The BEST Self-Built DIY Camper Van (in-depth Van Tour)

thank you [Music] foreign Savage here coming at you today with the most exciting video I've ever made on this YouTube channel today we are going to finally be doing the van tour so if you have not tuned into the channel before I'm 70 Savage I'm a software engineer by trade and I've spent the last four or five years converting these Sprinter vans from nothing but a bare metal shell into a tiny home that you can take off-road this right here is my latest creation I spent about two years from start to finish converting this particular van and I have to say with confidence that this is the coolest thing I have ever built when I first started this YouTube channel five years ago I knew absolutely nothing about how to build stuff in the real world and through a combination of watching other people's YouTube channels and just trying things out on my own I've learned everything that I know today and over the last two years as I've been building this thing I've been uploading detail held videos on every single project so if you see something on this van tour that particularly interests you there's a good chance that I have an entire detailed video on how I actually built it I am super super excited to share this with you guys let's go ahead and Dive Right In so first things first let me give you guys an overview of the exterior of the van and all of the off-road aftermarket parts that I put on it so the goal with this van build and something that has a lot to do with the parts on the exterior of the van is I wanted to be able to do light over landing and get two places exactly like this where you would never be able to get to in a normal RV now obviously this vehicle does have some off-road limitations it is a massive vehicle to begin with it's a 4x4 Sprinter 170 inch wheelbase which is kind of the mid size version of these Sprinter vans it's about 23 feet long in total so much much bigger than your traditional short wheelbase off-road vehicle but for how big this thing is and for how luxurious it is on the inside it's incredible to be able to do the kind of off-roading that you can on the back of the van we have some rear accessories these are both from Al Vans the extra spare tire and ladder to get on top of the roof and then the sherpa which is just basically a sheet of aluminum with bolt holes in it I currently have two bike racks mounted to it and besides being functional they definitely give it that off-road aesthetic from the back that I actually really like I might end up putting like a storage box on this Sherpa rack on the right hand side instead of the two bike racks because admittedly I have not really been doing that much mountain biking recently let's go ahead and climb up the ladder here which is pretty easy to do even when you're one-handed the main attraction on the top of our roof deck here is that we actually have a walkable solar roof deck what I mean when I say walkable solar roof deck is that you can literally just walk all over these solar panels you can put your chairs up here and sit on top of them they are built to have stuff on top of them there's something so cool about just chilling up here on the top of your van other things that we have on the roof of the van are our dual max air fan so that we can get a nice circular airflow through the van I have my cell signal booster antenna which easily flips up whenever I decide I want to use that and then I have my starlink mounting pole if you are not familiar starlink is actually a version of satellite internet that was invented by Elon Musk what that means is that you can have full high-speed internet access in places like this even if there's zero cell service all you need is literally access to the sky moving on to the side of the van here I have a couple of side steps that are also built by Rome built I think they look pretty dang cool and it just makes it a lot easier to kind of get in and out of the van and then I do have an awning on this side of Van that extends out about eight or nine feet makes for a really nice living space out here moving on to the front of the van here you can see that we have a pretty hardcore off-road looking vehicle I have the ca tuned bumper with a 12 000 pound remote controlled winch that I can use at wall I'm driving the vehicle even if I'm by myself which is pretty cool and then these lights that you're seeing are all made by Baja Designs when you turn these lights on at night it is ridiculous how bright they actually are it almost feels like you're in some sort of football stadium or something and then lastly the most important thing on the exterior of the vehicle that actually drastically improves the off-road capability of this thing are the wheels tires and the suspension the wheels are black rhino arsenals the tires are BFG ko2s they're 275 70 17s they're the biggest tires that you can put onto a sprinter van before you start losing the cool convenient Highway technology and then on top of the wheels and tires we have this ridiculous suspension package that I just added to the van about a month ago we did a combination of the van Compass 4.3 kit and the agile rip kit so we have an inch and a half of total suspension left but we also have those super cool adjustable shocks that let you dial it to Super squishy for off-road or super firm for highway driving between that lift and having the soft suspension mode it is drastically improved the off-road capability of this vehicle some of the stuff that I did on this trip in order to find this particular camping spot I would have never been able to do with stock suspension that covers it for the exterior and overall I'm super super happy and absolutely recommend all of the exterior modifications on this vehicle let's go