Van Builder HQ Podcast #2 - Ford Transit Camper Van Conversion Ideas!
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May 3, 2025
Today Nick at Van Builder HQ, Nick is discussing Ford Transit Camper Van Conversion Ideas! Tune In! Visit https://www.vanbuilderhq.com to learn more. Interested in buying a van? Check out https://www.odysseycustomvans.com Support Van Builder HQ on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/vanbuilderhq
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[Music]
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hey guys nick eilerman here with vanbuilder hq i got jamie with me today and he gave me
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a question he said show me some he looked up ford transit camper conversion ideas on
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google and he wants me to give you my opinion on these build outs what i like about
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them what i don't like about them so we've got them right here i'm actually gonna let me share this with
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you so you can see
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all right how's that working yes i still see my face
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all right so you guys at home you'll actually be able to see the full screen here of the uh
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the google alright so all we did is type in ford transit camper conversion ideas
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and this is the big wormhole you go down when you're getting ready to build out your van you may have an idea of exactly
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what you want or you may have no idea and you want to pick up some inspiration
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or even copy some ideas that some people have done because that's actually an easy way to
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to get started so we have these right here i'm just going to go for the
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through the photos right here on the right so all the photos on the this first photo just randomly pulled up this is
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nice clean build you got a good layout this is pretty much a typical style van
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you see these days especially in in the u.s just like clean white wood ceiling wood
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accents that type of thing first thing i'll talk about is the layout i really like this layout so my
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personal van that i have the low roof 2019 ford transit 148 inch
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this is really close to my layout it is also close to the layout of the
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van number one conversion that we're doing here in the shop and what people like about this just
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upon my research and actually doing some camping in my van the first thing i see is the fixed bed
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so this is a fixed bed which means you don't have to take the bed down build it back out into a
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dinette or a bench seating area it's ready to go when you need it
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and this may not be the layout for somebody who's doing full-time van living let's say you i'm
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actually go back here full-time van living because
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that dinette that you would break down and have two bench seats with a desk in the middle full timers that are on the road
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doing remote work like that setup so they have a full desk they can work in however if you're
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doing more weekend trips the fixed bed is nice because when you're done hiking for the day or going out and exploring
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you come back in you really don't have to build your bed it's ready to go one thing i do like about this van so i can
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tell this van may be the extended version of the ford transit only because
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right here on the left and right here on the right side you can see that there's a little seat
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and you can only achieve that if you have the 148 extend because the kitchen
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galley won't fit in there depending on this camera angle it might be a 148 but it's i just know it's really tight to
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get that seat in there but yeah go ahead we were at uh adventureland expo adventure van
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japan i saw this one i didn't see i know this is common when you see online
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the one you're showing but i didn't see that one maybe because it was an event as much at that
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expo i only saw a few that were more like decorative somewhere more kind of
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storyteller functional yeah that's really interesting to me because
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you know even though you and i went to the show stuff i'm talking about right now that's online
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what's really interesting is the stuff of the show i really didn't think portrayed
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you know what everyone that does youtube channels full-time or the content that they're putting out
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their style of vans whether it's you know guys or girls they are they have this type of layout
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or this type of look because i rarely see and to be honest that was adventure van expo so an
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adventure yeah i think it's more eutectic utilitarian not to say that this is not
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this is this is functional it's functional it's a bed it's it's got really good storage right here as you
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can see we got a right here this is a pull-out table so they can still have the dinette
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fridge more storage sink pretty nice what are those called the pop-outs and the windows they got yep i call them
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bump-outs so what's nice with if we were on a mac i could easily zoom in but we can't
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these bump outs they give you enough room for your head and your feet and in a ford transit
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you have about 74 inches between those two places and depending on how much
