VAN BATTLE! Ford E350 vs Ford Transit - Cost conscious ways to get your van life on!

well folks here it is the econoline versus the transit after uh traveling together through a couple of different states riding a whole bunch of bikes together um we thought it'd be kind of fun to do a uh a little van off with the old trusty econo line and my dream van which is the transit so jeff and i are both pretty conscious budget-minded folks so he's got a few tips and techniques on his purchase decision and uh i've got an argument for the old trustee 54 econo line so jeff tell us a little bit about your van um and how you got it yeah i guess it's worth pointing out both of our vans are pretty much diy built so this is uh even though i like like to think that my van is a pretty sick build it it's a budget build for what it is and and everything in there except for the aluminum rack on the top i built everything myself starting from the top acquiring this van if you look on um auto trader websites and stuff like that passenger vans like this there's tons of them that come off lease so for example this van i got with 20 000 miles on it it had a sticker price of 48 000 and i got it for 28. so i basically saved 20 000 for 20 000 miles and in my mind even if they never change oil that was totally worth it so then once we dive into the van this started out as a 15 passenger van and when i got it the first thing i did i literally took it home and within hours stripped the entire inside i took all the seats out took the floor out and then just sat there and thought what the hell am i doing i'm completely wrecking my van but the cool thing is when you take out the floor it folds in half and makes a template so i was able to use that to trace out a new floor so it started out with 15 seats now it has seating for five i drove it for about a year with an extra seat here and i just realized i never used it so i eventually built this storage system but i took two seats moved them back and the cool thing about having the passenger van is i don't really have a full-time van life um we'll get into where i sleep in this van later it's similar to drew's i just wanted to have safe seating for everybody i want to have headliner air conditioning heat and air bags and stuff like that so nobody's sitting on buckets or anything like that we have seats that are bolted to the ground um these seats though i moved them back about two feet so the original location was over this air vent so so you can see i gave the passengers in the back a ton more seating room so when you sit back here tons of room even if you're 6'4 you have all the leg room in the world and lots of room to move around and if you want to get changed this seating this floor in the front is the original floor and then once you get back behind the seat i took out the entire original floor and i put in three quarter inch marine plywood so that if i wanted to pull all the stuff down to the back or move things around i had a super solid platform because the floor under here is just really really thin plywood and you can't really do too much to it so after after living with this van for about a year and having a seat right here i decided to tear that out and make it a totally more useful space so if i ever do need to take this out i could pretty easily get it out and bolt back in that seat but this is by far the most useful thing i put in this van so i spend 90 percent of my time before rides right here so nowadays this is a spot to put covid masks random tools bike computers things like that energy bars the most using in this whole van is this garbage can right here so you could access it from both sides and then i have all my tools right here so if i'm trying to get a shock ready before a ride i need to get my tools they're all right there so this is all super super organized and then this is where i usually keep all my camera stuff my van got broken into a year ago so i want to tell you where i keep everything this is where i usually keep my camera stuff and a battery charger up here so this is just all the stuff that i use on a daily basis and i got a pump right there nice so before we move to the back okay i i want to just let people see we'll get some more light in here i want people to see what the cockpit looks like just in case they don't have a ford dealer you got some nice overhead storage here you got your rear ac controls how is this thing to drive comfort wise uh i mean you're 6'4 spacious can do do you get a stiff leg cruise control works the angle with steering wheel i mean how do you feel in here yeah so comfort wise when i chose this van the reason i went with a ford transit over a dodge which is also a super available model the dodges are a lot smaller in the front cockpit and i'm 6'4 so i needed to have that room but then another huge modification that i did which totally helps me out being as tall as i am this seat is a pivoting seat so you can spin it around and when i put that turntable under here it raises the seat up about two inches but those turntables are pretty expensive they're like 400 bucks so i didn't want to do it for the driver's seat i was trying to keep it on a budget but when i put that on here i loved that the seat was higher so if you take a look