VAN TOUR | From City CAMPERVAN To Fully Equipped BUG OUT VAN This Thing Is READY FOR ANYTHING

[Music] hey everyone my name is Chrome and I am a van dweller a gypsy a nomad a dirtbag today I thought it would show you the place that I call home the place that I use is my office and my all-around business so I'm a digital nomad meaning that I earned my living on the Internet by producing YouTube videos right here for you guys so today let's go take a closer look at the place I call home [Music] my home was manufactured in 2004 this is a Ford e-250 extended version and just a little tip to you guys if you're gonna be buying a cargo van to live in and you can find them in the extended version I would buy the extended one over the regular version because the usually price at the same price and giving you more square footage for your dollar let's dive into this starting with the exterior of the van when I very first bought my van it had a hundred and sixty-five thousand kilometers on it and a substantial amount of visible rust more rust than I thought I did have because they had masked it all up they had done some bondo work themselves well after the first year of being in my van all that bondo work that they hid from me at the beginning that I didn't see all started to come out so these back quarter panels on both sides of the van are brand new I did them last year I did them out a little body shop in Lillooet BC called Lillooet Auto Body great guy and they actually just cut it right out and welded a whole new panel on it so don't let a little bit of rust on a vehicle discourage you from buying it especially if you're gonna get it at a damn good price and it gets you started in this lifestyle I don't regret any decision I've ever made on my van so the exterior of my van has no windows except for the back doors so I am glad I don't have windows in the side of my van I know some people really enjoy the windows I myself like the whole privacy side of it and my back windows have been fully blacked out not only did I tip them there is also insulation on the inside of the window so right here that black piece you see is actually pink foam board you can see a little closer on this side where it's been banged and hit on making it a full 100% black oh like you can't see in nor can you see out and I really like to have that kind of all black Oh privacy inside because I know that I can leave all of my lights on and do whatever I want and nobody can see that there's somebody inside of the van when I'm parked in the city a big suggestion to all of you when it comes to finding the right cargo van to convert I would choose ones with the barn doors on the side and not the sliding door as much as the sliding door looks a little cleaner on the outside is less functional to live in because if you can take a look at my doors I have made functional use of extra storage space and places to put things you can't do that if you have the sliding door you literally take a major wall section of your van and render it useless so let's go take a look at my side door storage I tried to keep my side doors as presentable and pretty as I can because this is like the entrance way before you get to see the amazing van build that I have inside of my van so out here we've done a fake wood it's just a little piece of uh I don't what you want to call it MDF and then it's got just a print on the front of it I got this at Lowe's I also did the walls inside of my van in the same thing and yeah we just stuck on some some little quote things and some pictures I got those at the dollar store a subscriber gave me that I love that on the door here is where I mounted my paper towel and here what this clip is for is to keep this paper towel from unraveling in the wind so we just stick a little clip on it and it works just great and I have some extra ones here just in case just in case I lose that one the handles on my door here they're rusted I love that whole rusted patina look if that's what you want to call it the reason why I didn't put a lacquer finish on this one is because I wanted it to look like that you know because some people said you should have painted it it won't rust I don't know for me I think that just gives it that bit more lived-in and I don't know whatever look I like it so on the door here those are two garbage cans these garbage cans are only available in Canada I've had a lot of people on my channel ask me about these they're from a company called glad and these are called roommate garbage cans so they just mounted to the door these are meant for like under your sink so one of them is a garbage can as you can tell all my extra bags are kept in the bottom and this other one I put on here is primarily storage we've got dog leashes and some cleaning supplies to repair breeze because as a dirty van dweller we stink but yeah it keeps it nice simple easy and clean so the cable you guys are seeing here this is just a bungee cord umm I leave one on each door it clips on here my crews are you doing buddy and the other one is just latched right behind the fender here the reason why that's there is to keep these from shutting all the time when I'm sitting here I'm on a slight bit of an angle right now this other door also has