Tour of a Nomad Living in a Class A RV

so welcome back to the tour part of this video meeting mark and donna and uh mark this is your nice gmc motorhome yes it is yeah 1975 gmc motorhome they uh built this type of rig for four years back in obviously the 70s and uh according to the uh the records there was about 12 600 of them built originally and the estimate now is that there's about 8 500 of them still on the road and as a result there's a lot of dedicated enthusiasts there's still a parts supply warehouse if you will for them so a lot of people have gone to great lengths and a lot of trouble to be able to keep these things on the road uh the reason that there is so many of them still on the road in relation to their original production figures is the fact that they're they're primarily aluminum obviously steel chassis aluminum body fiberglass nose and tail cap and so there's very little to uh be affected by moisture if you will so uh there's other than the wood that's inside there's no superstructure that to to rot out or or that type of thing obviously obviously there can be moisture damage but for the most part the reason they're still on the road is because they handle the weather quite well also built toronto front wheel drive setup which it's a 455 so it has the power to move it obviously it's not the most efficient engine ever designed so it does uh yeah it gets a little expensive to run but you keep them tuned up and keep them adjusted and um well it runs down the highway fine so it's uh really been a good good rig for us and so to save on the cost of fuel you tow a ford ranger i told a little ford ranger um that actually has its own little story but we bought it here in quartzsite uh two years ago and um one of the things that we did when we decided what our next step was going to be and and and one of the things i'm going to just throw in here real quick and i've a friend of mine is considering doing this and and he's put a lot of i don't know stress into deciding what type of rv that he's going to have and one of the things that i've noticed in this lifestyle is the first rv you start out with is probably not going to be the one you end up with and uh there's there's always a stepping stone um you'd ask anybody out here they've started with one vehicle they've probably ended up with two or three since then and so they're never in the first vehicle they started with so and neither are we so we put a lot of thought into this after we'd been out for about a year uh decided that uh the gmc would be an ideal rig for us uh because of that and knowing that we were going to want to do a lot of work to it we were going to want to modify the interior we were going to probably have to put a lot of maintenance into it because while they're 40 years old we decided we needed a little truck it had to be small enough to be towed at the same time it had to be rugged enough to be usable four-wheel drive was a real plus because we do like to drive around the desert go exploring occasional mountainsides a lot of mountains around here that uh get some mines and and stuff that are fun to see so that was important uh it had to be set up oh i'm not necessarily set up but had to be we had to be able to set it up for towing which is very critical uh so uh a manual transfer case was very important and anyway we put all that together and my brother-in-law actually called me one day and he says you know i found this little ranger that i think is exactly what you're looking for when looked at it and sure enough it it had been ordered from the factory originally to be a toad so not only did it have the locking hubs and the manual transfer case it had the engine that i wanted uh and it even came with a tow bar uh the wiring was all set up all i had to do was plug it into the back of the coach and everything and saw it was like okay well we found the exit the perfect rig yeah and the miles that were on it were you know it seemed to have a lot of miles but it drives like it has considerably less and that's because it's been towed most of its life and so most of the miles unfortunately it racks up when you tow so but we've found a canopy for it got a good deal on that i built the drawers for the back so that we could uh keep some some of our supplies stored speaking of that let's take a look all right sure yeah these are these are the drawers that i built uh there's a platform here it comes right to the top of the wheel wells and the idea here is that um i knew i was gonna put a canopy on it so i wasn't too worried about the fact that i didn't have much bed space left so and then to make sure it handled the weather okay this is um signboard or mdo which is obviously they use it for science so it has to be able to withstand the weather and so you don't get any of the delamination or anything like that on it and um very simple drawer i just uh oh once a year i guess i put more wax on the bottom of it so it'll slide and so it's not on slides it's just its own weight yeah that's just plywood on plywood wow and with wax on the bottom yeah yeah it looks like it was hardly any effort at all yeah it works pretty smoothly and uh the name of this one this is where this is most of where the stuff that we use for camping if you will your outdoor stuff outdoor stuff you know our canopy frame the walls lights nails and straps and guidelines for things propane and so on so i kind of keep it categorized this is more for the vehicles this is more for camping you know that kind of thing this stuff you really want to have but you don't need very often don't need it all the time yeah so very good use of storage ladder spare water a couple of cans of gasoline we throw our chairs in there and stuff when we move that kind of thing very handy very practical very good use of space yeah so let's take a look inside all right and i see you have solar how many how much solar do you have 280 watts of solar it's run through a combination inverter charger that uh feeds um well charges the two six volt agm batteries in the back and uh a little generator that we only save or we only use when we need it kind of save it for the important uh or the bad weather i guess uh the best way to say it and then uh works out real well we uh we have some some some electrical stuff that um we wouldn't have had if we didn't have the solar