My friend Alexander finally got a van, and it’s beautiful.
It was a big, scary purchasing decision for him, and now the really scary part is building
it out ourselves.
To live and work in this van full time, Alex will need a place to cook, sleep, and most
importantly, work.
To pay the bills, he’ll need to edit YouTube videos and that means having a no compromises
workstation.
We’ll get to that, but first I want to show you how we got to this point, and what we
learned.
We’re now on day 5 of this van build, and along the way we’ve had quite a few wins,
and setbacks.
The first win was the swivel seats brackets.
To make the most of the van’s limited space we wanted the ability to turn the driver and
passenger seats around.
This might seem as simple as installing some brackets, but it’s actually tricky.
Today’s seats have weight sensors, seat belt monitors, and even airbags in some cases.
All this wiring needs to move as the seat turns all the way around.
Luckily, Dodge knows these vans are used for conversions so they leave a ton of extra wire
under the seats, bundled up with a zip tie.
We let those wires out, experimented with some routing options, and covered them in
wire loom to make it look neater.
The swivel seat installation went scarily smooth with no setbacks or missing parts.
Another huge win was the sound deadening material.
Commercial vans come empty with thin sheet metal on the walls, so they’re much louder
than, let’s say, your car.
So before installing insulation or walls, we applied this stuff called “killmat”
which is the same as dynamat and other vibration damping material.
Just putting some of this on the walls and ceiling made a huge, noticeable difference.
Most guides say to cover at least 60% of any thin metal panel with this stuff, which meant
that Alex’s van would only need two boxes of it.
Doing this beforehand with all the panels exposed was easy, inexpensive, and a huge
win.
Now for a lesson.
Alex’s van came with this engineered wood floor, which I assumed was held down with
these D-rings.
So, the plan was to remove the D-rings, pull the floor up, install our insulation, and
then reinstall the floor with longer bolts into the existing holes.
The problem?
The floor didn’t want to come up.
It was glued down with this gorilla snot stuff.
Getting the floor up without cracking it in half was a challenge all by itself.
We used a 2x4 with a wide piece of plywood on it, like a huge pizza server pry bar.
With great difficulty, the floor came up, and out of the van.
Then to remove the gorilla snot, which took hours.
Lesson learned?
Never underestimate a seemingly simple task.
If I were to do this again, I’d start on this particular task earlier in the day.
Next is a win: Installing floor insulation and putting the wood back down over it.
I used that wood floor to trace and cut a 1/4” thick rubber mat, and 1/2” thick
foam insulation.
The rubber went down first to deaden road noise, and the foam went down over it.
To fill the space along the edges I used “great stuff” spray foam.
After it dried it was easy to cut away the excess.
All in all, this part of the build went very smoothly and even cut back on the road noise
noticeably.
But then we learned one of our biggest lessons: The finer points of insulation.
That same day I installed 1 inch foam board on all the walls.
I filled in the edges with spray foam, and taped the gaps between the insulation.
As for the pillars and overhead spaces, we used fiberglass batting like you probably
have in your house.
In a van, however, this stuff can collect moisture from the walls.
Think of it like a cold glass of water that sweats on the outside.
Batting plus moisture equals mold, and that’s no good.
After speaking to some of our friends who have built vans already, we decided to take
it all out.
This set us back about 8 hours on an already tight schedule.
In place of the batting we used more foam board and more spray foam which was messy
and expensive, but the right thing to do.
Lesson learned?
What works in a house, doesn’t necessarily work in a van.
Now for a win, the walls.
Our friend Johnny suggested we install furring strips as vertical beams, and then install
our walls, which were 1/4” thick plywood, over them.
This would allow us to easily find a beam to mount to later when installing cabinets
or furniture.
It worked great.
It was, however, impossible to space the beams evenly because there were too many obstructions
and obstacles on the body of the van.
So we spaced them however we could, and then started installing the plywood.
Although the beams were flimsy and the plywood was thin, they were surprisingly sturdy when
combined with each other.
This was a big win.
Another win?
The electrical.
In any camper van you want to have a totally separate battery to power your fridge, electronics,
and lights, lest you run your actual vehicle battery down and find yourself unable to start
the engine.