another one of those metal bars these are amazing to like pull the door closed and my skateboard which I don't ever ride it's kind of more use now as a place to hang my towels I like it there it just looks good and those down there my friends those are my peoples yep gross but they are so those are bike racks that are bike bottle holders and I slide those in there I got to because sometimes you fill up one during the second year of my van life I noticed that I was going on backroads more often and hitting the trails and because my van is the extended version and these Ford ones have a giant long rear autumn where the Chevy's don't the Chevy's just have a longer wheelbase and a shorter back in one of the Fords they just have this huge area back here so my van recently went into a place in Abbotsford called custom suspensions calm and we got a two and a half inch lift on the front and a three inch lift on the back so let me go show you what we did on the front there you can see that we've got some nice big sturdy coils and a brand new shock in there these are custom coils because the for advanced you can only raise up about two and a half inches before your lift starts to screw up your factory suspension so yeah these were custom done at a place in Abbotsford other known as carrier Spring sorry for all the mud back here guys we've been in the backcountry for a bit so we put two extra new Leafs in the back plus a one-inch lifting block in the bottom giving this being three extra inches of clearance in the back which is where my biggest problem for clearance because on the Ford van this just has all that extra acreage back there which hinders me when I'm going up hills so having the three inches in the back the brand new shocks all the way around a sturdier spring in the front just gives this thing a full-blown just tougher feel [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] on the roof of my home I have a max air fan and the reason why I chose this one is because of the cover that's on the top I mean a fans a fan as long as the blade turns you're getting air right well the reason why I like this one is because I can leave it open at all times it never lets rain in and never let snow in nothing yes I drive with it open I'm in windstorms with it open there's only been the occasional time I could probably count on less than one hand in the last year and a half how many times I've shut that thing it's just great peace of mind to keep it open at all times you know the breeze on a windy day feels great and just knowing that you have fresh air coming in and out while the heater is running just it makes you feel good up here on the back side of my awning I have these amazing Rhino roof racks you'll notice in the back I do have a different brand those ones will be changed soon as those are metal and they rusted the second they went on there see where the rhino racks are aluminum and also a very heavy duty plastic making them ideal for your van because the last thing you want is anything that can rust because when rust drips on your roof from the rusty rock in the back that rust can cause rust holes in the roof of your home and that is one thing you don't want so this here is one of the newest additions to my van a friend of mine gave it to me and I am so it's amazing so adding a roof rack to your van is actually pretty affordable so this is a Rhino rhino racks unsecret - it's two and a half meters long but it's amazing for extending your living space so if you need some shade on a sunny day you can put it out what I am excited for is I can put this out when the temperature is okay outside but it's raining but I still want to leave my doors open to get a breeze inside so the reason why I don't leave my doors open on rainy days is because well forget they get a wet now I can leave the awning open open and extend my roof space giving me a whole lot of extra living space right out here awesome alright we're gonna go to the back that's where my solar is back there these could use a really good wipe down back here I have 300 watts of renergie solar so there's three 100 watt panels mounted up here and we will go through all of my solar electronics once we get down into the inside of the van a suggestion to you guys though they make these in black so if you have a vehicle with more dark things like I have a black roof racks and then I'm going to be extending those rhino racks back here as well - it would be nice to see these things in black I could paint them but just you guys know when you look them up on Reggie's website they do make them in all black and they look so good [Music] this is my little travel companion his name is Cruz he's been out here bathing in the Sun all morning so let's dive into the inside of the van this is the part I know all of you have been waiting for my van from front to back has been professionally converted by a company in Ontario Canada called happy camper kids [Music] [Music] there's just so much in here to talk about I don't even know where to begin so let's start with my my stove top so this is a coleman training stove the only reason why i chose this one is because it was black and it looked good no other reason at all so it's just a standard two burner stove