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Update Tour of Jon and Susan’s Custom Van Build
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May 2, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:00
taking a look at John and Susan's van today uh so they just came by to do an
0:06
update where we checked dimensions fitment of everything so one thing you might want to do uh when you're working
0:12
with a builder or even if you're doing your own DIY is try to mock up as close
0:17
as you can with the supplies that you've either bought uh some type of way to uh
0:23
visualize what your van is going to look like when you get finished so if we flip back around
0:30
uh what we have is a mockup of the van now the way I did this is the van uh the
0:37
bed system is not finished yet so what we're going to do is we're actually just going to tour the whole
0:43
van I'm going to talk about measurements measurements are something that are kind
0:49
of elusive in the custom van build World you'll go online you'll say oh you need you know 30 in high for your bike or you
0:57
need 36 or 40 um we're going to go through measurements we're going to talk
1:02
about the kitchen Galley measurements we're going to talk about our fridge stack uh we're going to talk about a lot of things that I think will really help
1:08
you when you're trying to conceptualize uh when you fill the van
1:13
up you know what space are things going to take up how much is the bed going to take up how much is the kitchen Galley
1:20
so we're going to walk through that that's going to be the kind of theme of this live stream so if you guys have any
1:25
questions put them in the chat um I'll be there to I'm doing this on the phone so the reply might be slow I'll probably
1:32
just talk about the reply but anyway we're going to get started uh back in this uh back area
1:38
we've got the bed and that's probably the best place to start so I've got a tape measure in my pocket and we're going to go through and talk about some
1:46
measurements so the layout that we have here in this van is called a north south
1:52
sleeping Arrangement so in some vans that I've done before um you have something called an East and West so
1:59
that's where you know you'll sleep with your head up here and then your feet over here um but this bed you know your
2:06
head will be at the back and your feet will be towards the front of the van or you know pretty much however you want to do
2:13
it the first thing is you're going to want to find out your height from your
2:18
final floor all the way up to the underside of your bed now you're going
2:24
to have a bunch of Dimensions that are going to be added you're going to have the thickness of your insulation you're going to have the thickness of your subf
2:29
Flor and then you need to consider the thickness of your support member or
2:35
material that you're going to be using so for example uh what I'm doing is I'm using the uh Ikea bars the bed bars that
2:44
are extendable so they're actually adjustable right here where I have the tape kind of holding them in position
2:51
again this is all temporary but those uh members are 2 and
2:56
a/4 in and then you have to consider whether you're going going to use 3/4 in
3:01
plywood or/ in plywood to support uh the actual bed that you're going to be sleeping on so in that case we're
3:08
looking at 3 in taken away from the height of the
3:14
floor to the bottom of the bed so if we had that set at 36 now
3:20
we're down to 33 um where we have this right now from
3:26
the base of the floor to the bottom underside of this rail is 34 and a
3:32
qu now uh as much as the hiking and venturing that I do I actually don't
3:38
have a mountain bike I just have this road bike that I used to ride downtown and uh that's what I have for the
3:44
example but it's there for an example most people that are pretty critical on
3:50
the mountain bike storage are always concerned about the seat height you can
3:56
save yourself a lot of trouble if you just assume that you're going to take the the seat out to store your bikee and
4:02
that's going to allow you to um that's going to allow you to really get to a
4:09
more manageable height if you did want to lower your bed um got a quick question is uh is
4:16
this a van yes so this is a cargo van so it's just a standard Ford Transit cargo
4:23
van and our timeline we probably got um about four weeks
4:30
of uh time to finish this up so that's what we're shooting for um electrical
4:38
and other components sometimes take longer depending if you get into certain quirks of the system that we've found
4:44
with uh a little bit of the wolfbox wiring which was pretty straightforward it's really trying to just integrate
4:49
that seamlessly into a van so um let's see what else does George
4:57
say uh interested in your choices of refrigerator so the refrigerator we have is up underneath this uh table we're
5:04
going with the isotherm Cruise 130 fridge and uh I can actually show you
5:10
guys in the build outside um let's uh let's check out and see if
5:17
that uh van is unlocked if it's unlocked then we can
5:24
uh we can go grab it hopefully my Wi-Fi doesn't disconnect here
5:33
all right so we've got the uh that's what we're putting in the van it's the isotherm Cruise
5:39
130 so if you guys are interested in this van tour this is the one that we're taking to peace love and
5:45
vans so a couple things I need to clean up on here but this is the other build so this is this is the adventure
5:56
build and hopefully Wi-Fi doesn't cut cut out uh we've got the Raptor Style
6:01
Grill on the front anyway so let's hop back
6:27
inside got to bring the doggo
6:35
inside okay now we're back um yeah so isotherm Cruise 130 is
6:42
