bonnet another brilliant thing about it is it's got an incredible turning Circle cuz we sat over the front axle the engine in it is a 2.4 L Volkswagen engine proper old school old school fuel pump so no ECU Electronics or anything like that no DPF to get blocked up but the only negatives to it is obviously it's quite noisy and quite sluggish and I know you're probably thinking well if it's noisy sluggish and basic then why have we bought it and I do think that sometimes when we get in the S van because you get in it and it's luxury it's like driving a Rolls-Royce compared to things like this because you got cruise control speed limiter it tells you if your oil is low and everything like that which is great but driving something like this an old school vehicle it's almost like driving a digger like driving a machine because you've got to be on high alert all the time You' got to be checking your gauges checking your levels and it's just a lot more fun to drive anyway and they're not just fun to drive either they're a bit of an adventure getting in and out of as well so as you saw Miss Daisy drove her home yesterday so we don't really know what she's capable of so I think it's time the old lead fooot put her to the test well the first thing you notice is she is loud and she is rattly but she's a beauty and talk about big Wheeling the steering wheel is huge it's like a kid playing on a tractor but I also love especially compared to being in the Landy that the cab feels really comfy like the chairs are comfy I can move my arm I'm not going to get Defender elbow and and the wind screen feels huge like you can properly see around you which is really nice however there's not much room for your feet on the pedals and they're really high up so it's kind of like doing step aerobics and there's nowhere to rest your foot so you either have to have like your whole leg on the accelerator which she is pretty sluggish or you have to kind of put it off on an angle one thing that is really nice though is she's super responsive on the brakes being a 1991 she's got discs all the way around so being a six- wheeel drive she anchors up pretty quick so as you can imagine she laughs at potholes but also she's got power steering so not only does she have a nice turning Circle but it's super easy to get round and so easy to judge because you haven't got a bonnet in the way you are the Bonnet so my lead foot rating she's a ripper let's get some speed up and see what she does well she might be red but she ain't no rocket another cool and unique thing to tell you about these pin scers is this tubular chassis design it means that all of your drive system is sealed and protected inside this housing it's designed to distribute weight more evenly and help keep the center of gravity as low as possible so another thing that makes this vehicle brilliant off-road is that it has portal axles and if you don't know what that means we've drawn a few pictures here to help us explain so in your normal car you've got your end engine that drives your prop shaft down to your diff which goes out to your axle and directly turns your wheel the difference with your portal axle is instead of it directly turning the wheel what it turns is a little gear which is attached to a bigger gear which is what spins your wheel now you might be thinking what on Earth is the advantage of that and to talk about that I want to talk about bikes so when you're riding your push bike and you're going to go really fast you're going to have it in your smallest gear at the front and the smallest gear at the back but when you hit a hill if you can't change gear you're going to die so you want to go up to your biggest gear at the back don't you which means that you're going to go a lot slower but it's going to be a lot less Force through your legs and that's essentially what our portal axle does for us if we're on slippy terrain or we're in sand or something like that it means that a lot less Force has to go through the axle to the wheel to get it to spin another benefit of portal axles is that it gives you more ground clearance and the way that that works is this is our normal drive system so axle goes directly into our wheel and this red line here represents the center of our Wheels however with a portal axle it offsets it so what that means is this here is the center of our Wheels but our axle and our diff is up higher so it gives us more ground clearance when we're trying to go over rocks and things like that now the main reason we went for this is cu when we're in the defender we realize just how much fun you can have in campers like this and I still love a van and they're definitely the most comfortable and luxurious way to travel I'd say but there's always going to be a sprinter there's always going to be a Transit and they're always going to get more modern and more technical which is brilliant but these are only going to get fewer and more expensive so we might as well do it while we can so the main reason that I wanted the pins is that I loved this Landy even more than I thought it would and the thing I loved about it most was all the places it could get us to and that's because it's so much narrower than a van and also lower so we could get down lots of tracks that we just couldn't do and obviously the 4x4 capability but she is pretty snug inside and you can see really clearly with them parked side by side here that we get so much more living space in the pins than we will in this because what's wasted as the whole Bonnet becomes the cab in the pins and my cab in the Landy becomes living space which when you've got such a small space it makes a big difference now I think it's safe to say that everybody's dream at some point in life is to be a fireman and when I first came back from Australia I applied to be in the fire service but they wouldn't have me so I think today's the day we remedied that I know what you're thinking ladies but I can assure you it's all me what's that Jess you want me to wear this tonight no problem no problem what's that ladies your loins are burning it's good job we got the old fire beer here to Fan Your Flames now enough of all this cuz just wants to see my farm and H well if you're new around here I'd like to be able to tell you that that's the first and last time that anything of that nature will ever happen on this channel but I would be lying and if you're not new around here you'll know full well that that wasn't all him hope you cool off of it there ladies anyway back to what you actually came for rather than what you might have left because of we need to tell you what the plan is for this beauty girl but I do need to preface this with the fact that we haven't properly seen what's actually in the back yeah well in the back we'll show you but there's a big water tank in there basically a big aluminium one which we need to get out before we can really know exactly what we're going to do but we've got a bit of an idea so let's show you so we'll start with the outside anyway and the color now we're going to keep it red but we're going to give it a liqu of paint anyway but probably what we're going to do is we're going to keep the middle section red but we'll do the bottom half black and we'll do the roof black as well then I might put a winch on the front I don't know yet cuz I want to keep the weight down but then also I've spoke to quite a few people and they reckon a hand wi is quite good because then you can use it to pull yourself out forwards or backwards depending how you're stuck so I don't know we'll see about that then we got to get rid of all the blues and twos on the roof and the front and then also all the ladder gear on the Top's got to go as well and then I'm going to get the wheels