i light it with a little barbecue lighter and it works my bluetooth speaker here it's got rubber on the bottom so it just kind of sits there it never falls off not even on backroads pretty impressive my burner runs on a one-pound bottle so this hose goes through the counter top throughout the back of it and there's a one-pound bottle right down there on this step to my van it's simple easy to change and it works so the top side here has a compartment so when you open this up you'll see my host for my one pound propane tank and this has just got like toiletries and other little things like that in the top here it's a great spot and it works just to have quick easy access for stuff all of my cabinets have little push button locks you can buy these locks on Amazon or you can buy them from a proper hardware store like we did the Amazon ones I guess failed quite a bit these have lasted me I don't know about six seven months so far and they've been really great all these drawers on the cabinets are all dovetailed because anything from happy camper kits there was no corners cut so amazing these things are rock solid and sturdy and they even have soft clothes and you're done pretty straightforward and easy the only thing you've got to remember with these things is make sure that they are all shut before you start driving because if you don't click that locked you can hit a corner in these drawers you're gonna come sliding way out so we have some some taller drawers on the bottom which I use for primarily like kitchen stuff like pots pans these are great inside of this cabinet here I'm gonna move my vacuum I asked to have a vacuum that's the charger for it behind this cabinet here is two shelves there's one deep-cycle battery in there and then I have a secondary shelf that's open waiting for a second battery at some point but they're nicely housed back here it's open on the side there so there's lots of ventilation and down there is my 700 watt renergie inverter switch panels that I use all these will be in the description of the video they're amazing they're straightforward they're simple and it also gives me a voltage readout so right now being a 14.5 I am getting some solar input as well so this normally gets stuck down there when I'm not using it but today because I'm charging it it gets hung neatly right there when I was talking with happy camper kits and planning out my van build making sure my space was hyper functional a few key things that I needed are one at all space to store taller items like maple syrup trust me guys you don't want maple syrup to break inside your van or to fall down and leak all over your cabinets yep I experienced that so having a space like this up here is really great so all I keep up here is my salt my pepper isn't anything taller in this top shelf another thing that I clearly needed in my van was a place to store some converse shoes and it worked so great I stuffed them in there they're pretty tight so they don't really come out sometimes on the odd road if I'm like really banging the van around these will pop out but I love having a place to store my shoes right out there where I can see them because this guy loves his converse shoes and the next thing that I needed and the most important thing in my entire van build is my desk so it's tucked away right here you pull it out and that is my desk so happy camper kits grind it a little peace out of here so I can have a place to put my cellphone and also another little spot here that I can stick my Starbucks or Tim Hortons coffee in the morning so it doesn't spill anywhere how my desk works is pretty straightforward so the desk goes in here and pops down easy as that then I can set up anything that I need whether I'm eating some food or eating a meal or editing a video I have this perfect office space here let me give you guys a little bit of a better look at this yeah that's it so now I have a little place and it's pretty awesome because when I'm parked at a beach somewhere and someone walks by my van and I mean you're editing a video and they just see this whole thing going on here people like whoa her van is so cool so what he did here is he just marched around here and this just sits on the top drawer of this cabinet and tucked in there a little bit and on this side there's just a little board sticking out of this cabinet that this just sinks down on top of and what I did up here is I have some extra lighting right around my desk area and all my desk lights are on a light switch right here so anytime they need them I've got them I've also got a night light over here so if I just need late at night I got one right beside my head therefore I like to say reading but I don't read books for when I get up in the morning and I need to see things where I can't find my glasses that's what that one's for and here is another switch panel just like the other one I've got in the front when I'm done with my desk it just slides right in here so while it's in this location it changes its jog roll from kitchen table and office desk to now my entertainment table so I pull it out just slightly and here is where I can stick my laptop on the top here flip it open kick back in bed and stream some Netflix if I'm parked by a Wi-Fi