Van Tour | Our DIY Ford Transit Connect Micro Camper

that could be a thumbnail our van everyone if you're new uh my name is Danny this is our little yellow van a Ford Transit Connect that I bought in 2021 for uh this much and uh converted it over the past few years and um we love it since my last very impromptu van tour video which was very quick very chaotic I wanted to do a bit more of a detailed dive into our van so this van is a Ford Transit Connect uh it is a long wheel base High roof so I'm 6'2 uh and definitely that extra length helps a lot uh when I sleep with my head on this end um my feet just just about hang off the edge there which really isn't too bad so it was always our dream to have a van and we always loved the outdoors and camping and we thought this would be a perfect way for us to just get out more and just explore the UK Countryside we were living in London in a tiny little basement flat uh during lockdown and I think that definitely contributed to us dreaming of the countryside and escaping the city and we slowly started plotting and scheming of how we might be able to make this work how we ended up with this size was that we knew we didn't want something to live in fulltime and we wanted a car that could double up as you know something we can use in the week to work and just random errands and wasn't too big that it would you know be tricky if we ended up in a city or something like that sorry I keep I keep moving around not sure where to sit so yeah as I was saying this size was just perfect for us I think it used to be an old dog van for a council and so it had had all these weird compartments in it had like kind of this this divider in the middle and then this kind of resin that kept it kind of waterproof I don't know I don't know if they used it to like hose down dogs or um not really sure it had a little sink in it and we just had to get rid of everything we had to cut through this middle bit and um it took a lot longer than I thought but because it was a council van it meant that they looked after it very well so when we picked it up it had a couple of little scratches but they serviced it very regularly so internally it was it was Tip Top okay let me take you on a tour okay let's start with the flooring so with this flooring we started by adding this rubber kind of sound proofing to it uh which added insulation and then also stopped it from being incredibly loud when we drove after that we added a kind of hardwood top and then we got some wood flooring wood laminate flooring from bnq which um we covered this whole area in the frame of this bed was built with simple 2x4s I definitely took a lot of inspiration from other designs and so I looked online and this seemed like just the best use of space in in my opinion I might be wrong use this as a little bench uh just to sit make some coffee uh hang out wherever we go and then we turn it into a bed for the bed we used another hardwood board and then we cut slats in it um which pulls that into a bed and to be honest it supports us very well okay let me show you how we transition this into a [Music] bed pull the bed out and then we [Music] for the mattress I bought a very cheap uh memory foone mattress from Amazon it was way too thick so it was a massive pain trying to get it uh the right thickness so learn from my mistake and just just uh just get it the right size uh from the start I spent a lot of time cutting this in half with a bread knife um as you can see uh it's yeah the this was me with uh an electric bread knife at one point uh trying to trying to chop this in half it took it took forever okay let me show you the curtains for these doors I uh bought this carpet lining online and then used a glue to uh to attach it and it was quite stretchy so you can kind of get it into to into all these little spaces and I think it looks awesome I mean it's so much better than just the the metal yellow sticking out it also just like makes it a bit Cozier you know and then for the curtains uh this we need to upgrade these but this was a um blackout curtain that we bought from dun Elm and then we just cut it up and attached it with this little wire thing that I also bought from bmq I mean it's it's not perfect but it it works there we go before adding any of our wood paneling on the side we had to uh lay out all the electrics as you can see we've got these lights up here and then under here and we've also got some um I forgot the word got some sockets to charge everything from drones to cameras and all that jazz so I don't know anything about electrics so I had to get my dad in to help help me luckily he is an expert on all this honestly very grateful for him for helping me uh with a lot of the the electrics and everything in this fan um it was so much fun getting to work on a little project like this with him and yeah it was It was kind of bit of sweet when we finished because because it meant that like obviously we were done with a van and we could take it on trips but then it was really fun working on it with my dad so um yeah so we had to um figure out where all the lights were meant to be um and then we took all the wires and had to kind of fiddle around and put them behind the paneling of the van all the way to the corner here uh where our Leisure battery is uh the battery is currently buried under this bed um but we bought one from alpha batteries and to be honest it is uh it is it is way bigger than than it needs to be kind of went a bit overboard with the battery so for this battery we used a split charge system which uh basically means that it connects to the van battery um and then as you drive it charges the Leisure battery which is pretty sick we then added some more insulation to the walls uh to keep it uh keep it warm um and then put this wood cladding on which makes it look very SAA esque so it it still needs to be painted but um maybe in a future video oh my word New Angle as you can see I can't quite sit up straight but I mean you just kind of just kind of hang out don't you uh the lights we used are these circular ones that I bought online they're uh they're diable kind of ridiculous our favorite thing though is um are these LED strips I just bought them from Amazon they just add so much to the man very like very hugar which is a word I learned and we love it the recent Edition the the top of this side table uh which took me way longer to finish for some reason it's very useful and I wish we had it sooner there we go folks um all in all we absolutely love this fan it's the best thing I've ever invested in like I said it's it's the perfect size for us to use it as a day-to-day van day-to-day car you wouldn't know that it's a camper van apart from the the curtains I guess and then just on the weekends to be able to hop in and just drive into the countryside even just to hang out like have this little space to to chill in or um if we wanted to stay over you know flips out into a bed so easily we keep all our bedding in here and it just um just makes it so simple we we wanted something that would help us to get out and explore the UK Countryside more and whilst we loved camping um and that's definitely an amazing option A much cheaper option we just thought let's invest in something that will uh help us get out more it doesn't have to be a massive thing it doesn't have to be a Sprint van with a kitchen and all that stuff this was a lot more affordable for us um oh yeah speaking of that um the total for this van you know having bought it for £6,000 and then converted it we probably spent about about £3,000 on converting it it's around £99,000 £10,000 total you know to to do something like this so it's definitely a big investment um but like I said we've had it now for 2 3 years and we absolutely love it thanks for watching everyone uh please like this video um my little my more detailed uh van tour video if you have any questions let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions of what we might you know be able to do more with this f um let me know I've Loved on the last video just hearing other people's stories of of similar van conversions or wanting to do you know similar types of things and get us explore oh gosh [Music]

Channel: Janoux Gerber

Views: 1,630

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Id: -WjmBTOg86k

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2024