VAN TOUR | Custom 144 Sprinter AWD With Shower/Sauna

welcome back to Titan Vans I'm Matt North CEO and founder today we're going to be showcasing a brand new custom build on a sprinter 144 all-wheel drive this build was inspired by our Ultra 144 model but the customer opted to make some substantial changes both on the exterior and on the interior this is what makes it a custom build we started from the ground up working with the customer took some inspiration from some of our models that we offer but designed something unique that met their needs and they selected some great exterior and interior upgrades that we do offer on a lot of our models some of these options though do fall outside of our normal offerings and so we're going to go into detail about the options that were selected on this build from both the exterior and the interior we're gonna start on the exterior of the van so let's jump in to some of the options that were selected to start off we're going to talk about the wheels and tires on this build we opted for the black rhino alloy wheels with a BFG tko2 Tire now this is the all-wheel drive model from Sprinter which has the same ground clearance and initial Factory lift as the 4x4 that was available from 18 to 22. 23 forward though these are all going to be all-wheel drive options and the largest tire you can fit without any modifications here is a 265 70 R17 now you can go a little bit bigger if you stick with the 16 inch rim but when we're going up to these alloy aftermarkets we typically will go up to a 17 inch wheel it makes finding tires a little bit easier now the reason for upgrading these is the alloy wheels are going to be a little bit lighter weight certainly they have a much better aesthetic than the factory wheels that come with Mercedes but you can also get some nice features like stem protectors if you're going to be going off-road you can get these a little bit more durable again for off-road use and then especially the tires where you're going to see the best performance upgrade the factory tires that come from Mercedes are great for on-road use and for fair weather but as soon as you're going to hit any sort of snow mud or sand definitely going to want to upgrade the rubber to make sure you get where you're going all right moving on to the rear of the van we got a lot going on so here on the driver's side we have our ladder Tire combo great option to move this spare tire out from underneath the vehicle and onto the back doors now the reason to do this again is if you're going to be off-road typically if you're going to need to change a flat tire it's not usually in the most convenient location it's not level ground you could be bottomed out in the back your vehicle could be so low it's hard to get a jack into there if then you have to get underneath there somehow and drop the cage down and slide a tire out to then get your spare on it can be a real pain so by having it up here on the back door we make it a lot easier to access the spare tire in case we need it so that's one of the big reasons for mounting it on the back doors now the ladder pretty self-explanatory gets this access up onto that roof rack so if we need to maintain equipment up there if we have a walkable deck up on top we can use the ladder to gain access up there so nice to kind of just pair these together make it multi-functional for that driver's side now there's a couple different ladder options that we offer this rear door ladder while it is a good option it does have a very high initial step height okay so if you're not comfortable with that we definitely recommend the side mount ladder but even for me you gotta hike your foot up there right to get that first step then you can kind of use these small steps you can step on top of the ladder if needed to get up here but again it's a you know we've got to be flexible and comfortable to get up to that first step once you if you do the side mount ladder it has the a very low initial rung Heights initial rung is going to be down here so very comfortable and easy to get up and down the ladder and it's more of a traditional ladder and that you have you know full rungs top to bottom so something worth considering but these are a good option especially if you want to get that rear tire out from underneath the van all right move over to the passenger side so this is a B2 carrier box and bike so you can see we got the poles up top you can now use these poles to mount bike carriers onto them customer didn't request the bike carrier so they got different plans for them or their own bike mounts that they're going to mount right onto these poles but below we installed a 30 inch aluminum cargo box so lockable gives you lots of nice storage on the back of the van you can add shelving into here this is great if you're going to be carrying firewood extra fuel you want sort of like a muddy place to throw all your boots or wet gear even use as like a ski Locker if you're going to throw like your you know your ski boots and helmets and stuff just a place where you don't have to put them in the van depending on what it is it's nice to have this additional storage now while it does make the vehicle longer one thing to consider is is up very high okay so even if when I go to Parker van like this because these items are so far off the ground even if there's a car behind me a lot of times I can go over the top of them with these items or I'm going over the top of a curb or a planter something like that but having this up nice and high even though it does make the vehicle longer it doesn't really feel that much longer because of how high these things are up so just something worth considering you know I really like having additional storage on the outside of the van and again having sort of that mud room area to kind of put all that wet nasty dirty stuff so I don't have to put it inside the vehicle now we can do these in a couple of different ways we offer dual cargo boxes single cargo box with the B2 carrier or directly on a rear door mounting plate so you got some different options depending on what you're trying to accomplish we also have vertical bike mount options but this is a really well specked out back door and you know what's great about these things is obviously they swing with the door