Swapping Seats and Gaining Space! | Building our dream Volkswagen T3 camper van

Hi! We are Joost and Alieke. In this video series  we're going to show you how we converted our van   Sunny into our dream camper van to take on  trips to beautiful locations. Our dream is   to have something similar to this beautiful  Westfalia van that we took on our trip to   Norway. This unfortunately is not ours and we have  a lot of work to do before we're at that stage.  In this first video we'll show you how we  removed the chairs, swapped them for others,   swapped them for others again and  how we removed the panel in between. First, we removed the bench and chair  that came with the van. While we like   it was the original set, in the end we  wanted to have a passenger seat that   could swivel around so it could  be part of the camper interior. The only thing you have to be aware of  when taking out the chair is that there   is a little lever holding it in place. Pull  it, and the chair should come off completely. Now that the chairs are out of  the way we can safely remove   this panel in between. We used a grinder for this. The panel is fixed with a lot of spot welds.  With a grinder we removed them all one by one. When the spot welds were almost gone we used a   chisel and a hammer to separate the  two pieces of metal from each other. It took some time to remove all the spot welds,   but in the end the result was worth it.  Now we have a lot more space in the van. On the Dutch Online Marketplace we found these  chairs that were still in perfect condition. When you handle the chairs be careful  not to touch the fabric after you touch   the rails. There's a lot of grease  in them to help them glide smoothly. In the end putting the gray chairs in wasn't  really necessary as we got in our hands on   these beautiful pilot chairs. While I was  a little hesitant about the brown color,   the armrest made them so much more comfortable  that we decided to go with these in the end. One of the armrest was a little  loose. This is a common problem   and is easily fixed by tightening some  bolts. It looked like a previous owner   had already tried to fix the armrest by  tearing away the fabric at the seams,   so we resewed the fabric to make it look  pretty again before we assembled the armrest. Because the material is old the  cover for the armrest was broken   at the point where you screw them  in. So we fixed it up by putting   a little sealant instead of a  screw, to glue it back together To secure it in place we tightened it but not  too tight because we were afraid the material   might break further because of its old age. After  a little cleaning they looked good as new again. These were only the first steps that we took  to create our dream van. Make sure that you   follow us and subscribe to the channel to receive  the latest updates on how we converted our van!

Channel: Alieke & Joost

Views: 12,876

Keywords: Volkswagen, T3, Vanagon, Westfalia, Vanlife, Campervan, Camper, DIYbuild, Caravelle, Pilot Chairs, Seats, Armrest, T25, VW, WBX, VanLife, DIYConversion, Travel, RoadTrip, VanRenovation, InteriorDesign, Adventure, NomadLife, VanUpgrades, MobileHome, DIYProject, Wanderlust, TravelInspiration, Lifestyle, DIYIdeas, HomeOnWheels, RoadLife, OutdoorLiving, VanLifeTips, Westvalia, Volkswagon, Volkwagen

Id: Ub8_86_6Bb0

Length: 4min 22sec (262 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2024