You’ll be amazed at this 4x4 Overlander Conversion

[Music] hi i'm ginger hi i'm greg we are currently in loveland colorado with our adventure ambulance ross this video is sponsored by tropic feel get ten percent off your ultimate travel backpack by clicking the link in the description and using discount code floor at checkout one day ginger just asked me like what do you think about traveling full-time and i was like that sounds good as long as we can afford it sure that's pretty much it and then we spent the next three years roughly planning paying off debts and just preparing to go on the road full time the rig that we started with was a truck camper on a f-350 but we were only on the road for like a week when we realized we were severely overweight for the truck so we swapped out the 350 for a flatbed 550 built storage under it thought that was gonna work but it was very top-heavy as soon as we got out west we were following other overlanders that we had met online meeting up in person and they were able to go way farther out on the off-roads than we were we liked trying to get to the farthest most remote campsite so we knew we had to stop and change to something that was going to be more agile off-road but at the same time really comfortable inside for us to live full-time we really fell in love with using a medium duty ambulance for our base vehicle ambulances are crash tested and rollover tested they have storage below the frame rails which makes our center of gravity very low and we could find it in 4x4 which was very important for us we found the ambulance while we were quarantined in mexico during covet so we bought it sight unseen and we spent three months in mexico playing around on cad doing different layouts there's not anything in the ambulance that really wasn't pre-planned the full build including the vehicle was sixty five thousand dollars we built this in six and a half months every night weekends yeah [Music] this is a freightliner fl 60 with a cummins 8.3 liter engine and a alien transmission the 4x4 from factory so it's a moment airington 4x4 system with transfer case and front differential from harrington we added bar design lights just for off-road driving we also added bigger wheels and tires to be able to go off-road so those are military rims and military-grade tires they're from continental mpt-81s we only had a very tiny tank who allow us only to do 200 miles so we took that out and installed new tanks some other modification that i've done on the outside is our rerouted exhaust to gain some ground clearance here is our sure cell booster and we also have a little antenna for our lt modem they are mounted on a electric actuator like that we can bring them up and down i actually keep in this compartment a lot of tools we also have access to our clothes from the outside as well as from the inside in the rear compartment we have some water so we have a total of 100 gallons of fresh water and again we try to put that as low as possible for lower center of gravity to go off-road we also have our seats and our amac so there's a an arm here and this attachment point that's it pretty much so i designed and built this back rack so this bike rack has actually quite a few features one of them it's obviously holding our spare tire we have a manual winch to be able to take the tire on and off because this tire is about 300 pounds it's also holding our bicycles some storage boxes that we use for camping gears and the pioneer mini split 9000 btu we also carry our recovery boards on the rear bumper behind those doors there's additional space for some of the tools that we don't use that often some spare parts we also have a tandem inflatable kayak that's pretty much it in this compartment we have another freshwater tank and some of the toys like paddle board and stuff like that doing here is basically our water field so we have gravity field or if we have pressure we can also connect a hose here and fill up our tanks we have a three-stage canister filter plus a uv filter for drinking water we also have our water heater which is capable to heat water when we drive the truck using the coolant of the truck and electrical we have a tiny compartment for the shower so we have cold and hot water and finally our electrical compartment we're using two tesla batteries to power our living quarters they are 24 volt equivalent to 932 amp hours on a 12 volt system the inconvenience going with tesla batteries they don't come with the bms so we had to basically recreate those features through the rest of the system this midi bms is there to make sure that all the cells are properly balanced and here we have the system basically that will do the overvoltage over current and temperature protections a dc to dc converter to convert the 24 volt from the battery to a 12 volt to power like older lights and small 12v appliances solar charge controller to be able to convert energy from the sun we have four solar panels from grape solar which are a total of 1200 watt we have all the way on top what they call a multi-plus it's a charger inverter so from that we can run all our appliances like 110 volt appliances we also have a dc to dc 12 to 24 volt in order to be able to charge our battery when we are driving if we are connected to the grid to charge a battery we have this connection up here obviously i designed this system myself i have actually a consulting company if you want to build such system for yourself i'll be happy to help [Music] all right welcome inside so right when you come in the door we have the inside unit for our mini split air conditioning this is running completely off our solar we mostly use it on dehumidify mode instead of air conditioning on dehumidifier mode it's taking about 200 watts and we can easily keep it 72 degrees in here this is our isotherm fridge and freezer the unique thing about this is that it has dual compressors so we can make this both fridge if we wanted to but we use it as fridge and freezer so that we can keep a lot of meat in the freezer and extend our time off grid this area right here you're not using this space a lot of times so putting our shower here for us seemed like a great utilization of space we recessed our shower pan into the floor about six inches just to give us a little bit more room for our shower head our shower head stores away in the toilet compartment and then we have a shower curtain that just pulls around here on this side we actually have all of our clothes storage it's accessible from the outside or the inside everything is in plastic totes because we do get some moisture in here and all of these walls are made out of hdpe plastic so they can get wet this is our airhead composting toilet this is the second rig that we've used airhead typically go four to six weeks between changing out the compost and we actually got rid of the urine jug and we plumbed the urine directly into our gray tank underneath the truck so you may notice we don't have full height above our toilet we stole this idea from our friend tom and his ambulance when you get on the toilet you don't ever stand straight up what that allows us is tons of storage up here this is all bathroom stuff shower stuff extra stuff that we don't need all the time also over here pull out trash our trash is also accessible from the toilet area we don't put paper in the toilet so we just centrally located our trash this is our pull-up pantry it is one of the very few pull-out drawer things that we have in the camper that's by design because the more doors and drawers you have the more things to break when you're going off-road all of the things that do pull out are locked so they cannot open when we are driving we have hidden buttons that you have to click and then you can open the