ahead and go into the interior so that I can show you guys what's pretty much consumed the last two years of my free time [Music] so the idea of this particular van build was something that I dreamed up when I first started getting into Vans it's probably also a vision that a lot of y'all share when you're watching these van videos and it's the idea of having a van that you can take wherever you want and have as close to the same experience as living in a modern day home so that's basically the foundation of all of the different features and functionality that I added in here [Music] so very first thing about the interior of this van build that I'm personally really proud of every single component in this entire van build was framed out of 80 20 aluminum beams overall I wanted this build to be as strong and as lightweight as I could possibly make it and then another huge huge advantage to using 80 20 is that when you've bolted things to that frame you can simply unbolt them whenever you need to go back inside that cabinet to do work but hopefully now it makes sense why you see those little white bolts on all of the Cabinetry throughout the van it's because all of that plywood skin is bolted directly to those aluminum beams okay so enough with the boring construction of the van let's talk a little bit about the van build itself all the features and functionality what the layout looks like and how it's actually like when you're living in this thing overall the build is separated into two different spaces there is a living space and there's a sleeping space let's go ahead and start out with the living space so the living area serves a few different purposes it has three seats including the front two Sprinter seats that can be swiveled around so you can kind of just hang out in this area the factory seats that come in these Sprinter vents are actually really comfortable and they feel great to sit in for long periods of time but my favorite seat in this van is actually the third seat the one that I added I did a ton of research when I was building this seat on the proper angles for the most ergonomic seating positions and I think I absolutely nailed it because I can sit and work in this third seat and it is just a wonderful experience plus I kind of like The View when I'm making videos you can kind of see the van so a little bit of the place that I'm staying at I just think it's nice the bench seat does have a seat belt installed on it which in my opinion is better than having no seatbelt at all I did try and bolt it to multiple parts of the frame and I think it's fairly safe but a lot of people disagree and they made sure to share those opinions when I made the video on how I actually made this seat belt above the bench seat is where the brains of the van live this is the control panel for everything that you need to interact with in this van build but hides them away in a nice little compartment so you don't have to think about them until you actually need to use them it has the battery monitor which shows you how much percentage battery you have left the water level gauge so you can see how much water is left in your fresh water tanks it has a bunch of on off rocker switches for all the different little features in this van next feature we have in the living area of the van is this kitchen Galley unit the countertop here is made out of a maple Butcher Block that I straight up got from Home Depot I did spend a bunch of time hollowing out the underside to try and make it a bit lighter and then I cut it with a bunch of coats of water-based polyurethane both the paper towel dispenser and this soap holder are both stuck down of like industrial grade Velcro so I don't move anywhere even doing crazy off-roading I think it just adds a nice homey touch and a level of convenience to using this van and to be honest I don't do much cooking in the van I'm mostly the kind of guy who does like microwaved frozen meals that being said we do have that massive battery Bank in here and I have 120 volt Outlet right here on the galley unit so I have plugged in an induction cooktop and cooked up Ramen so the galley unit itself has a pretty good amount of counter space but for when I need extra cooking space I'll utilize that swiveling Lagoon table that I normally use for my laptop which either extends the counter space for the galley in it or acts as a little desk for the passenger seat if I were living in here with two people I'd probably just get a second Lagoon table and leave them both mounted to both locations and then I have this really good size fridge and freezer combo that kind of matches the aesthetic of the van and it runs directly off a 12 volt battery Bank the fridge section holds tons and tons of drinks and you can put lots of food in here as well probably enough to live up to two ish weeks off the grid for me I could put up to like eight meals in the freezer section and that lasts me a few days next to the fridge I've designed something in this van that I don't think a lot of people think about until they actually start living in their van build and that is a trash can if you're living and cooking in your van you're going to generate a lot more trash than you probably think trash is smelly it's even more smelly and a hot enclosed small space so this pull out drawer with the built-in Trash Can Lid flap kind of provides two barriers from that smell getting into the living area and since I do do most of my cooking in a microwave I did install a microwave in this build it actually works pretty well for a small microwave I've used some pretty crappy small microwaves in the past and this one tends to heat the food up pretty evenly the ceiling that I made in this van is these quarter inch planks that you can literally buy at Home Depot then