at my seat closely i put a i put a two inch by two inch steel tubular spacer under there so this seat doesn't pivot but it raised the whole thing up two inches and then it also gave me space to put that inverter underneath the seat too so now when i drive my seat is a little bit higher since i'm so tall it just gives me better comfort for my legs and stuff like that but the cockpit is super comfortable and it drives like a car like you don't feel like you're driving a van at all okay and what motor you got in here uh this is just the standard v6 so i'm not like a mega car guy i know that is not the ecoboost it's just a regular v6 engine which is pretty typical for this uh transit 350. okay now you've got some pretty beefy all-terrain tires on here that was huge um one of my friends told me that the transit sucked with for any kind of adverse weather and i got it and the first thing i did was i was going to do a mountain bike trials then i attempted to try to pull a trailer up onto just super light grass and i was peeling out so i went and got these if you have good original training tires it makes all the difference in the world this this those tires turn this car into a four season vehicle without those tires the transits do really suck in the in the terrible weather um since it's rear-wheel drive you throw those tires on there and makes it super super useful all right so you got the beefy all terrains on there you got this james barrow rooftop tent you got your canopy you got oh you got your sweet light bars here that you blinded me with right yep and like i said i did all the stuff myself so drilling holes into the roof or your van is intimidating when you're not a car person uh but i went for it there this is a ford transit off-road light bar it's foes racing so i thought that was kind of cool since the mountain bike company as well and i even wrapped this hood myself i had a bunch of vinyl left over from a different job and i took the hood off and my son and i put it on the kitchen kitchen table and we attempted to do it and actually didn't come out too bad it's nice yeah it looks kind of sweet so with these beefy tires that sail up on top what kind of mileage are you getting out of this v6 on this trip right here my uh speedometer or odometer was saying 13.3 miles a gallon which isn't terrible and we were going in tennessee speed limits 70. so we were we were doing 75.80 yeah we were definitely doing 75.80 and i think that adding that rooftop box definitely totally cuts down on aerodynamics so that was the killer before that it was probably closer to 14 15 miles an hour so that's a sucker if you don't put that on there you'll get better gas mileage okay all right well let's see the back and how you store those bikes so i made provisions to store some bikes inside but i like to keep them outside that's my ideal way to store them so i have a rack that swings out of the way allows me to get in the back and then in the rest of my life i'm not a very organized person so my van is the one place that i could actually uh have complete control over and try to keep organized so i really try to do that so a couple other cool diy storage things this is actually a shoe holder that you would put in your house and i cut it shorter and just fastened it to the door allows me to keep places to store gloves and stuff like that and since it's uh like nylon and netted it doesn't get gross and allow stuff to dry out so i put my pads right there this is a shower curtain i can hang that on these hooks right here and i have a spray box so this is pretty cool this you fill this thing with water if you get your bikes dirty or you get your body dirty you can use this thing to hose off and when you have the shower curtain you can put up you get full natural in the middle of a parking lot no one would even know um i have a generator i have an air compressor under here too so if i need to seat tubeless tires or whatever the tank is underneath there so that's uh you know stealth out of the way and then the biggest thing that i did since uh the last van video that i have online is i put in this lockable tool chest um if you follow me on social media you might know that last year i had my van completely robbed so that taught me a lesson so now this is a fully lockable storage cabinet in here it gives me places to put everything usually i take the key with me but otherwise i could put all my camera equipment in here and lock it different drones and bike parts i could pretty much fix anything i need to fix on my bike on the road helmet storage is super cool these things are called the helmet or i saw these online and i thought they were kind of weird and i got them and there's they work really really well you just hang your helmet on there this is my laundry basket so i can throw my gross clothes in here when i'm done riding and then just take it inside to clean it off tool stand if i ever need to work on my bikes i have a trail boss tool kit right there if i need to do any trail work so this has a portable mcleod a spade a pickaxe it all folds up into that cool little packet right there different shoes flat solid shoes clip shoes everything goes under here this is typically where i'll get dressed for a ride and underneath here is