compartments it stores all of our dry food canned goods even our instant pot up here we also have a little microwave we honestly only use it for popcorn when you put in appliances you have to leave so much room around them for venting we put our microwave and our oven on slide outs so they can vent when they're being used and put away when we're not using them one of the perks of building your own camper is that you can build in little luxuries that might seem ridiculous to other people this rack is plumbed to our gray tank so you wash your dishes and you put them in here wet it drains out to the great tank we also have a fan hidden back in here so we can pull the moisture out but to accomplish this all we did was go on ebay and buy a dishwasher rack and then we cut the actual dish rack to size to fit in and hold all of our dishes here we have our induction cooktop rated for 1800 watts but you can only get a thousand watts on the larger burner and 800 on the smaller burner trying to boil water on a thousand watts takes forever underneath the induction is actually our air fryer oven it again is all electric because we have no propane no generator everything is running off solar this is awesome it has a grill pan on the bottom and we can also dehydrate fruit in it this is our dinette it's pretty big for camper standards that's because we're both working in here so if you've got two laptops notebooks all that stuff it is just perfect size dinette is actually raised up off the floor about 14 inches no matter where we are in the camper we wanted to see out of our huge windows so whether i'm standing or i'm sitting i've got a view in either direction these windows are double pane you can buy these on alibaba from a manufacturer called maygood they have a built-in shade and a built-in screen which is my favorite feature another cool feature is that you can actually leave these windows open when it's raining and if the wind does kick up when the windows are open they have these built-in shocks that are basically supposed to go like that when it gets windy it has worked so far i don't know that i would leave them up in like a torrential storm but it does work greg and i work at different times of the day so we needed a space that could be dinette and bed at the same time one person can take a really comfortable nap up here and then when we both want to get in bed it's all electric so two buttons table is going to go down that's how we go from day to night we also have these very cool sheets they are called betties when the bed is going up and down they stay in place so it's an all-in-one system bottom sheet your comforter everything's all in one both sides zip off independently you can sleep in it like a sleeping bag or zip it all the way off and use it as a regular comforter our mattress is a custom mattress we got it from a michigan company called foambymail.com we wanted a very thin mattress but a very firm one our entire mattress is seven inches and it's very light underneath the bed we have a fully system this allows the mattress to have some air flowing under it that we've been in here eight months we've checked it no mold no mildew we have a tv here that actually goes up and down it's on a pretty beefy mount because we do go off-road we can watch this from the dinette i can actually use it for video editing but it also turns so that when we're laying in bed our feet are at this end and we kind of hang out and watch a movie everything in here stays here while we are driving so everything here is built with a little lip nothing can come out small stuff is velcroed down and yeah it just stays there we don't have a ladder on the outside so the way we get to our roof is through here you might notice that we don't have a max air fan in the ceiling we had a maxi air on the truck camper and we weren't super impressed with the roof hatch and the fan we actually stay very cool on the nights where we're not using our air conditioning as far as heating in the winter we have a diesel heater underneath the dinette in our last camper we had an espar diesel heater in this build we did a knockoff for 150 from amazon we also have 24 volt heated floors they're not going to heat the cabin but when you get up in the morning and the floor is warm it is really nice we also have a heat pump inside of our mini split air conditioning we don't typically use that in the winter because in the winter you're not getting as much solar in and it does take more power but we can use it especially like in the fall in colorado when it's really cold in the morning but really hot in the afternoon you're still getting all that sun it's nice to be able to use that instead of the diesel heater [Music] for me the hardest part of the build was being patient i wanted everything to be done very quickly and that's not how it goes there's all these setbacks along the way and everything takes five times longer than you expect so patience for me was honestly the hardest part of the build i think if i was to do this again i would not complete it in six and a half months i would not work every day 12 hours a day it was just emotionally draining for me it is not as easy to make friends and to meet people that's also one of the reasons why we have our name on the back of her it's for people to be able to contact us and say okay what do you think about meeting i think one of the biggest misconceptions is that you just spend your whole time over landing in like an instagram photograph we're working we're inside the camper sometimes the weather is horrible sometimes we're sleeping at a walmart there are days that are absolutely unbelievable but there are real life moments that most people don't see online and i would recommend people to go to things like overland expo overland rallies we did that long before we got on the road and it completely changed our plans we got some really great advice i would also suggest if possible if you don't already have a rig rent one there's a lot of companies that rent truck campers vans schoolies if you can rent a vehicle take a long road trip you might be surprised at the things that you will learn this is the shell backpack which is unmatched in versatility access organization and aesthetics with its ability to expand from 21 liters to 36 liters nearly doubling its carrying capacity and its built-in space-saving wardrobe system the shell backpack is the ultimate travel backpack let me go over some of its excellent features it has both a clam shell design and top-down loading it has the removable wardrobe system for optimal travel convenience the kangaroo pouch allows you to keep things separate from everything else its front fit lock system allows for quick easy access add-ons like the toiletry bag and the tech pouch it's got carrying straps so you can handle it however you like it's weatherproof and it's made from sixty percent recycled nylon and recycled plastic bottles so order your shell backpack and start planning your next adventure today click the link in the description and use discount code floorb at checkout for 10 off your very own shell backpack today thank you for watching and have a great week

Channel: FLORB

Views: 508,905

Keywords: Travel, van life, van dwelling, simple living, van tour, van conversion, florb, dylan magaster, ambulance, ambulance conversion, overland, overlander, overlanding, overland expedition vehicle build, expedition vehicle, diy van conversion, camper van conversion, vanlife, camper van, overlanding rig, rig, overlander rig, overlanding camping, expedition vehicle build, expedition vehicle tour, 4x4, 4 by 4, overland build, overland camping, overland expo, off grid, self made, custom

Id: AOHgNm-48qk

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 07 2021