I just coated them with a few coats of water-based polyurethane throughout the ceiling I used a ton of these little LED Puck lights reason I use so many is because sometimes it's nice to have a ton of light in here and at the end of the day they're all dimmable then really briefly the floor is a material called lawn seal it's like this dedicated aircraft and Marine vinyl it is incredibly hard to install this lawn steel stuff without having like bubbles in your floor I ended up needing help from a professional in order to get it right and to be honest like the floor still scratches really easily which is something that really frustrates me besides that though I do think that it looks pretty nice but the floor and the ceiling are super super thin so that I can stand up as straight as possible in this van I'm 6'5 which makes me a very inconvenient shape for Van life I can stand up fully straight underneath the max air fan the other big thing that I've distributed throughout the living space is storage we've got a couple of big storage drawers underneath the bench seat behind the bench seat I put two Pantry drawers which I'll typically put all of my snacks into I'll also put all of my paper plates and plastic utensils in here which was originally out of laziness but it turns out that using disposable eating stuff is actually a lot better when you're in a van because you don't have to waste the water on doing the dishes on the gala unit I have some storage as well on the side of the galley unit there was a little bit of wasted space that I decided to use for these two drawers The Galley unit also has a skinny storage drawer which I have the induction cooktop in as well as just miscellaneous utility items moving over to the tall cabinet I have some cool storage in here one of them being a full on hanging closet which is very much a nice to have in the van there's something really nice about going on Van trips and just not needing to bring a suitcase so for all the drawers and cabinets in this van I decided to use these latches made by a company called RV Labs I think they're the most aesthetically pleasing latches that exist for Vans and campers and stuff as far as functionality they work pretty well you do have to think about the fact that the handles stick out and they're kind of sharp so you're going to catch on them as you're walking through the van if I were to build another van I'd probably still consider using them but uh I don't know it's a tough call they're great for YouTube though because they look dope all the drawers are also under mount Bloom drawers which are the like fancy version that you would have in a nice house they're made out of this beautifully finished lightweight Maple Plywood And they're all Edge banded so I think that these drawers just turned out great one important thing that you might realize about this van is that I have zero overhead storage not putting up for storage in this van is something I decided on after losing approximately 20 percent of my brain cells on cracking my head against the upper cabinets that I put in my previous van build and now that it's done I love that decision because it just feels so much more open in here I'm not constantly thinking or anxious about smacking my head on things and even though I lose storage space by not having those upper cabinets I have a secret storage trick up my sleeve that I'll talk about in a second next up in our living area is something that I really enjoy in this van and it is a dedicated bathroom now this is actually a pretty big bathroom as far as van bathrooms go it's 24 inches wide and 36 inches long and it is actually a wet bath so what that means is both the toilet and the shower are in the same space now that I have this dedicated wet bath with a dedicated bathroom I can confidently say I think this is the way to go in your van build especially when you're staying in here with other people and you have to like take a deuce in the morning having the toilet in its unenclosed space is just a way more house-like experience So speaking of the toilet believe it or not my most popular video on my entire YouTube channel throughout the duration of this build was the toilet video so thanks to you guys for watching that video so many times I'm now a certified toilet YouTuber anyways toilets in a van are a really important topic there's a few different toilets that you can pick from I've made two videos that go into great detail on the different types of toilets that you can put in your van and I actually recommend specific toilets in those videos so I'm not going to go into too many details now this toilet here is the separate tiny toilet it's a waterless urine diverting toilet which means it has a solids container with this little flap on top of it that opens when you sit down on the toilet seat and then it has a liquids container in the front I end up needing to empty the liquids container once every couple of days and then the solids container I only have to empty it once every couple of weeks one of the coolest Parts about this toilet though is that it has a built-in vent fan so it's constantly just sucking the air from the inside of the toilet and pushing it outside of the van and the toilet never smells whether I'm inside the van or out plus I just think that this toilet looks sexy especially compared to the other van toilets on the market other than that I have this custom teak shower mat in here which I just think makes the aesthetic of the bathroom look super nice your veins rarely level which means that water in the shower pan is going to pull cool up in one of the corners so this teak shower pan kind of makes it tall enough where you're not stepping in water even if you're not parked on a level location and then as far as the shower in