so they're mounted directly to the hinges which allows you to not have to if you're using like a hitch mount bike rack that has you know dual bike mounting not only can you not have storage beneath them but then if the bikes are right here to get access to the back doors you got to swing those out of the way or drop them or take them off the rack to then open the doors so mounting things to the hinges is a great way to add functionality to the back of the van but make it very you know easy to use Easy to operate swing with the door so you can still get access to the back of your van last thing I wanted to mention on the back of the van is we added some additional lighting to the roof now typically we have our perimeter roof lighting package this customer often opted to just do the rear lights and not have the additional lights on the passenger and driver side now these are really great for reversing so for backing up especially if you're off-road or even just in a dark parking lot sometimes it can be hard to see with this large of a vehicle so you can power these lights right up from the dash so when you hit that reverse button go ahead and kick on those lights you're going to get a lot more illumination towards the rear of the vehicle making it a lot safer and easier for you to back up the second functionality is obviously if you're going to be hanging out back here or at a campsite you got the doors open and you're doing something in the rear it can make it really easy to see what you're doing if you're loading up gear so apart for this particular build we'll talk more about some interior stuff just to show you with the slide out tray option if I'm loading up deer and I got all my lights on it makes it a lot easier for me to see what I'm doing load up my bikes in here if I need or cargo boxes maybe I'm doing some outdoor cooking I got my grill or whatever set up on here got my lighting just makes it a lot more you know visibility is a lot better and just gives you that added functionality off the back so I'll just kind of show you case how how you might utilize this those additional lights up there foreign last thing to talk about for the exterior of the van is the roof rack this was the Orion roof rack this was a new product for us and was client requested so we're going to jump up on top and show you some of the features that were added onto the roof of this van all right up here on the roof point out some of the key products that were installed up here on the back we have our air conditioning unit this is a 13 500 BTU unit 120 volt power you can see it's pretty low profile doesn't increase the height of the vehicle too much we'll talk a little bit more about this on the inside of the van up front we have our additional solar panels so we squeaked in a two different panels kind of just Tetris them in with some of the other components we also have our starlink so again we'll talk a little bit more about some of this stuff when we get on the inside but the starlink gives us our Wi-Fi internet Nationwide as long as you have line of sight to the sky so this integrated really well with the Orion rack low profile flush mount design and then up front we have our max air fan which is going to give us our ventilation and additional cooling up in the front of the vehicle so really low profile design all in all with the Orion rack integrates well with the Army Fiamma aw awning attaches right to that guy and all in all keeps a very Sleek design up top now there's no walking deck so this is really just kind of a gives you the ability to mount additional components up here but still can't walk around on it there's no decking to be able to hang out on top of the roof so you know it has some great you know added versatility with including and mounting these components but again might not be one of the products you're looking for depending on what you're trying to accomplish with your roof also you can see we don't have any attachment points to be able to store additional components so if you're trying to mount a Thule box carry surfboards or kayaks on the top of the roof rack this is probably not the ideal rack for you but you know probably gives you some good food to chew on here see the different options that are available when it comes to roof racks this custom build leaned heavily on the ultra 144 model for inspiration but does have some significant changes that includes this slider extended Galley cabinet on our Ultra 144 this cabinet ends a little bit further back which allows for DOT approved seating to fit and still maintain a walkway to the back of the van these customers didn't need any additional dot seating so we extended this Galley out and added a exterior fold down table this is a really nice option here bring some of the Interior to the exterior out into nature allow you to set up use this for cooking set drinks up or whatever else you plan on you know kind of using for outside staging but is a nice quick way so you don't have to carry an additional table set it up every single time really easy to set up and take down we also went with a larger drawer 130 so this is the marine grade fridge here and we oriented it facing towards the front of the van which gives you access to both sides from both the outside of the van and when the door is shut on the inside so from this orientation I can reach in grab stuff get access to the freezer up top here and make it really easy to utilize this even when I'm outside the van now again this is the larger model this is the 130 so 130 cubic inches inside so it's one of the larger fridges that are that we install in a van marine grade stainless steel very nice unit all right moving on to the shower stall so lots of stuff packed into this guy so we'll kind of go bit by bit here so right off the bat you can see a little different if you've seen some of our videos is we have some shelving integrated into the shower install so here we mounted some surface mount L track along the wall fabricated machined these brackets to allow us to quickly remove these shelves so we can just undo the four star knobs here and we can slide this whole shelf out all right so I popped out that second shelf down here so we could get a little bit better view inside so with it out you can see we have the toilet