hi there welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of creative homes and showcase stories
of people living alternatively in this week's video we're going to meet dan a retiree who has
found a passion for travel in his senior years and boy does dan travel in style his custom overlander
features comfortable indoor outdoor living in even some of the most remote locations
but i want to know is dan's life your idea of the perfect retirement
or do you have a better idea comment below and if you like these kind of videos please
make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you know every
single time i publish a new tour but right now let's take a tour of dan's overlander
my name is daniel and this is my 2005 mitsubishi fuso
i ended up going in the air force back in the 60s i did a tour in vietnam and then another
tour right after that in taiwan and just really got a taste for travel and eventually i got
married i think it was about 30 when i got married raised three kids lovely wife i retired and within
two years after i retired she died of cancer that first year after she died i you know i just i was
just lost i didn't know what i was doing i finally decided that i need to do something i need to get
out and i'm going to walk the community santiago and that journey showed me a lot it's really
a life changer taught me that i can live with very little you travel for a month or more with
just a backpack that weighs less than 15 pounds it's not the destination it's
the journey and it really is for me you know when you get to the end what's next
so i was looking for a vehicle came across the fuso which i kind of looked for a fuser i'd seen
them being used in australia before and i thought that would be a great vehicle i've always liked
this cab over trucks for some reason and then when i saw this one i'd say i think i can do something
with that i could have bought a ford pickup in the lance camper you know just like everybody else but
yeah this had to be a little bit unusual maybe it's like me i come up with these ideas and i
have to usually get somebody to do most of it but one thing i don't have the tools i'm also kind of
at a point in my life where i would rather go to somebody that has the expertise has the equipment
if you're going to build something like this but just go out the window really quick
this is my 2005 mitsubishi fuso fg 140 four-wheel drive cab over truck
i was previously used by a guy who he was chewing horses back in new jersey bought it
from him and i've been converting it ever since i've changed shocks springs all the suspension
the wheels went from dualies to singles it makes a huge difference and it rides much better this
truck comes with power door locks power windows a five-speed transmission first gear is just really
low just a crawling gear generally i start off in second gear unless i'm off-road somewhere
other than that pretty basic it has air conditioning tilt steering very easy to
drive turns much tighter than a ford pickup truck or something and that's because of the wide axles
miles per gallon on this i'm getting 13 and a half to 14 and a half maybe 15. you're sitting
just about eye level with truck drivers big windshield gives you a great view of everything
i have a lock here pull this lock
which releases this handle and there's another safety latch under here hold this open and lift
so now you get to everything pretty easy
this section here is a separate box from the back the frames on these comes along and then drops
down so you can see the two different heights this front part was just storage we built this rack
and put slide outs on the bottom so i've got storage i can put my stove down
i can cook right from here so the bottom half of this rack is for storage and the upper half is a
bunk because it is two separate boxes we had to cut the wall out on both both walls and then we
used an accordion seal up there um to seal it up because there is a little bit of movement
in the boxes when you're off-road and it seals it up keeps water and
dust and everything else out and then moving back here this other part opens up also
when i got it i had to rip out all the interior storage the walls and everything
my type of travel was probably more the live outside type so this size was good for me
i didn't want to have to be inside all the time doing cooking and everything so i ended up with
a fridge freezer on a slide out i think this is about a 60 liter snowmaster refrigerator
so i can get to this from the outside i can also reach it easily
from the inside we mounted this on the swivel and i can spin this thing around and
get to everything on the outside here so now i can get some dry goods here
pots and pans and this is this drawer is empty this is where i
put my induction cooktop when i'm not using it when i'm traveling
and then coming around the back we raised this bumper up built the swing aways on here
so i can carry fuel or water on here with jerry cans and my spare tire on the other side
this door is actually for a teardrop camper but it works pretty good for this and as you come up
you just kind of tuck your head in there and and go in so this door is two separate pieces here so
you can close this um and dead bolt it lock it and lock this handle so the handle won't turn
you've got the deadbolts locked and you've got a screen here for ventilation in the hot climates
screen on the inside has got 40 thousandths wire and it's
threaded real close together they say a bear can't get its claws in there to tear it apart
coming around this side same thing as the other side this door opens up
so i found these guys this company valor works in phoenix arizona that agreed to
raise the roof i found out real quick that just being bent over all the time just trying to put
your pants on or whatever doing anything it was difficult so we cut out the roof raised it up
made a whole difference and it just makes the whole thing feel so much bigger and more usable
so composting toilet small table couple places to sit when you've got an eight-foot box and another
i think it's about 30 inches probably 28 inside it's really limited as to what you can do i
have a rear entry door so that kind of dictates everything's going to be running north and south
on here this open space back here will be my sink eventually and water storage and you have space in
the back corner there for a small shower hopefully that works and i can get that done pretty soon
and then windows arctic turn windows
the shades have come down and the bug screen would when you go up so pretty nice windows
no moisture because they're double pane this is the open sleeping area for myself
yeah my kids think i'm too old to be doing this so this is about 28 inches wide 29 inches the
box i think is 30 inches it's actually pretty comfortable i can sleep completely curled up
and then this is the a second uh sleeping area that i can build up
with these cushions and stuff this is the guest bed this is my second place to sleep
inside of that bench has full lithium batteries so i have about 540 amp hours of lithium battery
victron equipment all through this 3000 watt inverter i've got a ground deploy solar panel i've
got a solar panel on the roof and i've got a 30 amp connector here also if you're at a campground
this is the other front door with the sleeping area in the top storage on the bottom
this is mostly tools and my connector for my 30 amp water hoses stuff like that in here
being on the road all the time traveling solo in the states this gives you a home
in some sense it's not for everybody that's okay that's their life my life is different
thanks for watching this week's video please make sure that you like share
and subscribe and i will see you soon with another tiny or nomadic home tour