here it works very similar to a normal shower in your home it's just a lot smaller it has this little mixing valve here that you can turn to all the way hot or all the way cold or however hot you want it yes I do have an electric water heater in here to take hot showers it's nowhere near as nice or as comfortable as a shower in your home like if I'm staying at a friend's house I'll typically just go into their house to take a shower but when you're way off the grid this can just make a huge difference in kind of the quality of your camping experience okay okay so that covers it for everything in the living area now let's go back to the South wing and talk a little bit about the sleeping area so when I first started designing this van and at the time that I uploaded my first video this was actually the biggest bed in a van anywhere on the internet that I could possibly find it is 75 inches on the boy side which is the longer side and then it is 72 inches on the girl side and when it's in its low position like this it actually has an additional six inches of length so with me being six five I can even sleep face down with my little toes pointed out not only that but it is a nine inch custom-made memory foam mattress that I got from this company called touchda I actually think that this mattress is more comfortable than the mattress in my home it was also about twice as expensive but the coolest thing about this bed is not necessarily how comfortable it is but the fact that it is indeed a rising bed system now this is something else that I crafted up when I originally envisioned this van build the original reason that I wanted a rising bed system was so that when I go on mountain bike trips I can simply lift the bed six inches or so and then have space underneath the bed to fit the mountain bikes yes you can sleep in this bed in any position no matter how high or low it is and then when I'm not on a mountain biking trip I can just put the bed in its lowest position and sleep very comfortably it's surprising how little Headroom and how high off the ground the bed is when you do make it high enough to fit bikes underneath it a lot of people just don't realize that when they're building Vans one nice feature I do have for the bed since it does indeed rise up is this Whittle water in reality though I have yet to go on a single dedicated mountain biking trip that being said it makes it incredibly easy to store a ton of crap underneath the bed and then simply rise the bed up when you need to access that crap a couple weeks ago I went to Montana and spent about 10 days there and I found myself lifting the bed up every single day to access something that I wanted from the back and as I was talking about before this storage solution is the game changer that allows me to not need any upper Cabinetry in the van since there's just such a massive volume of accessible storage space underneath the bed for sure and the van now in my mind the temperature and comfortability in the van includes three separate topics one of them is just airflow in the van second one is air conditioning and then the third one is heating it's way more important to have well-designed airflow in a van than it is in like a house because there's just not as much air in a van it gets stuffy very quickly in here so I do have the Dual Max Air fans on the roof so that I can circulate air throughout the whole vehicle and that actually works pretty well but believe it or not that's actually not typically what I'm doing what I typically do for airflow in the van is set the windows in the cracked position and then turn the fans to suck air outward and what that results in is a almost unnoticeable amount of actual airflow but it's just enough so that it doesn't feel stuffy and speaking of Windows the windows that I put in this van build are actually incredibly cool in the living area as well as in the sleeping area I've added these Arctic turn Windows not only do they give it that cool kind of overlandy look from the outside but they actually work really well how they work is you open the four latches on the window and then you can push it out to one of three positions depending on how open you want that particular window and then the coolest part about these windows is they come with a built-in Blackout Shade as well as a built-in bug screen so you can slide the shade out connect it to the bug screen and then slide both of those up and down it's way way more convenient than buying those like handmade insulated window covers which I do have for the front windows but for anything in the living and sleeping space all I have to do is slide these things up and down these windows are constructed of dual pane acrylic and not glass like the normal windows in your car so they have way better installation value so next up we have the highly debated van life topic air conditioning when I started my first van build about five years ago now all of the content and material that I was reading online basically convinced me that I would not be able to have a off-grid battery powered air conditioner that was actually reasonable to use between the solar on the roof the alternator charger that I've built into the vehicle and then the massive battery bank that I have in the back I can just keep the air conditioner running perpetually if you've ever sat in a car on a hot day and just not had the air conditioning on that's how it gets in your van even though it's well insulated in here it's still a vehicle at the end of the day and it's very uncomfortable even on moderately hot days in like the 80s with the battery powered air conditioner that is no longer the case I've had days where I've been in this chair on meetings for like 8 or 10 hours and because of that air conditioner it's actually not that