down below it's now with the size of the shower stall you can't really fit inside the shower when using the toilet so this is designed to use in place you can use it with the curtain open or slide this thing out to get a little bit more space but it's really easy a lot more functional to just kind of use like this your knees will stick out the front of the shower stall but it is a very small space to be able to try and incorporate the full sort of wet bath on our Ultra 170 model this shower stall gets another six inches and then we rotate the toilet 90 degrees and you can use it fully inside the shower stall but in a 144 squeezing all this into there kind of have to make some sacrifices and that's one of the places that we do with the toilet now a toilet comes in and out very easily so when you go to use in the shower mode unclips really simple to do go ahead and just slide this little retainer clip out and then the whole thing just lifts out of the shower okay set that guy off to the side now we have the full shower stall available to us we have our shower head up top here and it utilizes some quick disconnect fittings down below which allow us to quickly take the whole shower hose out that way it's not flapping around when you're going down the road so you can kind of store this separately out of the way keeps everything nice and quiet but then when you need it you can go ahead and clip it in use the quick disconnect and then you have your hot and cold controls right there okay and the last thing to mention here is the the heater that's ducted into the shower stall so down here we have our register cover for our heater now you can go ahead and just keep that closed so that no hot air comes inside here and then all of the hot air will come out right here down by my feet a little hard to see but we have another register cover right here where we can adjust and have all of the Heat come out so it's teed off two outputs there so you can control how much hot air is going to which location okay but if you've ever spent time in a van or lived out of them full time finding a way to dry out equipment or you know clothes or towels especially in wintertime is very difficult so we came up with this as a solution to our problems spending a lot of time in Vans is to have this ducted heat in here and obviously with the L track as well as you'll see some additional mounting points up here with some quick disconnect fittings so we can utilize these little rings to clip in clothes hang a line across you can clip these in to other sections of the L track hang up gear strap skis in here whatever you need to do and then we go ahead and turn the heater on especially if it's going to be cold outside or you know you're doing some winter camping you're going to have that heater running so then we just go ahead and open up that duct allow some more heat into the shower stall close the door and allow everything to drip dry right down into the gray water tank that's mounted under the vehicle okay so that's just for the drying sort of functionality let your gear all your wet stuff kind of live inside here but you can also use this as a sauna so if you totally Crank that heater up this is the Evo 40 unit so it puts out a ton of hot air if you crank that all the way up shut this register cover to the main cabin and open that thing up we've had it up to 160 degrees inside here so you can very quickly get this very hot get inside get your sweat on rinse off with the shower whole new day right so it's a lot of functionality baked into this little space here so it is a dedicated space to have a shower inside of the van so you want to make sure you get the most out of it and with all these different features and different ways to use it it can be a really great option even if it does take up this much space all right got the bed push back looking underneath the van or underneath the bed here we have some additional storage in the van so on this side here you can see we have some really nice deep storage we got some additional blankets underneath here you could have more clothing in here this is a removable shelf as well so if you want to store some taller items in here you can but we added design the Shelf in just to make it a little bit more versatile because of how deep it is gives you the ability to kind of have things organized and separate it if needed under the sink you have access to some of the plumbing and connections underneath here there's a little bit of storage but mostly it's going to be the sink that you'll see directly underneath there and then on this side we have sort of our standard cubby cabinets we designed these into a lot now the reason these don't have doors on them they have pretty substantial lips so things are not going to be able to you know slide out when you're driving around but the reason we don't put doors on these is so if you do have bikes back here or totes or whatever stored underneath the bed you can still get access to your gear without having to swing a door open to get inside of them so these Cubbies are open Face by Design to make it a little bit easier to get in and out now down below here is where we opted to install the starlink equipment so this is our repeaters so this is what you'll be able to connect your computer or your phone up to this is the in motion version so this will allow you to connect and have internet even while driving I think they've tested this up to 85 90 miles per hour while driving down the road and it still works just fine so if you do have passengers or you're working remotely or you know the person the passenger seat needs to look something up you don't have good cell reception you'll be able to connect to your starlink to your internet and have normal internet connection just like at home so it does require some additional plugs in here and some additional switches to control to make sure you can turn this off this unit off and on but Starling is certainly a great one to look at if you're going to be hitting the road and need to maintain that sort of connectivity okay we got some additional storage down here this is the wheel well down here as well so we kind of integrated some storage around the wheel well just to give you some additional stuff places here and then back here is going