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insulation and stuff like that you do if you do a window obviously that takes it down the size
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but this will allow somebody six feet to sleep sideways
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and that's what a lot of people like to go for a sprinter van is going to be much narrower
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and it's not going to allow you to do this unless you do the bump outs or a flare space add the flare space
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flares so flare space
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just do a little image here if you guys can see so flare space these sides right here
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are what come in the kit and then on a sprinter this is what you're looking at
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i always like that orange although i've not heard a concern about this at least the vans that i'm initially doing
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i like to get back to our topic on hand i like the ford transit because
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you get the width without having to cut this out for people who don't know what
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this bump out entails you actually have to you have to cut out
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with the jigsaw the whole entire panel and then this is a piece of fiberglass
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on the sprinter i oh no it doesn't matter yeah you can do flares on ford transit you can do it
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on youtube you said you have to cut out the whole thing with the sprinter oh yes let me clear that clear that up so in a ford
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transit you have enough room
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width-wise via the structure of the van to it's not necessary to cut it out to
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allow more space so like you get let's say 72 inches
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if you go to a mercedes sprinter the mercedes sprinter
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the mercedes sprinter
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see if i can find it
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so you see we got 70 inches so we got 70 inches is our maximum width
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however the wall curves in so as you go up towards the bed you're going to lose that
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and i don't know i thought it was 68
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but essentially you're not going to be able to do a six foot tall person in here
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if we if we just copy this we go in
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what do we do ford transit
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yeah so see the sprinter wall it curves in really aggressively so you're not
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able to without cutting the structure back up here without cutting this out and then adding
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on the bump out like this to get this width you're not going to be able to
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the six foot tall person is not gonna be able to lay width wise the second thing is it's a it's
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pretty invasive it's you're cutting out this whole entire panel and this is a piece of
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fiberglass and then so the same adhesive that holds your windshield on it's like a black
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adhesive type glue this is especially formulated for stuff like that they call it window weld
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or whatever adhesive is recommended from flare space and you actually glue this to the van so it's glued to the van it's
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not drilled or bolted it's actually glued i haven't heard of anything like these falling off on the
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trail no but if they're installed properly but just for these first vans
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that we're doing i didn't want to go this route i wanted to keep the van intact as much as possible
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and so that is why doing or using a ford transit
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helps you you can have the bed width-wise and not cut the hole out
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so yeah that was a long way to explain that yeah can you go back to the images you had which one this one or this one
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that one scroll down a little bit all right that one in the middle with the dog cage
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down no this one yeah talk about that one that i feel like that was a look that i saw a
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lot at the talk about this one as a conversion camper conversion idea so what i'm
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seeing here is they've increased the bed height so really high and it looks like their
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purpose here was to ensure that they could fit a mountain bike in there i saw a lot of these at the event it
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looked like this style having that cargo area was important
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yeah so the conversion that i'm doing this is what i'll i'll be doing it'll be
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this type of this height to allow for mountain bikes to be put in there
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i don't think you need to be above 48 inches but anywhere from it's
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pretty big controversy so there was a forum here a van build
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oh yeah let me put the v in there
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so that's a great question like mountain bike yeah and it's it's it's hard i mean you
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really just have to kind of go to shows and just kind of see because um
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this sprintersource.com forum if you just search mountain bike height
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needed in van build it'll be the first one to come up and it's really cool they did a poll
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so they pulled people and it looks like 36 inches was what most people did
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what does the bike have to be collapsible or is that the height of a bike so what to achieve 36 inches
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you have to understand you're already what you're doing is you're taking the you're taking the you're always taking