bad and you might have noticed earlier in the video that I have no air conditioner unit on the roof of the van this air conditioner is made by a company called cruise and comfort and it's actually an under mount air conditioner so the condenser is underneath the van the compressor is in the bottom of that tall cabinet and then the evaporator the thing that I actually blows the air outwards is in the top of the tall cabinet I just loved the idea of not having one of those big ugly air conditioners on the roof of the van that being said I do not want to create something that was in my head when I got into this idea of battery-powered off-grid air conditioners in a vehicle when you're in a big metal can with things like glass windows the outside of the van can often get to like 140 150 degrees on a really hot day and that heat just constantly seeps to the inside of the van so the air conditioner has to work really hard to keep the inside of the van cool and although it makes a massive night and day difference on the livability in here it is not nearly as effective as like an air conditioner in your house it basically takes a significant edge off of whatever heat you're currently in anyways there's an entire video on the air conditioner and how I actually installed it if you're interested in more details so that covers it for air conditioning let's talk about the diesel heater that I have installed for the opposite conditions and unlike the air conditioner the diesel heater does not have any caveats for how well it works I have been camping in the middle of Utah in a seven degree snowstorm and it was a warm 72 degrees in my van it had no trouble keeping up whatsoever I use an S Bar heater which is very similar to the Webasto heaters and it literally runs directly off the diesel tank that powers your vehicle only difference being that it uses a small fraction of the amount of diesel that your car does those little diesel heaters are just one of those technologies that just works incredibly well in a van build you have to get a diesel heater if you're building a van and then another really important aspect of heating and cooling is the direction that you have your vents in my case I have vent facing both forwards into the living area and backwards into the sleeping area so whenever I turn on the heat or AC it's cooling down the whole van equally I do think that heating air conditioning and good airflow are all mandatory if you want to be comfortable and spend significant amounts of time inside of your van M you could have the best insulated van in the world and unless you have forced heating and air conditioning it's not going to be a comfortable temperature inside of it so the final topic that I want to talk about in this van tour are the utilities in this van build what I mean by utilities are just the electrical and the water system in Vans unlike in most boats and RVs you have massive water systems for fresh water and you have a massive electrical system that basically allows you to not be tied to the infrastructure like the electrical Grid or have water hookups they're the thing that allows you to travel around and experience the outdoors so I took that topic to the absolute extreme with this particular van build the battery bank that I have for my battery system is over 12 000 Watt hours of battery power in different terms it's over a thousand amp hours of 12 volt batteries and the reason I went so massive on this battery system is the idea of just not having to think about how much battery I have left at any given time and because of how massive the battery bank is the electrical system had to be completely 100 percent custom so I had to do all of my own distribution Breakers fuses all of that stuff I actually had to think and know about what I was doing most of the electrical components are in the utility cabinet on the passenger side underneath the bed that I also have an entire electrical sub panel that's behind the bench seat back the nice thing is I'm not only super stoked with how big this battery bank but I'm also very comfortable with how safe this electrical system is every single wire is behind multiple fuses or Breakers and I sized up heavily on all of the wire sizing so there's almost no risk of this thing catching on fire I also have a 3000 watt inverter that I have paired up with the battery bank and what that allows me to do is have those house Outlets that you see throughout the van so that you can just plug in house peripherals those things don't run off of direct battery power you have to have an inverter to power those things and 3000 Watts means I can use like the induction cooktop and the microwave and have my gaming laptop plugged in all at the same time with without thinking about it overall this electrical system is kind of at the heart of why this van accomplished my original van Life vision of having as close to house-like Comforts being in the middle of nowhere Off the Grid aside from the electrical system we have a water system I have an over wheel well fresh water tank that contains about 32 gallons of fresh water and then the water heater holds six gallons of fresh water as well they're all hooked up to an electric water pump that provides I think five and a half gallons per minute it basically feels like the same amount of pressure as a house there's a couple of really Nifty things about this water system that I want to talk about first one is the water lines actually go underneath the van which means that in Winter conditions they freeze by default so what I've actually installed is heat tape along all of the plumbing anything that holds water that's outside of the van has 12 volt heat tape on it and what heat tape does is it's simply a switch that I flip and it warms up what I'm planning