and for instance the refrigerator typically our refrigerator is not real big there's not a lot of cubic feet of storage in there and we like fresh vegetables so it's we picked up a little 12-volt cooler and it's not a fancy refrigerator freezer thing it's just a it's just a cooler it doesn't even have a thermostat on it you just plug it in and it works and you unplug it and then it's off and uh but because of the solar we can run it when the sun's out and it's usually pretty cold that by time sun goes down so we just unplug it and plug it back in the next morning and so as a result very little draw on the batteries with that well it's really spacious in here it really feels big we made a lot of modifications uh this was a dinette originally but it had the steel frame seats that folded into a bed and there was very little storage underneath them they were very hard to access and where you weren't going to sleep there so we thought you know we'll just make it and so as a result i was able to go a little bit lighter uh increase the storage space considerably there's a it's my utility storage down here and um that's where i keep some of the tools and oil and stuff and that sort of thing that is really a good setup easy to access and it's really easy to access from outside as well yeah you can reach up from while you're standing outside exactly so and then on this one there's two parts to the storage on this one one this is a drawer and this is kind of our pantry and then behind it there's a access door that you probably can't really see that's for the very very seldom used stuff like tire chains that sort of thing so that's not original this is our probably i should say donna's workbench this is where she does a lot of her jewelry making um she has the little jeweler's vice here a little visor that's movable and stuff this is a magnifier lamp and um a lot she does a lot of the the jewelry and stuff she makes the little dolls she does artwork like so um it's hand-drawn she did that very very nice yeah and um so this is what keeps her happy while we're on the road creativity yep she's able to create express herself she sees something she likes she can come here maybe duplicate it if she or something similar she likes that kind of stuff she made these curtains the at first you know they had a divider curtain there but this is actual tapestry and it looks heavy it is and the reason being is that it does a very good job of insulating the cab area from the back makes it better easier to heat kind of works as a closet for us at the same time while we're parked and so uh that way we don't have to uh clean it completely yeah but there's a little bit of clutter okay but there's the cooler you know and so it's a coleman and it's uh just 12 volt got some fresh veggies in there and we just uh we see we plug it in tonight excuse me in the morning solar keeps it running all night or all day and then unplug it at night the countertops are just really impressed with the countertops yeah this used to be a couch by the way there was a couch here and it folded out and made a bunk bed hung from there hung from here and um i don't know who would sleep up there i don't know i don't even think i could convince a kid to sleep up there but it wasn't all that comfortable and the couch wasn't comfortable and we said you know again we're not planning on having parties in here so we picked these up at a um uh like a habitat for humanity store just a kind of salvage store um for like 20 bucks the countertop is actually made from old fence boards oh yeah this is a um pull it over here so out of the light okay uh what it is is um it's a uh probably about an 80 year old fence and i think i believe it's oak but um in these patterns these are stencils that donna was playing with but it's a um a fence contractor who does a lot of the salvage wood from old barns and fences and stuff he had put up a new fence for a guy back in minnesota or someplace tore down this one ran it through a planer ran it through his machine to put the tongue and groove on it and then sold it as flooring and this was these are pieces that were left over from a friend of mine's floor basically he had a 5 000 square foot house and he put this floor uh this flooring on the first floor and this is some of the what was left over and he gave it to us and we were able to make a counter out of it so i really like all the light in here the windows huge amount of windows another feature that's unique to the gmc that gives it it keeps them from looking dated as well this is one of the first ones that used large windows with radius corners some most of the rvs of this era did not do that right and so as a result you get the light and the spaciousness and they found that radius corners gave them a lot of structural strength a lot of structural strength modernized the look right and which i don't know you've probably seen different movies with these on these vehicles featured in them i think i can't remember the exact name but sandra bullock in that movie where they chased tornadoes or something i think there was like three or four of them in that uh the movie stripes uh featured one of these uh or i think one of the a couple other movies and so they were they were using a lot of movies because of the fact that they distinctive they're distinctive and they don't really go out of date i guess they got a style to them that seems almost timeless yeah now we did do some modifications um but this is just a it's a bathroom sink uh we use a little plastic uh tub for um most of our washing that way it doesn't fill our tanks forcing us to move when we're before we're ready so very little water goes into our tanks so you just dump that outside we just dump it outside it's just gray water and stuff like that right original stove three burner um magic chef with an oven we use the oven uh we use the stove daily so i like that and how about this wood dark wood here is that oh this is original actually this is very nice yeah and i have to be careful we do kind of load cram these things so that be careful you you unload it or you open it up and something might jump at you right so that's that and this covers mostly taken up with vent and lighting so there's very little storage space up there so that's where that stuff is silverware and utility stuff for cooking