connection it's an amazing little entertainment center and it slides away nice and snuggly super good as you can tell on the front of my cabinets they're pretty artistic and a little bit way out there but that's the kind of person that I am and because happy camper kits cuts everything on a CNC machine the endless opportunities you have when a robot cuts all your wood is crazy so you can dream it they can build it so I wanted something a little bit artistic and a little bit weird on the front of my cabinets and this is what we came up with so he has put my slogan to my youtube channel on there which is weirdos unite and poured it with black epoxy it looks so amazing it's glossy and as you can tell we got a whole kind of bunch of craziness going on down here and I think doing that kind of design work for someone like me doing this kind of stuff really just kind of puts your own personal touches on a van build that could have looked pretty plain without it my upper cabinet here was actually built by a subscriber of ours named John on Vancouver Island and I didn't want to change this cabinet because it's solid and sturdy so what happy camper kids did was they continued my design all over this cabinet just to kind of tie this into this over here so the primary reason behind building this cabinet is I needed to use some upper storage space in the van and I think utilizing space up there gets a lot of things that would have normally been in bins underneath there better on the floor and gets it up out of the way so this cabinet here holds my 20-pound propane tank which is located right inside of there and the biggest part of this cabinet excuse me cover is my water storage so I have two 27 liter jugs of water storage and this is also my sink so my active jug that I use is always on the outside because when I run the water it runs right out of my van making this super convenient and I can access this from the inside of my van if I ever want to pour myself a glass of water while I'm in the van and the doors are shut I can do that from right inside here on the front here you'll notice my Olympian wave3 heater which is mounted on the inside here running into the propane tank that's inside of there I really enjoy this heater the Olympian wave3 is a great heater it's a lot drier than the buddy heater and right now because I can't afford do any of those fancy diesel heaters this thing has been doing the job year after year and I'm extremely happy with my purchase my bed is a double size bed so it's four feet by six feet and yes I can sleep crossways in my vin my bed is exactly six feet across and I am 5 foot 11 so it works out just perfectly I have a 8 inch mattress underneath you which is a 4 inch regular foam mattress and a 4 inch memory foam underneath here is just a flat piece of black plywood I painted it black it does have a few holes in it I'm not convinced that putting holes in your bed frame makes a difference if anything it lets cold air up underneath you when you're warm inside and I think it actually adds to the problem so yeah kinda that's a bit of an unsure situation underneath the bed here I have six storage bins which are huge and they're held in here by a little bungee strap that goes on a little I'd hook on that side everything underneath my bed a lot of it is just stuff I don't use a lot except for the front two bins one is laundry one is the dump it the drawers on this cabinet are nice and big I use this one here for mostly my towels and my shower bag it's a pretty tight fit in there today right up top here is an extra cubby hole for extra little things I may want to throw in there RINO this is the t-shirt and here is my renergie MPPT and dc-to-dc charge controller this is an all-in-one unit and it manages my entire solar system so it manages the solar coming in from the roof and it also is connected to the alternator so it charges my deep-cycle battery while I Drive and the cool part about it is is when my internal battery is full this thing will send power from here back to my starting battery if my starting battery is going low from being sitting still so it's great it'll make sure that both my house battery and my starter battery are charged at all times a pretty great little unit I feel like I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff in here my roof vent the reason why I chose to put the roof and right here in my kitchen is because this is where a majority of my moisture is created and it just made sense to have it so I can suck it right out of my kitchen here in the back there I have a circulating fan I'm a huge fan of this thing it's by a company called calf Ram oh this is the Sirocco toot elite it's a bit pricey but I really like it because you can adjust this thing any angle you could ever dream of it's pretty amazing I lose you leave it on me at night like directly at me but sometimes I will tip it towards my feet it's a great little fan the privacy curtain I have in the front is two layers thick so I have two separate little blackout curtains on here and having it doubled actually makes a huge difference on a winter's day keeping the heat in the back and keeping the cold up front so in the winter time when my heater is on and I get up in the morning and I