just a big ton of storage so i can put extra tires sleeping bags all that kind of stuff and then i put all these hooks on the window to uh allow me to hang my clothes on there you know when i go riding i can hang extra coats or pants or whatever and then this is where i can store my extra bikes so it's kind of like an old school bike rack if i don't want to have my bikes on the back i could put them in here and then just bungee them so they don't fall out but uh it allows me to store some bikes in here and then this you know it doesn't take up any space if i'm not storing bikes it's just a little storage wall right there here's my refrigerator a yeti cooler they'll keep ice clean for days and then a couple storage bins right here like i said this is all diy so this bin right here is where i put my shorts the top bin is for tops you know tops and bottoms and uh my dyson vacuum so i keep everything clean all right well i don't know i feel like that was a tour into a mansion for lifestyles of the rich and famous and uh as we head over here to uh my rolling junk show after uh 12 days on the road so far might not be as impressed this is gonna be a real real nevertheless this is how we roll okay this is real down and dirty we don't have stuff hidden in the back to make our vans look nice and clean okay this is how it goes so let's see how it is we are 3100 miles deep so far on this trip so let me walk you through this bad boy right here so as a previous owner of an e350 i had a 12 passenger band in the past and i just wanted a little bit more space but definitely wanted to keep it on a budget so going up to a 15 passenger van seemed like a really good way to go for us again we were trying to stick to a pretty tight budget when it was time to build this thing out and while jeff definitely scored a sweet van for a pretty good deal that was still about 15 000 more than we paid for this beauty right here that's right so i got this van here it is a 2010 e350 it had 56 000 miles on it and i got it for eleven thousand dollars took some haggling took a bit of hard work but this thing was just sitting up in valencia california and outside of la i'd say if you're looking for these econo lines urban areas are going to be great because there's a lot of shuttle companies dealerships you know they used to go through a lot of these vans if you guys have been anywhere you know airport companies rental companies everyone use the e350 and that's another reason i'm a huge fan the 5.4 v8 motor is probably one of the longest used most bulletproof and reliable motors if you consider police cars these vans f-150 pickup trucks there's parts and there are millions of miles of experience behind them being that this is the e350 it's kind of got that burly front end i had my buddy morgan up in bend oregon hook it up with a nice light bar we did a led headlight upgrade kit so that way when uh it's late at night and i'm cruising down the highway i've got plenty of visibility and can see what's coming down the road ahead of me i've got a little bit of a lead foot i'm sorry to say but you know at least i can see farther if i'm going faster so moving on down the road here we'll get into the passenger quarters now this bench seat uh was a carryover from my last van um it was actually an rv conversion bench i put this on here because i have a tendency of picking up these real dirt bags and letting them in the back of my van so rather than stain a nice seat i put this easily washable blanket on here and so one of the things that's really cool about this bench seat being that it's out of an rv conversion is that it folds flat into a bed so although i do have this cvt clamshell automated pop-up tent which is really neat uh if i'm just stopping on the side of the road at like a rest stop or um you know gonna get up early the next morning and go or if i've got more people and i want to stay there and they can stay here this bench will fold forward and flat and it'll be essentially a bed big enough you know you could fit yourself and your lady friend if you're out on a trip comfortably uh it's been done so definitely like the van conversion seats um they're a lot cheaper if you can find them used or from like an rv shop instead of like these high-end custom van builders builders it'll save you a lot of money the downside is you'll have to do a little bit of work yourself to make seat belts work so that's something that's that's really got me thinking and i like about jeff's fan they've got full restraints airbags all that this thing we're kind of relegated to some 70s style lap belts and uh crossed fingers so um as you can see in the rest of the van here i left the stock headliner up front oh you like my hat holder yeah is that cool or what tell us about that so that there is a cowboy hat hole that actually is a real cowboy hat holder it sure is dude oh i thought like no let me show you legit cowboy house check this thing out dude like that boom there you go that just bolts right up to the ceiling hold your hat now you never know when you're gonna need a cowboy hat right like let's just say you've got a friend who's got a chevy or a sprinter and he breaks down on the side of the road and you're standing out in the sun waiting for a tow truck you want to