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the front tire off the bike so it's the this 36 inches is made up of
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the rear tire height and the seat post height
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and for my research the controversial topic of this whole thing is some
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extreme mountain bikers they're really particular about not lowering
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or raising their seat height their seat post height because some of them have like carbon
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fiber seat post and if it's sliding up and down it can damage
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the same post that's a deep insight yeah yeah i went down the wormhole on that but hey that might be important to
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somebody yeah so that's a reason why some people might do get closer to the
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40 inches but you're really taking you're taking away from your head room up here
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so that last one we looked at was a little bit more glamorous so let's see this one that's
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really high so this one this is about this is normal that almost looks like 36 inches to me because that's the way i'm
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designing it it's a dog right in the middle yeah it's a dog okay so what they've done i'll get to that in
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one second but what you want to do is have the best of both worlds
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so you want to find out where your ceiling height is going to end i'm sorry your ceiling where your
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where's your ceiling height going to land how high or low once you get your ceiling in
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and you know how much insulation you're going to put in the thickness of your
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ceiling the lighting whatever is that lowest point here even your fan
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begin that is your measurement and you can play around and you can actually
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uh you can go in your house and sit on the ground i do it in here but i think it
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zoom the camera out but you want to uh here let's just do it this is a
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so this is a channel to help enhance
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okay all right so imagine that i'm in the van or i'm at my house
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and this is the wall and i got my back to the wall and you can have somebody measure the
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top of your head to here and then that's going to give you a
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measurement so you're going to take that measurement
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the top of your head you're going to take your ceiling height you might have been going to be able to
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just start doing math and hear me yeah no i said you said from here to from the
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top of your head top your head to your oh you couldn't see the top of your we saw your whole body except the bottom part was the bottom
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top of your head to your butt like you're sitting down okay your butt so we saw most of you enhanced
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so if you like like an l shape so this is your head this is your butt and this is where your
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legs are out so this portion so you want to take so you measure your
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empty van ceiling height all the way down to the floor of the van okay that's where you start
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and we need a white board and then you're going to take your ceiling thickness and you're going to
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subtract that and you're going to subtract that from you sitting down right here head butt
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legs and then so here you go you got your ceiling
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height okay you're laying down and then you're going to take account the bed thickness
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the bed frame any structural support that you need take all that into account and then
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whatever you have left over minus your floor thickness
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is going to give you the height needed for your bikes so when i'm building a van you always
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gotta you always have to start at the end and then go backwards because
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you can't build a van and then get to the end and be like okay i actually need a little bit more room here because you're screwed that's not
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going to work it's too late because remember as you're building your van your floor is getting higher your
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ceiling is getting lower it's starting to come in so whatever height you need for your
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bikes that needs to be a fixed number so say 36 inches and then your fixed height for you
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sitting up in bed needs to be whatever it is now there are things you may need to
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sacrifice you may need to sacrifice mattress thickness so instead of a 10 inch mattress
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say you need four more inches you're going to get a six inch mattress say you were going to use two by fours to make
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your bed frame and then instead of say you need another two and a half
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inches of room now you're gonna have to go to a one inch steel tubing or one inch aluminum tubing
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to make your bed frame so there's all kinds of different ways to to resolve that but
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everything in a van is connected so if you do something to the ceiling it's going to affect the floor if you do
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something the floor it's going to reflect affect the bed just they're all connected
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um yeah so if you have any more questions about that send them to us and we can
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put that in the video because i'm actually going to get back to what we were talking about you can go down a wormhole with all these heights and