down here the fridge is i'm really really pleased with this is um like i say this was the the previous owner had put this in and it's it's gas 12 volt 110 volt and switches back and forth automatically depending upon that's a priority obviously 110 first priority gas the second priority and then the 12 volt batteries is the third um so and your spice cabinet there really really really impresses me yeah this is never seen anything like that yep this is probably one of the favorite features um that people always like or are impressed with when they when they come in here now you did that that isn't factory yeah donna did that did that donna did that yeah so yeah i i would love to take credit for something like that but she's the creative one that's ingenious i'm the mechanical guy she's the she's the artist well what how wonderful to have that combination that's a good point that's a very good point um like the magazine uh pockets on the on the bed i don't know if you can see that very well but i don't know if some additional light would help or not but okay yeah and is that sewn onto the blanket no it's actually just attached to the bed frame itself okay and then that flips up and there's storage underneath yeah so that's a door under there that's storage under there yeah yeah yeah this used to have us side facing lounge chairs or seating very similar to the dinette almost identical to the dinette actually um and which was very uncomfortable to sleep on so it didn't take long at all to convert that to just the primitive bed and this must be your bathroom back here this is the bathroom here shower closet with a full-length mirror drawers inverter and stuff in there is that what something you built in or this is this is factory that's all factory yeah good use of space yeah and now something i did add is the uh component shelf back here if you want to go back there look at our tv and satellite setup right you have this satellite this satellite so that component shelf underneath i added that and seems to blend in fairly well so so you come back here and lay down and watch tv correct and uh nice you know good sized bathroom bedroom nice bed yeah it's um it's full size so we're not talking queen or king or anything but uh perfectly adequate for the two of us and can we peek in your bathroom i don't know let me look okay yeah i suppose so it's a wet bath is that correct it is a wet bath yes so you just uh you take the shower with everything out and around right and it has a curtain that you can pull to make sure that the water doesn't leave there around the door and stuff and do you shower in here yes so you use both both tanks black tank black and gray well there's a story to that too in order to make sure that our tanks don't force us to leave our camp prematurely we don't use the black water at all we use auxiliary containers um and uh is that a nice way to say five gallon bucket yes yeah you know i don't know how much detail you're into but we do not contaminate our black water tank let's put it that way and uh and the gray water uh most of it ends up just being dumped from here shower water that does go into the tank but we can take i don't know three four showers before the tank is full and we have to concern ourselves with emptying it so so it works out pretty well so you're pretty free from tanks and dumping pretty much pretty much uh we were we were camped for four weeks at the on the other side of quartzite and uh managed just fine before we had to come out and dump refill now i will refill with water periodically it's a relatively small water tank so we'll take advantage of the water dispensers out there in the community by uh when we're out with the truck uh i'll fill up that five gallon uh jug dump it in the tank and so that gives us the hot water if we need to shower and stuff like that so every time you go to town you get every gallon get another five gallons and um we use uh again to keep from using the water in the tank we will also would just use auxiliary uh water jugs right sure and uh that's for our coffee and occasional cooking recipes and things like that and probably like a lot of us who separate uh uh filtered water to drink and cook and uh cheap water city water for showers shower cleaning and washing dishes and that kind of thing most of the desert water is not very good pleasant no no so that's our uh well i guess there's a little little goodie too that this is a is an original uh feature of the gmc's but that is nice but typically that's a like a vacuum system uh in-house vacuum oh yeah because these are usually carpeted which of course we pulled that out right away who wants to live in 40 year old carpet right and so um but that's the uh so we converted that to a pantry and that's very very nice very very handy well mark thank you so much what a what a wonderful home you've created for yourselves thanks yeah we really enjoy it just love to be in it and if you're forced in by bad weather you're not unhappy at all no no as a matter of fact we have uh quite a few of you we can be sitting here and as you can see we've got quite a breath quite a panorama yeah so yeah yeah it's uh it's nice we really enjoy it you know yeah is there some headaches with a 40 year old vehicle sure but you know as far as other than a you know brand new sprinter or something which i don't feel would offer us near as much personal satisfaction uh there's really not much else out there that we can get this much livability from your bang for your buck is pretty astounding yes yep yeah that's the whole that's the whole crux of the whole thing right there right so pleasant livable space per dollar you can afford to spend exactly right exactly well mark thank you so much for sharing your life uh you and donna and i really appreciate it oh you're more than welcome and uh we'll talk to you later all right sounds good thanks and for you folks at home i hope you enjoyed this and be sure and like us on youtube and subscribe to our channel and share us with your friends through social media and we'll talk to you later [Music] you

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 171,270

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, GMC, Motorhome, Class A, full-time, toad, Ranger, pickup, remodel

Id: FstZcbRw1bw

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2017