shot blasted and powder coated and we'll stick new boots on her all around then obviously we'll under seal all underneath and everything like that and then these are like tree sliders and Bush ERS and they're actually made of wood which is quite a unique feature we want to try and keep that really but they are really expensive to buy now most of them are good but the one the other side's a bit rotten so we'll probably have a go at making our own ones of these anyway and then I would love to keep these these roller shutters but unfortunately they're not that weather tight so we're going to have to get rid of them so what I'm going to do is I'll probably skin the whole outside and then we'll probably put a window in there as well and then on the back here it's pretty much going to stay the same where we'll keep these so these are just like ladders like what I put on the Sprinter so these are pretty handy to be getting on and off the roof but then when it comes to this roller shutter same again we'll have to get rid of that and we'll probably do the same again where we put a window in there and then lastly on this side we're probably going to do something similar here with a window but then just want some sort of outdoor kitchen so whether we have like a fold down table or a slide out kitchen or something like that and then we'll probably have an orning on the side as well so moving on to the inside you you're going to need your imaginations to bit for me because the back is still full with the massive old water tank and all the equipment but the idea is we're going to build a lovely Big Comfy Couch seating area in the back with a table that will then drop down to make a fullsize double bed that we can use and of course I need somewhere to put my toilet and then in the front here we're going to build a storage unit on top of here but of course that needs to be easily removable because our engine's underneath it and we're toying with the idea of not doing a crawl through in here which I know it breaks our Golden Rule but we didn't use it as much as we thought we would in the defender so when there's space at a premium something we're thinking about whether we do or not and then obviously inside the cab she needs a good old spruce up and we need to sound deader and do all of those kinds of jobs so another little space we're hoping to make use of is this box here now this is actually our battery box now normally these vehicles are 24 volts and have two batteries but because it was a fir trck they've converted it to 12vt and there's only one battery in there which gives us a little bit of space to use and speaking batteries we're going to try electric cooking for the first time in this build so we're going to put in 560 amps of lithium batteries and then I'm going to have an induction cooktop and one of the things I'm really excited about with that is we can just put some plug points around the place and I can move my cooker because that's something I really enjoyed in the defender and it means we won't have to run gas lines everywhere so that's a win we're also going to put in our usual bits and Bobs so we're going to have our water filtration system and a diesel heater that's thermostatically controlled and then onto the last bit which is the middle section you can get a better feel of what it's going to be like in the back here so we need to take out this partition and all of this stuff here it's not structural so it will be flowing all the way through we're going to build our kitchen in here and one thing we are thinking about doing is a pop top but we're going to wait and see once we get everything out how that's all going to work and whether it's going to be possible but one thing that will make it okay if we don't do that is we've got a lot more head height in here than we did in the landing so it could be comfy with that one so talking about the roof I need to tell you my plan for it so I don't need the pop to be the whole length of it so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a roof rack at the front so we'll make that like we did on the Sprinter and then I'm going to put a 12vt air conditioner unit up there as well but to make the pop top I'm going to need a new tool so you've been missing it I've been missing it it's time for T talk Tuesday so to make the pop top I'm going to do it out of aluminium and to do that I'm going to need a TIG welder so you've SE me weld before but that was using a MIG welder which is pretty much the easiest welder to use easy to set up and everything like that but the only problem with them is the only World steel and that's where this little beauty comes in so this is rx newest worlder this is the 211 TF and I absolutely love it so when you look at normal TIG welders they' probably got about 20 different gauges on the front and to set them up is an absolute Nightmare and it takes a lot of time and a lot of experience and this is where this is an absolute game Cher now firstly I need to talk to you about the TIG torch now this is a MIG torch and there's no setup involved in it all you got to do is press the trigger and Away you weld whereas the TIG torch is slightly different so you've got a Tungsten and a cup and they're different sizes depending on what metal you're welding and also what thickness but don't worry the machine's going to tell you what you need to use so you can set these up manually but the best thing about it is this easy set setting which is going to do all the work for you so first off it's going to ask what tungsten size we've got in the torch so you can adjust it at the top ear look so let's say we got 2.4 mm in there then it's going to ask what work thickness you're working on and we're going to weld say a 3 mm piece then it's asking what metal type we're on aluminium even ask what joint type you're going to be welding so whether it's a corner Edge lap T so let's say we're going to do a corner then it's asking whether we want pulse we don't want pulse then it asks what TIG torch you're going to run whether you're going to run a normal TIG torch or whether you're going to run a pedal let's just go normal TIG torch and then you go okay and it's going to tell you how many amps it's going to run it's going to tell you what to set your gas gauge to 8 L per minute and it's also going to tell you what cup size to put on your TIG torch so I think you know why I wanted this little beauty because it takes all the guest work out for you whereas if i' got another machine I've had to put all them settings in manually and I don't really know what I'm doing at the minute whereas I know when I start to weld this is set up perfect so if the weld's bad it's me not doing a good job so you'll see how I get on throughout the build but I think you know what I'm going to say don't you brilliant little bit of kit for the workshop well I hope that satisfied your triple te needs I know it's made John very happy and I've Loved showing you around our Beauty new rig this week next week we're going to start the build or should I say unbuild where we're going to pull her all apart and actually see what we've got underneath there so look forward to seeing you then and don't forget about that Surf Shack Link in the description

Channel: True Blue Travellers

Views: 86,584

Keywords: van build, van conversion camper, van conversion build, self build campervan, self build camper, overlanding, overlanding gear, overland camping, overlander build, overlander truck, overlander camper, offroad, off road camper, 4x4 camper van, 4x4 camper truck, 4x4 camper build, expedition overland, 6x6, 6x6 truck, overland truck, expedition truck

Id: SuDFxMT31Xg

Length: 21min 28sec (1288 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024