on doing is kind of just letting the lines freeze and then whenever I need to use the van or use the water system I'll just flip on that heat tape and it'll defrost them and it's actually totally okay to just allow all of the types and fittings in this van to freeze because I chose to build them out of opener or propex pipe and fitting systems all of which can withstand the PSI associated with pipes freezing if I were to do this build over again that is one thing that I would change though I'd basically create an elevated space underneath the bed and then run all of my electrical and then also water lines inside the van and another caveat of living in a van instead of living in a house is that any of the water you use you also have to store somewhere this is what we call Gray Water it's basically a mixture of fresh water and whatever came off your hands when you were washing your hands or the toothpaste that you're putting down the drain I have a 20 gallon gray water tank that's stored in the back of the van underneath and that's where all of the gray water collects as you're using the van I'm either way off the grid or I'll just find some dirt on the side of the road somewhere I'll drive onto it and then flip the drain valve and that makes it really easy from inside the van to flip a switch wait a minute or two for that gray water tank to drain close it back up and drive off and that pretty much covers it for water and electrical systems and now that I think about it that actually covers it for everything that exists in this van build I know that you guys are all interested so I want to do a quick cost breakdown I'm going to put this spreadsheet up on the screen here it breaks down all the different projects that I did how much money I spent on each one of them and then how many hours I spent on each one as far as how many hours that I put under this and what my hourly rate would be well I feel like I'm good enough at this van building stuff now where I would be able to charge professional rates if I were to build bands for other people which I'm not going to do by the way but just for the sake of calculating how much this Fan's worth then if I multiply the amount of hours that I put into this with how much professionals are charging to build Vans right now this van in total is worth about three hundred thousand dollars which blows my mind I would never be able to afford purchasing a vehicle like this if it wasn't for you guys watching my YouTube channel so I really do have have you guys to thank for this van existing at all and that probably sounds really crazy to you guys especially those of you who are not like in this van industry but that's what these kind of Vans are selling for and by the way you can build way cheaper Vans with way fewer hours a lot of the time that I spent was on the detailed fit and finish of this van and the time spent engineering the best possible solutions like I really aimed for perfection in this van build is whether or not I'm going to sell this van and I think that's a bit of a loaded question because any vehicle kind of just gets sold from person to person until it ends up in a junkyard that being said I am not going to be selling this van anytime soon as I mentioned a couple of times this is the van that I wanted when I first thought about getting into van life and I absolutely loved the trips that I've had in it so far I have a lot more trips planned I will sell it eventually if I get my hands into another crazy big project or if I can somehow magically afford an earth roamer but besides that I do plan on keeping this thing for a while so if you are interested in seeing me travel around in this van slap the Subscribe button below I do promise to make at least a few travel videos which brings me to the final question of what is my next project and uh I had to think about how I was going to answer this one I want to be as honest as possible with you guys I'm at a stage in my life where it doesn't make sense to do YouTube full time I mentioned to you guys that I'm a software engineer and I currently run in a small Tech business that uh aligns a lot better with what my goals and dreams in life are and believe it or not running that business takes quite a bit of cognitive bandwidth as well as just my time and as cheesy as it sounds I feel like I'm on this Earth because there's something that I need to build I just don't know exactly what that is yet so as of right now my plan is to continue to heavily invest in that side of my goals and dreams and intertwine videos as fit and filming a travel video takes away 90 of the fun of actually experiencing that travel in exchange for a YouTube video so I'm gonna try and find a good balance there I do promise that I will upload some travel videos though and if I can accomplish my goals in the tech industry I do have this crazy vision of creating a super high-end electric over Landing vehicle company one day anyways at this point I'm rambling I hope that I've answered all your guys questions hope that you enjoyed the van I want to give one more shout out to you guys my fan base for watching these videos for allowing all of this to have been created thank you guys so much for watching this video and I will see you guys next time

Channel: Seven O Savage

Views: 185,906

Keywords: sevenosavage, 70savage, 7 0 savage, 7 o savage, seven o savage van tour, seven o savage van, van tour, camper van tour, sprinter van tour, diy camper van, diy van tour, how to camper van, bright camper van, battery powered air conditioning, 80/20 van, aluminum van, off grid battery, off grid solar, tiny home, tiny living, van rising bed system, promaster, sprinter, off road van

Id: XzAsxYJ8c-A

Length: 33min 55sec (2035 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022