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measurements like that conversion ideas were first one was glamorous that
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second one you just we went through was more spartan adventure
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yeah i now talk about this uh i'll talk about this dog crate millennials like dogs absolutely like dogs right yeah
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so this is pretty cool what they have is they've got a dog crate here but then right here they've got a pass-through
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when they get their van parked and they're inside at night time and these doors are shut they the dog has a place
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to stay on the inside i would i have a big disclaimer would be be very careful with pets
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in vehicles and a lot of people should say oh yeah duh i know that rolled the windows down
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all that stuff but it's not that simple because say you're saying you're going into a grocery store for examp for
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example your dog's in the car get the windows down you're back in let's say 30 minutes or
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something like that but when you get a van and you have an
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animal you're bringing with you people may go out on a hike so they want to
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keep their pet in the van because they're going on a hike van's gonna get really hot even if you open up
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all the windows and you got the ventilation fan on unless you're in you know washington
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or oregon or some place where it's nice and cool i say that would be okay
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however if you're anywhere more south in the u.s it can get to to be an oven depending on what season you're in
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so one thing i would give advice for is they make they make these dog collars
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with the temperature sensor
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there's this company i forgot which one it is
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there you go so they have these heat sensing dog collars
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that send you text alerts when the temperature is above safe level
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for a dog and i would get this there is a there's one
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i think that works like via satellite or lte
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anyway the point is get something like this for your dog so that you can it's expensive but
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you're i think it's worth it if you're taking a trip and you're bringing your dog and you're
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putting in the van some may ask when i'm saying this why would you take your why would you put your dog in a van if
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you're going out on a hike so it's not that those owners that have dogs
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don't want to deal with a dog it actually may be unsafe for the dog to be on specific trails one the dog may not
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be allowed some dogs are not allowed on certain state park trails and even certain national parks yep so they're
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not actually allowed to be on the trails also it might be very dangerous for the dog
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sometimes there is there's animals to where if the dog ran off you should have it on
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leash but there's just there's certain areas that are dangerous for the animal so it makes
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complete sense that owner would keep them in the van so as long as it's well ventilated there's somewhere to some way
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to monitor the interior temperature of your van as you're going on a hike i think that's completely cool but do the
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due diligence to prepare for something like that kind of take care of your animal don't rely on a
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bowl of water a bowl of water what if your fan stops you you don't know if your fan stops you
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you have no you know information um man we're going down some wormholes here
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okay nah mountain biking dogs it's all part of the ideas okay so you got a fixed height for your
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bikes you can take your dog with you got some really good tips on how to take care of your animal keep them safe
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anything unique about this conversion this build and i mean this this is standard you got standard
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floor dogs in there you got nice height for mountain bikes you got a looks like a piece of aluminum they got a nice
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little mountain silhouette made out of three pieces of wood that's
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pretty cool i like that they got some old school pioneer speakers here that's so funny is there any list of images
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of images on the left is there any that caught your eye that were different than the first two let's just go through here
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so here's somebody that has a one fan build this sirocco fan
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it's very popular it's very expensive what is it i don't know what that is
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it's just one that also this goes back and forth so this van is
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this fan you can see if this will work here so it has a hinge here and here so it
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can move all 360 and go up it can go down it can twist left and right
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and people see right there so you can go all kinds of different directions
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and it's really nice for vans it's just it's expensive it's a 12 volt fan but you only really
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need one of them they make another one right here same company but there's no guard on here
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so if this is flapping around at night and you get up it might hit you in the face but the
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savings yeah you need a fan even though you have a vent fan you might want to direct the