open up this curtain you can feel the cool temperature coming into the back so it creates a great thermal divide it was a very simple install all it is is a black shower curtain or a black curtain rod and we pull this out here flip and all I did was I cut a hole in this roof liner and I stuck it in there pretty straightforward and simple and that's my big sticker collection so having this come all the way across is a full-blown blackout and that's the cool thing about having two layers is you can guarantee that at some point it's gonna black it all out so when the bottom down here you'll see a very nasty cut job yep that's that's my man way of doing it I took the excess from the bottom of this curtain and I folded it along the top to create a little valance it's not you can allow for me you see I was put in there I literally just screwed it proved nothing fancy so I took the cutoff piece and I folded it and created a little balance here that way when it's shut no light can bleed over the top of here at all while we're on the topic of privacy when I'm in the van at night I always cover my side windows so behind my seat here I have these black pieces of cardboard bought it from the dollar store cut it to the size of my window and these just get popped in over my window at night it's not a perfect fit but for the most part when you're walking by at night you don't really notice because the glass is shiny and that's black it kind of looks like tinted windows I do this because my dog likes to sleep in the front seat and the last thing I want while I'm parked at night is someone to see the puppy in the front seat and nobody doesn't sleep on the passenger side so you can't really see them when you're walking by but it definitely works this is the very first time on my channel I think I've ever dove this deep into my van tour so hopefully you guys are getting a better look on how I live inside of my van now let's go take a look at the biggest game changer in my van and that was having a professionally built rear garage so before this was probably the biggest area of frustration prior to having a professionally built because I would end up just throwing a lot of things back there because there was extra space not everything I owned had a proper place for it well now because of this my van stays way cleaner because everything has a home [Music] I just about want to say that this is my favorite space in the van but this is my favorite functional part of the van I love it because it is completely organized my whole life so my doors are treated with the same wood that's on the inside of my van and also on the side doors here you can get a bit of a closer look all it is is just an MDF board with a printed front most hardware stores carry either these or a variation of these in the back here I chose not to do any hardware any drawers or anything like that or cupboard doors I all I asked Andy is I said look just cut these into little cubby holes and I can stuff them full the only downside to cubby holes is that you can visibly see whatever is on the inside but hey this is my garage it's all good it works but you do you can see people like hey chrome you have a beer so when I say no I don't they make you liar I can see your beer so back here these drawers just pull oh you're gonna lift them up a little bit because of the lip that's on here and the drawers pull out back here is where I keep my jakhary batteries yes I do have portable batteries in my van even though I have solar on the roof little batteries say this just come in handy for outside powers so if I've ever had a picnic table and I need power other than that these are just rammed full of like some shoes some outdoor stuff some of my awning parts and yeah well then tours you guys don't want to know all the tidbits that are inside of it or do you there's enough videos on my channel that cover all the little tiny things that are in and around my van today I just wanted to give you guys a better look at my van build itself having a pro build just makes it feel good I feel like I live in luxury and it's also a lot more convenient because before I used to have home furnishings in my van and having home furnishings sure it looked good sure it got me by for under a thousand bucks but in the long run having something professional it's just so hyper functional thanks for watching you guys hopefully you enjoyed this deeper dive into my van please hit the subscribe button if you haven't already scribe because we produce everyday van-like content of the travels with me and the little dirtbag are you guys take care [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: VANCITY VANLIFE

Views: 570,058

Keywords: vancity vanlife, van life, vanlife, bug out van, bug out van build, bug out van ideas, bug out camper van, ultimate bug out van, best bug out van, bug out vehicle, camper van, survival, camping, prepper, live in van, van build, sportsmobile, solar, conversion van, van dwelling, van tour, van tour van life, tiny home, diy van build, van life tour, professional van build, van life with dog, custom van, stealth van, van conversion, bug out vehicles, tiny house, off grid living

Id: nY0e-sdYke8

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020