what we're going to use uh so let's finish up with talking about the bed and then we're going to go inside and I'll show you the
6:48
measurements for the fridge so back here in the back if we have this set at uh let see what I said
6:57
34 and A4 uh I think that's really going to give enough room for for bikes you're going
7:03
to have a lot of space enough so that you probably could lower this a couple inches depending on what you have but
7:12
the main reason that this is set at this height other than trying to set a goal for the 36
7:18
in is because of where our window pills are so this is our window pill as you
7:24
can see I've made it to where it's exactly flush with the bed so you don't
7:31
have a kind of awkward lip or anything like that so you're going to have this nice clean
7:37
um clean setup and if you're asking about the
7:44
mattress this is a 60x 74 in it's a
7:49
queen short or short queen however you want to call it um that's an RV
7:55
size so instead of being I think maybe 60 by 80 it's 60 by 74 so it's a
8:03
little bit shorter hence the name it's a 6inch mattress so when you go with the 6in
8:10
mattress and then you go in a Ford Transit where this is the highest point where we can actually get this window up
8:17
before it uh comes into contact with this cross member up here that's going to give you the
8:24
dimensions we have so if you just want to do a ballpark number this piece of
8:30
tape right here is right at 36 in so you have 36 from the base to the bottom of
8:37
the mattress not including your support material and then you have a 6in
8:43
mattress so that's how all those measurements come out and if you're
8:48
wondering about height from the LI from your kind of living space so on the
8:54
shorter side of the van to this cross member where the ceiling is you can see your right at 3 ft above the mattress so
9:01
36 in now keep in mind you might actually want to put a bookshelf or
9:08
storage uh cabinet up here which we are doing and that's going to take away
9:13
whoever is sleeping on this side of the mattress so you got to you want to be kind of considerate about you know how
9:21
that's going to turn out later you know where the most comfortable place to sleep is that sort of
9:28
thing um that's pretty much it for the bed and the dimensions uh we're going to swing back
9:33
around to the garage a little bit later we're going to talk about the ecoflow and kind of where we we are with all the
9:38
cables and inputs and how we're going to do that as well as the water system but let's hop over here and show
9:46
you the inside of the van uh kind of how I have it staged so again this is the
9:52
demo unit of our kitchen Galley that I'm looking to start making um let me know
9:59
if you guys are interested in this setup I have a video on it but
10:04
my goal is to actually have these be able to be flat packed um the dimension
10:09
of these are perfect for a Ford Transit I built this because it's very hard to
10:15
find something that's 38 in wide typically most kitchen G in the industry
10:21
are a 41in kitchen Galley and that's more designed for a sprinter um and
10:27
there's a couple things that are kind of weird on Transit one you have this big chunk of metal that sticks out right
10:33
here it's pretty annoying that the cabinet's hard to work around as well as this one down here at the bottom so I've
10:40
notched that out created a space for it um but as we walk in again we're just
10:46
going to go step by step the first measurement you want to consider is how wide the entryway is so from our weather
10:55
seal to the kitchen Galley we got 19 and 1/2 in in really you don't want to go under 20
11:04
in is probably your minimum so to this Lagoon plate is about 20 and a/4 in um
11:12
that's that's as tight as I would get to comfortably get in and out of the
11:18
van so if we take from our bed we've got a 38 in kitchen Galley and then we've
11:26
got an additional let's call it 20 in so from the bed to the door
11:35
opening we've got 58 in to give you an idea what we're going to be doing for
11:41
their step down here is we're going to enclose this step in a custom way um you
11:48
can go with a kind of like a threshold pre-made powder coated thing
11:54
but it's really just a waste of material cuz this underneath here will be wasted um instead we'll cut we'll close this
12:03
off and then open this side and then this will be a nice place to store dog
12:08
leashes like a short umbrella um you know stuff like that stuff that you may
12:14
not want to have in the the van itself um as we come in the van we're
12:20
going to have two swivel seats um we've already upgraded the dash with this really awesome Dyan display as
12:29
well as a wolf box which is a dash cam uh it's really awesome we just
12:35
finished installing this uh license plate Mount camera so not only will the
12:42
Dinan show this camera when you're backing up on top of the van but you're
12:48
going to the wolf box will have the rear camera as well so pretty pretty highte for uh for John and
12:57
Susan it's really awesome uh we finished upholstering this
13:02
transition piece so that when we upholster this panel and this panel everything will be
13:08
seamless um I got a couple more bugs that I'm fcking out fixing with the electrical they're fixed now I just
13:14
haven't you know put all this stuff back together all right so as we walk into
13:20
this van we're going to have uh a jump seat with a
13:26
trino uh toilet in this section so it'll be a jump seat and a place uh for the
13:33
trolino and then you get this nice open area to where this jump seat and this
13:39
seat can face each other we got another second Lagoon Mount that we mounted on the
13:46
inside and again if you guys are wondering we have a uh a part uh not a
13:52