have a cowboy hat where do you buy a cowboy hat holder that's like a real thing oh yeah real deal yeah you know if you look it's kind of like you know it's right next to the gun racks section in a mail order catalog but yeah you never know right like jeff i also opted to go for the passenger van model i i like having some windows i like having more of a finished interior it takes less time and less build effort so as you can see over here right like i've maintained stock accessories right everything's closed off i got cup holders i got cigarette lighters even back there i mean your pillars are covered so it just kind of minimizes a little bit of work if you don't want to go deep into that full custom fan build oh right here behind this door i've got a power inverter which is absolutely awesome and having additional power on board is huge right now for example i have a fridge a couple of gopros and an e-bike charging up in the back and um being able to do that especially if you're on the road a lot keeping laptops camera gear uh cell phones all that stuff charge is really cool so something i really suggest another cool thing is with these econolines for so many years being ambulances there's a lot of really cool accessories so if you notice under here there's a secondary battery and basically what that's for is um you know being charged and running that inverter you know ambulances have a lot of onboard equipment and this was like an ambulance mount that uh that they sell online it was like ninety dollars and you just mount it up here to the frame ground it run it off the alternator so now i'm charging two batteries can run my inverter and um got plenty of juice to spare so i don't have to worry about draining the starter battery if i'm somewhere overnight and i got my leds and my computer and fridge and all that stuff going so definitely a cool thing to look into so as far as inside the van storage i'm a huge fan of keeping bikes in here what i did was i got some l-track from a freight company secured that down and then i customized these uh rocky mounts bike holders i kind of drilled out the base plates of them to work with these kind of quick detach ltrack mounts and so basically what i can do now is as you can see right now i've got two bikes in here and my dirt bike or a little play bike i should say and um what i can do is i can fit up to five bikes in here on these rocky mounts depending on my needs and what i'm doing so because the system's on this track here and i've got these mounts i can actually it takes a little bit of work sometimes i need a little mallet and tap them back and forth but i can slide these racks and i've got two rows so that way i can kind of alternate put one forward and back that way i can have the handlebars at slightly different spacing um and again if i need to put some big stuff in or like a fridge and a dirt bike i can slide the bikes to one end keep the big stuff on the other vice versa so it's a pretty cool setup to get five bikes in here um i'll usually have to like maybe take pedals off and at least on one or two of the bikes loosen the stem so i can have the bars flat makes life a lot easier for them coming in and out on board storage is definitely something that's important for banners if you've had one or if you're just a mountain biker you know you tend to accumulate a lot of stuff and being able to kind of have the essentials when you need them where you need them is important even with this organization i still struggle sometimes because there's just always stuff coming and going and in my research it found that like just van stuff is so expensive and overpriced my last van i ended up building a lot of stuff myself and it worked great for three four years but just after being on the road and bouncing down dirt gravel shuttle road stuff starts working its way apart um so i thought it'd be worthwhile to spend a little bit of money but not van money so i did some research and found a company that um outfits like electrical and trades vans and this thing was super cheap um i think it was like i don't know maybe 180 or 280 dollars and it bolts right in on the top and bottom super secure it's got dividers on top big open bay in here it's all metal so you can you know any magnetized items will stick nicely then you just get yourself some cheap little tupperware bins from the store and you can kind of organize things again i'm 12 days in so it's getting a little messy another awesome thing is that you've got a lockable compartment down here so you can put any larger items safe items you know anything that you want to have locked up when you're out on the trail in there definitely an important feature and again way cheaper than anything that's certified van life so what i did with with the outsides uh the bottom panels everything to keep it a little bit quieter is uh i got some marine grade carpeting and some really strong spray adhesive so front and backs underneath at the bottom of all the shelves carpeted all that so if there were like loose allen wrenches bolts anything like that it wouldn't make a ton of racket from there anywhere that i peeled back stock parts i use that marine carpet again um spray 77 or no what is it it was like some sort of a 3m spray 90 it might