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fan towards your face a little bit more because it can get hot if you're you know hiking in certain places
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okay so they got storage over here they don't have the bed width wise in this transit they have it lengthwise they
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probably have the extended version that's how they're doing this this is actually what i wanted to do in
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my van but i got a 148 so it's not long enough what about that sink and stove can you walk us through that that looks
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different yeah this looks like a dometic sink these dometic sinks
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i'm not a fan is that the brand the medic yeah i'm not a fan of this sink i think it's
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extremely overpriced oh kind of looks like a something on an airplane or a boat
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yeah it's extremely overpriced this does fold down and the selling point is look
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it's space savings but this is glass to me that's a hazard regardless if you
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got rubber grommets or whatever when you open it up you've got to flip this up you got a
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little baby faucet here you have no room there's no room in here
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to do anything how big is your sink going to be so let's see here this i'll get to that one
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second so we got 16 and a half inches okay so see the sink is
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we got 14 and then we got five and a half inches
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so this thing's five inches so i went with this sink this is the
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which one is this one with the rivati it's pretty much the most popular sink
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i say van life van life sink i think you like that one i love this one yeah this is the one i'm
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putting it this is what i'm putting in yeah what's nice is it comes with the drain comes with the cutting board that
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actually sits in here on top of what's this website oh this is a good website i i don't buy
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from this website i like to buy everything off of amazon and it's not because amazon is easy if you
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can if i can that's true the reason that i buy for amazon is
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all of my inventory and orders and past purchase history and
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specifications and uh wish list everything is extremely
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organized so if i have any questions on okay wait a minute what was that diameter of this product that i bought
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and i can quickly go to it or what were the additional components i bought when i purchased that
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so this might be a good tip if you are purchasing things off amazon which almost i've seen 99 of people that
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are doing diy they just go to amazon because it's really convenient easy but what you can do is
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you can purchase things off of amazon and if you just do a little bit of forward thinking
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to help yourself organize you can say okay i'm gonna buy the sink i'm gonna buy the sink drain
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i'm gonna buy this water lines i'm gonna buy the water pump for the van on one order click buy okay next
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i'm gonna buy my mattress my linens okay buy
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so if you do those in modules instead of just buying a hundred things
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at one time you can buy these in modules and you can say oh this is how much it
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cost me for my kitchen sink and items these are the items i bought and
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this these are this think of it more as just a like a bill of materials
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so coming from an engineering background we always had bill of materials and the build materials was the specific nut
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bolt screw washer quantity manufacturer it was a way to
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highly organize what we're buying so if you're buying a van let's say you get a sink what sink did you get did you
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get an rv sink did you get a household sink they're very different the diameters of
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the sink drain the diameter of the where the faucet mounts they're all they're not the same
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they're two different worlds so if you buy an rv sink and then you want to have this nice
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let's go back to let's we'll stay with ford transit and
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let's do for transit kitchen
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kitchen ideas so you got your van and you want this type you want this
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type of faucet so this is what you're going for okay so this hole diameter the
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hoses that connect to it all of that are household
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items if we went into rv sync
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i got fat fingers in my case you're saying keyboard are you saying some it's it doesn't make sense to buy rv
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specific parts if because you'll save more with regular just my opinion rv parts are not
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like water pumps and stuff like that that's what you're going to have to go with but i'm wearing on rv parts i just the
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quality they don't instill confidence as much as traditional ones yeah the quality for me is just it's
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just not really there but you do have to you do have to adapt so you need to you
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can have this you can have your you can have your nice faucet but you're going to have to adapt
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stuff so what you don't see behind the scenes of these really pretty builds right here
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you get this nice faucet and this nice sink cool the water lines and piping you're going to