partition but this is our microwave and refrigerator stack so we're actually
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going to stack the uh isotherm Cruise 130
14:04
fridge here and we're going to uh so we'll have a we decided on doing a big
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drawer in the bottom the ism Cruise will actually start right here 24 in above the ground
14:17
so it's off the ground so you don't really have to bend over and then coming up here we're going
14:23
to have the uh the microwave so if you're wondering how much room the jump seat to the front passenger is we've
14:34
got uh just right at 3 feet and then for the width of
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the iso Cruise 130 we've got 24 in and I
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believe 22 or 21.7 uh 21.9 I think is
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technically the width that the fridge needs so we'll get the kitchen Gall a
14:59
second but let's take a just a pan of where the bed is just so you can get an idea of what that looks
15:05
like so the bed's there uh we're not building boxes on the left and right hand side we're going to
15:12
keep that as just Easy Storage you know you can stuff jackets um you know blankets and stuff
15:19
like that there you don't have to get too complicated with that one thing to consider is the height
15:26
from getting into the bed when once this is all said and done so for example
15:31
we've got 36 plus the 6 in bringing us to 42 so
15:38
that is what you're going to have to overcome whether you do it with a step stool or step ladder that's something to
15:44
really think about
15:53
um this section right here we're going to have an open door so where you can open up and do garage
16:00
access and then as we pan over we get a really good view of the kitchen Galley um the reason I want to uh
16:09
produce this kitchen Galley is a lot of suppliers of these don't take in
16:15
consideration standard drawer sizes so for example if you wanted to put type of
16:20
like a coluty organizer or pots and pans in here um I found that the dimensions
16:26
are really just kind of whatever they come up with they're not actually like a standardized Dimension which I found odd
16:32
so this one is standardized so you have down here a pot and pans drawer obviously it's not for pans but the
16:39
height is a pots and pans drawer height um if it was a little bit wider it would
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be that Dimension but it's not um then we got some nice drawers here you could do your silverware up here you could
16:52
store your induction stove up here and then you get some nice uh open drawers here so we'll have one two three big
16:58
drawers and these two are smaller drawers the panel here is not going to be usable this is just the face that's
17:05
you know hiding the or covering the Ice uh Reva sink and then we'll have a door
17:12
panel here for our graywater system the depth of this if you guys are
17:18
wondering is 212 Ines so it's 21 in and then you
17:24
get the face frame at the front that's a/ inch thick and the working surface is about 22
17:32
in so pretty good working surface
17:39
there but yeah if you get a chance to start putting your van together this is a this is a great way
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to um just kind of map out you know use masking tape and map out where everything is going to go it's going to
17:53
help you to make the uh decision-making process a lot
17:58
easier as you get going um some cool things that we're
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going to install you guys can see this we've got four rails of L TR so we're
18:09
going to actually put two rows of L TR um down here in the floor they're going
18:15
to be spaced in the garage in a way that we can in the future if they would like to install the Flatline vanco 500 lb
18:23
drawer slide system we'll get three ELR studs we'll put them together and uh they can just
18:30
drop that right in in the meantime that front rail is going to be perfect to mount the bikes
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to and uh you know that'll check it off the list for them um as far as being to
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be able to utilize that these rails or one of these rails is going to go here and so that's three
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and then the final rail is actually going to go along this jump seat
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area and there there's so many access accessories for L Trak and uh what's
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nice is since there are so many accessories then you can put all kinds of different hangers uh they even make
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bag systems to put on it and uh yeah let let me know guys if
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you have any questions while we're doing this van tour I'm going to jump to kind of like the final things that we're
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going to be working on next week um so we have uh made way up to this top
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section of the van to where we're going to be finalizing this rear section so in
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the rear of the van we have a Mac two Mac uh two 14x14 openings one's for a
19:40
Max fan and then one is for the nomatic cooling X2 unit uh and we're actually
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using the ecoflow 48volt power cable that's actually going to directly power
19:53
the 48volt nomatic AC so it's going to be really awesome to uh