to be our electrical system I'll showcase this one just because of how this door opens but we'll talk more about the electrical system from the rear but our inverter is housed in here obviously lots of venting inverter can produce a lot of heat especially when it's running sort of continuously when it's powering you know something like the induction cooktop or the air conditioning unit so I definitely want a lot of good air flow into that guy and then we got our utility panel down below some of our batteries plumbing system on the other side so we'll kind of swing around to the back talk about a little bit of that all right so back here in the back of the van pop these doors open show you some of the great stuff we got going on in this cargo area down here so a couple things I'll point out we got some additional 120 volt power as well as a cigarette lighter back here and the ability to turn off those load lights from the rear now we integrated these power so especially for like e-bikes or if you need to like inflate a paddle board you got power right off the back of the van make it really nice convenient if you're traveling with e-bikes you can plug them in keep them charged up while you're driving so you got full batteries when you get there okay now we'll start with the electrical system here uh you'll see our utility panel here super clean we show you kind of what you need access to we got a lot of equipment behind this panel here that'll kind of you know go in detail about what some of those items are doing but really nice and clean uh keep this very simple interface you know essentially it's like the breaker panel at your house something that you need to access when needed but for the most part it kind of lives where it lives and does what it's supposed to do and but we want to make it very user friendly very easy to kind of find anything that you're going to need to access okay so we got our solar charge controller up top I got the ability to disconnect our solar so we can very quickly push the red button that our solar is now disconnected we can re-engage our solar we got our 12 volt fuse block this has all of our main circuits on here for 12 volt so our fridge water pump will basto all of our heater pads fans reading lights overhead lights all that stuff powered right off of here fuses right here so if you ever need to access them very easy to get two and our Master battery on off switch this allows us to de-energize the system very quickly so if our solar is disconnected boom system is off that easy if we want to turn it back on go ahead and flip it to the on position it takes about a couple seconds you see it there power it on so now our system is you know back up and running batteries really easy to access down below magnetic cover right here pops off and we have our battery Banks down below this is 600 amp hours of lithium ion batteries this is the largest system that we do in our 144 chassis once we get up into the 170 chassis we can do up to five of these batteries for a total of 1 000 amp hours of Total battery capacity so lithium ions um you know they certainly have gotten much much more popular in vans today and so they are very great when it comes to energy density so that means how much power can I store in this space in this volume we found these 200 amp hour batteries to be some of the most energy dense meaning for the form factor for the size of that case they have a ton of capable amp hours storage okay so these are 200 amp hours that means it will power a 200 amp draw item for one hour or you know just kind of give you the math in a different way if you're powering an item that pulls a hundred amps so our air conditioning units pull very close to that around 100 amps when they're running on high Max all out they pulled out 100 amps you can run those for two hours off of a single battery keep in mind with air conditioner units though they typically have what's called a duty cycle so they're going to kick on and off as needed just like at your house typically an air conditioning unit doesn't run 24 hours straight it's going to run for 30 minutes and it's going to be off for 45 minutes an hour then it's going to run for 30 minutes as the temperature you know goes up and down so with a duty cycle like that right every time an air conditioning unit kicks off the longer you can now run it for so if it's going to be 80 degrees out and you want to be 74 in there well you're going to have a pretty low duty cycle right about 25 percent maybe so that means out of a one hour period it's going to be on for a quarter of the time right so about that you know 15 minutes or so it'll be running and it's off for 45 minutes so now you can actually run that air conditioning unit even though it pulls 100 amps while it's running you multiply it by the amount of time it's actually running for you can run that thing for four times as long so instead of two hours you can actually run that thing for eight hours off of a single 200 amp hour battery right so battery capacity can be a little bit tricky but you just kind of want to do the math figure out how much you actually need which will tell you how big of a battery Bank to actually design into a van which is what we do really well here all right guys so that pretty much wraps up this video thanks for sticking with us and watching this whole video all the way through and no that was a lot of information but hopefully you guys via some good things to think about if you're designing and building your own van or if you're interested in a Titan build if you want more info on some of the products and models we offer check us out at www.titanvans.com also make sure to hit that like And subscribe button so until next time we'll see you on the road foreign

Channel: Titan Vans

Views: 113,066

Keywords: Conversion van, conversion vans, custom camper vans, camper vans, custom camper, custom van, custom vans, sprinter van, custom sprinter, custom promaster, custom adventure van, luxury van, upfitter, custom mercedes, mercedes conversion van, webasto certified, webasto install, promaster conversion, sprinter conversion, custom 4x4, 4x4 conversion, diy van conversion, custom diy van

Id: 5QksCfxh4VU

Length: 25min 27sec (1527 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2023