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have to adapt to some type of standard so you're going to you're going to have
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to work you're going to have to decide on what standard you're going to use are you going to use flexible
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pvc or nylon or something like that like more like kind of the old school are you going to go
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more of a new school way of doing van builds where you're doing like half inch pex lines to put those in your van
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and one youtuber or van builder that i enjoy his idea
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he says convert everything to half inch pecks and i like that so
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if you guys know what if you don't know what pex is please tell us i don't know what that is it's expensive
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but this is what is in a lot of homes so a lot of homes use pecs
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because it's it's really easy to work with
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and you see it on a lot of renovations or restorations yeah because
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pex is pretty much it's like the new thing where you're getting away from copper and
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metal piping and you're going to more of this flexible type stuff these are awesome these are these this is a this
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is a pex manifold and it's just beautiful if i
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want to build my tiny home or whatever it's just you're going to see this pex is just you can really nerd out on
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it engineering wise anyway so pecs allows you to
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uh what's nicer for diy you can go two routes it's not really advised to use this this
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is called a shark bite fitting and what a shark
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a shark bite fitting is how a diyer somebody that's
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not comfortable with cutting pecs maybe using the expanding tool
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and the crimper and all this stuff if you're not comfortable with that you can do these push connect fittings
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it's a one-time connection so you do it once if you mess up you're gonna have to cut it and redo the whole thing
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but assembling it's real easy so let's talk about pecs in a van really quick
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okay so we've got a picture right here and this is a shark bite pex is this red
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the red and blue is exactly the same the only difference between red and blue
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is it's just to identify hot and cold it's the same material it's the same exact
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thing it's just color coded to help you hold on i could turn that off that's so
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annoying okay so you're saying nick why don't you just buy this this 300 crimper kit from
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home depot you can do that if you're a van builder maybe you need this cripping kit but
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this is what you really want to use this is a pex this is a milwaukee tool for pecs so
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let me just
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i butchered milwaukee that's okay the problem is it's like a 400 tool okay so
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if you're doing a diy van build you probably don't want to do you're probably not going to buy a 400 tool
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because you're saying man nick everything it's 400 400 400 400
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i completely agree with you that's what it feels like when you do a van build so
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you don't have to do this but if you still want to if you still want to use pecs which i highly
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recommend this is called a shark bite fitting
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and let's just do how does a shark bite
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fitting work all right so a shark bite fitting
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if this is a cross section of a shark bike fitting so this left side is ignored this left
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side for a second here we go this is a better way that's better let's see here
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give me a big picture okay here's a shark bite fitting there's a little shark it's called shark bite
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because it has teeth so the way a shark bite fitting works is
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you have a this is a coupler and you have one line that goes
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into this side and these are teeth right here so the reason it's one time use is you
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have to you can push in and those teeth are going to bite it shark bite they're going to bite
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the plastic and this o-ring is going to seal it so it doesn't leak water so you shove a piece here and then you
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shove a piece here and then it seals it and it's a really easy way
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it's an easy way to connect tubing if you don't know how to
34:27
use pex crimping tools or you don't want it or you don't want to
34:32
spend that money with uh pex crimping tools if you have any questions about pex pex
34:39
tubing how to connect it give us those questions i'll be happy to answer it i'm gonna be using that in the van so you'll
34:45
actually see me install that peck sharkbite it's a really good way to
34:51
let's rewind here pecs is a way to convert so that you can get your water
34:57
from your water storage tank to the sink
35:02
you know that whole system yeah jamie let's do an episode on
35:09
like van sync ideas i think that'll be great okay so we'll knock that down i'm gonna try
35:14
to rewind back to where we started somehow so we talked about sinks talked about pecs how to connect them to
35:20
the sinks we talked about the sink we talked about a home style sink versus rv industry sinks
35:29
they're different the diameters are different the water faucets are different
35:34
if you go to gander outdoors or if you go to any like rv center stream
35:41
uh now i'm trying to think of stores that sell all your rv parts if you go to any of those camping world
35:47