have been the strongest i could get spray it on there cut it it stretches out real nice and can form around any kind of contours and molds so definitely worth getting oh another nice tip i guess is dynamtting stuff dynamat as much as you can i did the bottoms of these inside the doors everything i like had uh under panels if you can dynamat stuff it will not bounce around vibrate echo definitely a worthwhile investment something i get asked a lot about here is the ceiling in this van being that again it was a passenger van like jeff's it had the air conditioned ducting it had the finished headliner all that stuff and by taking that out i was able to gain three three and a quarter inches in height which is a big deal um i can fit a full-size dirt bike in here i could in my old van with the headliner still in but it gets in easier now i've got more space it also allowed me to put some insulation up above this this is just shiplap like cheap shift lap siding i got at the home depot not all that expensive it's great kind of clicks in and then screwed into the beams that kind of go over the ceiling of the van it smelled really good for the first month or two that's kind of worn away but um smooth looks good and it really wasn't all that spendy so definitely a one of my favorite pieces about the van i i at some point would like to build maybe some shelves some organizational shelves in here get a little tower that's on my to-do list unfortunately that requires time and i don't have a lot of that so for now this area gets to be a little bit messy from time to time so this here is the rear ac and heat vent so this used to be what went up into the ducting that um kind of heated and cooled the back area of the van i left that in there because i i still wanted to be able to have climate control in the back if i'm going somewhere super cold it's nice to be able to one warm up the bikes get them nice and hot so that the suspension isn't super harsh more importantly i can put like my helmet my shoes my knee pads in here get them nice and warm so that they're not all stiff and cold when i get to the trailhead and when it's super hot if i'm changing you know i'll sit on that wheel well over there i can have the ac running and just kind of blast cold air into the back and keep everything nice and cool i don't always have this in here if i do i don't typically have a dirt bike and i'll put this over against the corner but this is my csi fridge freezer combo again being on the budget my buddy morgan audio works bend oregon thank you bud hooked me up with this thing had to trade him some some bike parts but well worth it he said this thing is basically like a total arb replica ripoff whatever i don't know what you want to call it but it doesn't cost nearly as much as an arv so csi black ice insulated blanket totally worth it you don't need to spend seven eight hundred dollars for a fridge or whatever these things go for so that uh in a nutshell is the tour of the old trusty van and she does fine i gotta say i don't have a ton of money into this thing you know 11 grand for the purchase price um spent some money on the rat was able to find some pretty affordable alternatives to storage and bike rack solutions that that do the job and don't cost a ton of money so i get about depending on how i'm driving like terrain wise i can get anywhere from 12 to 14 and a half miles to the gallon with this tent on top and some fairly aggressive tires if i drive much more conservatively which i try not to do because it just takes so long to get places you can get a little bit better but if you're pushing this thing 75 to 80 you can probably count on about 13 miles to the gallon which you know isn't too much worse than jeff's van and is uh i don't know about 10 grand cheaper so i don't know if i'm gonna spend 10 grand in fuel but i will say having the ability to stand up like jeff does is a huge benefit and having spent all this time on the road in a pretty confined space showing up and seeing jeff in that thing getting comfortably dressed all neatly organized it does make me think it might be time to do the upgrade what do you guys think i don't know get rid of the e350 they look really good but i like the aesthetics of the e350 but this is pretty convenient so crack practicality may win guys i don't know this thing is sweet thank you guys for tuning in watching if you don't already follow the trail boss mr jeff lenosky make sure you go check out his channel he's got uh not only a cool van but a ton of amazing skills on a bike and we'll definitely teach you guys a few things to improve your riding out on the trail so thanks for coming along for the ride jeff riding with us in some cool spots and uh let's go shrink some trail let's do it all right

Channel: The Loam Wolf

Views: 77,312

Rating: 4.7876415 out of 5

Keywords: loam wolf, mtb, mountain bike, mountain biking, van life tour, van life build, van build tour, moto van build, moto van setup, bike van build, bike van tour, bike van life, econoline van conversion, econoline van build, ford econoline vs transit, ford transit conversion, transit van build, transit van conversion, van life

Id: Q6UA7ub67q8

Length: 27min 11sec (1631 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020