Alexander would be adding solar panels, and possibly a second battery down the road, so
making the whole thing easy to work on and expandable was a priority.
Since we didn’t have any of the accessories that would go in his van yet, I ran wires
from the battery area to different points in the cabin, including the roof for solar,
the walls for charging ports and accessories, and towards the back for the fridge.
For the benefit of our future selves, I cut ports in the wall and covered them with blank
switch plates.
This would allow us to access wiring later on, and even snake new ones behind the beams
using a coat hanger.
This system would be truly expandable, and in our eyes, a big win.
About now you might notice that the ceiling and some of the walls are still bare, and
there’s a very good reason for that: Timing.
For certain parts of the van we’d be relying on help from other people, which meant that
parts of the van would need to be ready for them on certain dates.
Although frustrating, this compromise has paid off.
By having the driver’s side wall done on Tuesday night, we were able to get Johnny’s
help for all of Wednesday.
If you like woodworking, or just find it to be oddly
satisfying to watch, you should absolutely subscribe to crafted workshop.
Johnny is one of our good friends, and his YouTube channel is freaking awesome.
With his know how and amazing shop, we were able to install this tool chest, battery compartment,
and workstation.
Let’s start with the battery compartment, which as we discussed would need to be spacious
and expandable so we could add things later on.
We wanted to put this box behind the driver’s seat so it could double as a footrest.
With a removable top, it would also be very easy to access to change fuses or hook up
new accessories.
Johnny drilled pocket holes so we could mount the box to the floor, and cut out a beautiful
top that fit the contours of the van.
Because we’re all nerds we also installed a transparent top on the battery compartment,
which serves no other purpose than to look cool.
Ah, priorities.
The next thing we did was install this tool chest, which not only has lots of drawers
for Alex’s stuff, but also a nice counter top for things like food preparation.
Best of all, with the turn of a key all the drawers lock closed.
This will keep them from opening when driving the van around.
Although this tool chest is fairly lightweight, that also means that it’s made of thin sheet
metal just like the rest of the van.
So Alexander applied some kilmat to the back and all the drawers.
Johnny and I actually spent a few hours mounting this to the floor and wall.
It seems like an easy task, but this tool chest could become a deadly projectile in
a crash, so getting it perfect was the only outcome we would accept.
Once the tool chest was installed, we could work on the fun part: The workstation.
In most vans, this spot is usually dead space, devoted to throwing jackets and backpacks.
In Alex’s van, it would house a huge battery compartment and a highly functional workspace.
We’d need to get the height just right for Alex, and also leave space for the driver’s
seat to spin all the way around.
It wasn’t easy, but we got our measurements and stuck with them.
For the work surface, Johnny used two prefabricated stair treads, which he glued together to make
one big piece.
This would not only be stout, but also really nice looking.
On the side of the toolbox used to be a handle which was fastened with four bolts.
Johnny used those to fasten a support, which would put the work surface at the exact height
we needed for Alex.
As an additional support we also used a flange and a pipe to build a leg for the outer edge
of the table.
Since only one side of the pipe would be threaded, Johnny used a wood block to fasten it to the
table, which also added a few style points.
It looked freaking awesome.
I’d like to note that we purposely made the toolbox lower than the workstation so
that if alex spilled something while preparing food it wouldn’t destroy his laptop.
To charge Alex’s laptop, I installed this 12 volt USB C power supply.
Without it, Alex would need a power inverter and this wall wart which both create heat
and waste power.
This is as close to 100% efficiency as he’s gonna get.
This van is now a hodgepodge of incomplete projects.
We still need to finish the ceiling, walls, solar, fridge, bed, and the garage.
Between trips, normal riding videos, and other obligations, these projects will be somewhat
spread out throughout the spring.
I want to thank you guys for watching this van video.
I know you signed up for mountain biking content and this is a little off topic.
But go to any trailhead around the world and you’re likely to see a van very much like
this, with a mountain biker living inside of it.
As we progress on this build I’ll post more videos on it, but next week you’ll be getting
mountain biking content once again.
For those of you who want more van content, make sure you check out the Singletrack Sampler
to see Alexander’s side of this learning experience, and of course, check out Crafted
Workshop to indulge in every woodworking vice known to humankind.
Thanks for riding with me today, and I’ll see you next time.