i don't want to say gander which i've never been to so you go to campy world if you go in and you feel those faucets
35:53
and stuff they're all made out of plastic they're chrome plated plastic and
35:59
there everything in an rv is about weight save saving weight the beautiful thing
36:07
about building in these vans is uh you have a smaller space
36:13
but these vans like the 350 series uh 350
36:19
the weight capacity you can go do your your nice faucet and stuff like that but just remember these rv components
36:27
they're usually made to save weight i know this robotic sink that i'm doing
36:32
it's pretty heavy i don't know if it actually shows the the weight all right stay with me jamie
36:38
we're going to get back to your question here in a second i'm just now i'm i'm i'm on your
36:44
on you're on the way you leaned away i don't actually have a next thing i
36:50
could i found lined up so i'm relying on you to come up with something anyway this i forgot how much this sink
36:56
weighs the point is the quality of the sink is excellent it's all stainless steel
37:02
this one is this one's just very it's just very expensive and you don't get a lot of space to clean dishes i mean
37:07
that's what you're going to use a sink for so to finish up the looks here
37:13
uh so if we just go back let's back up it's a van conversion ideas you'll notice
37:18
we got these we got clean like white paint with wood accents we got wood on wood
37:25
we got this one's you know completely white
37:30
this is clean and you'll notice the theme here clean very clean
37:36
and this you know this color white is it's to help the space feel bigger
37:44
um but you know sometimes you want a more cozy feel so that's why you're using a lot of these wood elements you
37:49
know the wood and the white and we're randomly going through here this is this is nothing planned and you
37:56
can see like it's freestyle it's just white i'm a fan of the darker i like the darker elements the reason i like it is
38:03
because for adventure vans specifically if you got dogs if you're if you got hiking
38:10
gear if you have a white van it's gonna be it's gonna be very dirty
38:15
make sure you have your all-purpose spray at all times yeah it's going to be uh you're going to be wiping that down with some
38:22
lysol wipes every day but if you have these wood tones you covered that up a lot oh also imperfections dents dings
38:29
putting the bike in taking the bike out you're going to dent and ding all this stuff up and a lot of people like wood that is dented up and d adds that
38:35
character to it if you paint it white you're going to you're going to see that hey go back there's there's an idea that's the pop out
38:42
the pop-up yeah so a little knowledge on the pop out so sports mobile sells this pop out
38:49
pop up however it is not it's only allowed on the low roof
38:54
versions this is not allowed on the high roof versions because uh the structural integrity of the van is affected
39:03
so a low roof is the only one you can actually use a pop-up at this current time there is another
39:08
company that is coming out with one for the high roof
39:14
and they have some type of frame that reinforces the structure so at this moment if you
39:20
have a throw ford low roof van this pop-up you can do it i forgot to name the other company that's working on the
39:26
one for the high roof but again guys just like the flare spaces you are taking the saw and you are cutting the
39:33
whole entire roof of your van out it will be removed all your cross members were taken out and i'm just saying this
39:40
from my engineer background you're removing the structure of the van so
39:46
in the future understand that i understand that van parts like this
39:52
um you know these even those these are engineered solutions it doesn't mean that this
39:58
doesn't affect the van and i'm not saying don't do this i'm saying if you do this
40:03
and then all of a sudden you got a little bit of warpage or stuff that's shifting in the van just be aware that
40:10
you did i said that was how much was that 14 grand yeah 14 000 for this
40:16
install um wow i mean hey i mean i might do this i
40:22
think it's important i think it's smart but just understand you're you just like the more holes you cut out of your van
40:28
the let the further you go from the ford engineers that have designed it to let's see with that pop-up top you
40:34
can now fit your now your dog will stay cool and your mountain bike will fit
40:40
uh people would not leave this up if they leave the van
40:46
the mountain bike fits and the dog will stay cool with that pop top
40:51
yeah not hating on it but i think you want a little bit more and again guys i'm going from
40:57
i'm going more for an extreme adventure van that you can take up to the tip of alaska that type of thing that's kind of
41:03
what i like to that's what i want to build for but stuff that is just kind of like fun weekender
41:08
i digress yeah i'm not hating on the pop-up i think it's cool but
41:14
i don't know my engineer's side says you're removing a whole lot you're moving a whole lot of safety
41:21
it's not gonna flip over right now we can wrap it up i think that was good let's see here
41:27
yeah we'll just go through here real quick that's cool finally seen the beach i haven't seen
41:33
the beach in the background in a while no what that's what i'm saying is cool is they elevated they elevated this
41:38
that's a cool idea that way you can have storage but see you guys get the idea you got uh
41:44
here here's that layout where you would get a desk and bench during the day you lay it down
41:50
bed at night time so that's what
41:56
the van number one that's pretty much what it's going to look like this is exactly with a high
42:02
roof though that's not high roof looking yeah this is looks like it looks like a mid roof
42:16
that's nice that's nice and clean this is a single person
42:22
that's for transporting prisoners what is it prisoners yeah
42:31
oh that's cool that's pretty spartan so this flips down for the bed and it almost looks like
42:38
public transport you keep your bed here
42:43
storage yikes
43:01
there you go yeah oh so if you guys want to know what the these things are uh everybody's like man
43:08
what is those things what are those things to vent the bed it's called the fro lee fro
43:17
froley beds
43:23
f-r-o-l-i there it is it's called the froley bed
43:30
system and what this allows you to do is you get some nice flex
43:36
in the bed system but it raises your bed up off of the wood
43:42
and protects from mold moisture froley sleep system
43:47
let's see i don't know where you can buy it i thought there might be some more for amazon
43:59
let's see here yeah the foliage system so that they're
44:05
you buy them and they they kind of snap in like legos together
44:10
there they go that's what they look like are you familiar with legos nick oh yeah
44:20
i'm a lego maniac um where is this
44:26
bro oh fully there you go
44:31
froley travel ventilations i've never seen that oh it's very important to ventilate your
44:37
mattress learned so much today
44:42
what is this yeah i know they're
44:48
okay so a queen is probably what you're gonna fit that is not bad they used to be a little bit more expensive than that
44:55
uh it's always four hundred dollars yeah every everything for van building is
45:01
four hundred dollars it's 3.98 it's just foreign actually
45:06
a lot of things i've seen you buy there you go 40 inches you wish were 400. there you go guys that's cool
45:13
oh that'd be cool to actually have like the u-haul has that pull-out bridge yeah so this is very popular so
45:19
these are what are they called these are drawer slides
45:25
drawers they're heavy duty they're completely different than stuff at lowe's or home depot
45:32
do not get drawer slides from loser home depot i'm sorry i'm sorry guys i'm about to
45:38
show you something that's 400 again so these are our 500 pound
45:44
uh drawer you want locking drawer
45:50
slides there you go anyway you need two of them
45:55
yeah well they should come in a pair so 500 pound capacity a little blue tap right here that's your
46:01
locking sometimes they're yellow so this one is let's do heavy duty drawer slides
46:06
i've never seen this i'm just randomly googling here guys so slide length let's
46:11
do 48 inches is pretty common low capacity 500 pounds
46:17
and we if you guys want to like sit on this or something would this be a feature in one of your vans this is more
46:22
add-on stuff because again van number one is a spec build so
46:27
nobody has come to us and said this is what i want nick in my van i'm building
46:32
this van as more of a showcase of the capabilities of odyssey customs
46:39
so when you see it you're like oh that's awesome now i'm building it with the adventure wagon interior conversion kit
46:46
specifically because that is a modular kit so if you want to
46:56
you go to venture wagon kit adventure wagon and we go to accessories
47:03
so the kit that i've installed in this van allows you to buy these add-ons they're
47:09
very expensive is that to be like a bunk bed yep but this is just the top
47:16
so if you wanted two just one of them yeah so if you wanted two of these it'd be five like almost six thousand dollars
47:22
wow so they're very expensive but it's the engineering so look guys it it's extremely low profile
47:30
it has these little you can see these little grids here so what that does is
47:37
if the bed is lower the grids are expanded and as the bed moves up so the the van curves right so as the van is
47:45
the if you want the bed higher as it moves up the bed frame actually moves in
47:51
and then if you lower it it moves out so that's how that's how that's that's
47:56
what that is this is really cool so again the vana building you can buy all these all this stuff
48:02
it's like that actually is cool it saves space yep and so people use this because
48:09
believe it or not they'll actually buy this system and then drive their motorcycles so they'll drive
48:14
two motorcycles up into the back of their transit they'll strap it down they'll go on their adventure and then
48:20
when they get to their location they'll actually put the ramps up take the
48:26
motorcycles out of the van and then they'll put the beds down and then they can are these dirt bikes
48:33
oh yeah these are dirt bikes okay not like a harley they're that big so there you go cool they put are you
48:39
gonna ah yeah it looks cool so they'll do this and then uh it's way smaller than a car there you go so
48:45
here's an adventure here's a so you got two motorcycles and then you got the bed up here so you can lower the
48:52
bed after you when you take the bikes out and again this moab is what they call
48:58
their elevator bed so it goes up on these rails so my van will have these rails
49:04
installed and then you have to have the wall kit and to install that you have to have the venture wagon
49:10
system so that i'm installing the adventure wagon system and then it allows you to add
49:16
you are a adventure wagon installer uh
49:22
yeah i'm installing an adventure wagon i'm not a installer yet oh i'm sure you will be let's see and
49:28
then these mule bags they're really cool they're soft bags that you can put up
49:35
into your i need to help them with their product there you go see it snaps in and i like these soft bags because if you
49:41
get up and you forget the bags there you don't bust your head on a cabinet i really like that
49:47
oh that's better guys how much is it to go with a joke
49:53
sorry it's 400 so a bag is four hundred the bed you
50:00
sleep okay i'm the best the bed you're gonna work okay
50:05
the bed frame is thirty two hundred the mattress is eleven hundred
50:13
so three four four thousand dollars to go sleep on a
50:20
bed sell your bitcoin all right anyway but again guys the reason this stuff is expensive
50:28
is because it has to be engineered to be lightweight because that bed let's just say
50:33
with you or somebody else on the bed 400 pounds with the mattress frame the
50:39
bolts everything you could be looking at 500 pounds so that's why
50:44
these things need to be engineered to be safe you don't want to get to your destination and go hike and then come
50:49
back and then your bed falls apart [Laughter] so um yeah we're wrapping this up here
50:56
that was really cool that this is here we talked about these drawer slides you guys can buy them
51:02
40 inches for the heights for the bike uh i think um you have some minimalist
51:10
designs there you go there's a pretty loaded out van i like
51:15
that i'll tell you one thing i'm into i'm really into the outdoor kitchen i think that is it slides out
51:22
yeah because when i go when i go hike and i have my friends together you know what we're gonna make this up we can
51:28
make this a part one if you want to do another we're cooking outside the van i think what we're going to do is we're going to take a bunch of these ideas and
51:34
then we can expand on them just a little bit we talked about sync system we talked about a little bit
51:39
about layout design we talked about sliding systems interior kits bikes i
51:46
mean we just kind of did a little van overview of see right there that's what i i'm probably going to build in my van
51:53
that's smart and okay last thing guys you might be enjoying this and getting a
51:59
kick out of this but i saw this at lowe's and i could not believe it last night
52:04
you don't go to low as much do you
52:10
i saw this i couldn't believe this it blew my mind away is lowe's
52:16
stainless
52:29
look at this got 129 bucks i'm gonna put this in my van
52:35
it's 129 bucks look at this it is awesome
52:40
look at that you can mount this on a drawer slide with a propane bottle
52:46
just slide it out in your 2019 van yeah look at that
52:53
stainless steel overcooked burgers perfect
53:06
well great yeah cool so that's it um you know we can go down the wormhole and
53:13
just go through all this stuff but guys there's so many different ideas there's a lot of things
53:18
that help you do it the right way but the same time you might want to put your little touch on it you might have a different use case for these vans you
53:25
might be living in it full time you might be going it on strictly on adventures moto camping stuff like that
53:31
but if you want any advice or my take on this because i've done tons of research over the last two years on
53:38
just all things vans really getting nitty gritty ask us these questions put those in the comments we'll be happy to
53:44
answer them in a future video yeah but we're going to end it here and we'll see you guys on the next
53:50
episode [Music]
54:11
you
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