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to check that out we're going to come through we're
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going to upholster this rear section with the four-way stretch fabric um and then coming over here
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we're going to have a nice little spice rack shelf uh and then this section we're
20:18
going to clean up and this is going to be our equal flow uh screen so we can control all
20:26
that all the systems and then we'll have the uh the W the
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wabaso smart temp 3.0 it's a big name uh heater contr controller for that which
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is underneath this plastic at the moment kind of hiding under there so this
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plastic is off because uh we need to tap into the system for our interior lights
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um I want to put a little light down here just an entry
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light that kind of opens this uh shines this area lights this area sorry um this
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is what the what it looks like this little LED it's really really cool so
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it's uh I think it's by super bright LEDs I think that's the company I'm not
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sure um but this thing is awesome so it has that little cover so it doesn't
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directly shine in your eye it just shines in the area but I need to wire
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this into that light so that's why that looks like a mess right now but we finished
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all of our trim upholstery so that all this transition is super
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clean so that when we do go to actually put everything back together it looks
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really nice um you can actually see over here just going to give you an idea of
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how it looks this is how I wanted the ecoo uh Powers cables to come out and
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look I wanted them to look super professional nice and clean the original was a little I just I didn't like
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it um what else what else here see George
22:16
has got a question uh like many van bills mattress sizes are nonstandard what do you recommend
22:23
sourcing your bed sheets good question so the nice thing about if you have a
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queen short I have found uh sources on Amazon
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that do provide those sheet sizes and to be honest the width is going to be a
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standard queen size bed width the length is just where you're going to have to take up that extra bed sheet by you know
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stuffing it under the bed for example um but you know we're only talking about like 6 in so you can just
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kind of St stuff that but that's a yeah that's a good question that's a big another concern people have
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is you know it fits in the van it's a custom mattress but what sheets will actually fit on
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it um if I back up this uh piece of 2x4 that's just in
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place and it's just kind of showing you the kind of defining the area uh this piece was cut at 77
23:26
in um um so you guys can see uh I'm exactly 6 foot tall so I've got a lot of
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head room it's nice and comfortable to walk in here even when I come all the way
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here to the the very front of the van uh speaking of the ceiling we're
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going to have eight uh LED lights in the ceiling and
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those pieces of duct tape or masking tape or that's pretty much the the
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layout that we're going to go for um there's four so one two three four in
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the front of the van that's going to be on a sensor or a switch right
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here and then in the back we're going to have four lights on a separate bank so
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you'll have two switches both dimmable um for
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that and then for lights we're going to have three of these really cool
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so pardon the mess but this is this is the uh the light it's a I think it's
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called AO um anyway it's a light that has uh
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White so it's a daylight white and then it has a red function with a switch on the side and then what this is the
24:50
everybody's favorite part about it it has a USB port so you can charge your phones in bed there's kind of like a
24:57
there's two in the back so each of you can charge your phones
25:03
and just put it by your bedside and then we're going to have a third mounted right there and that's so
25:10
if you want to get in the driver's seat or you want to get in the passenger seat to uh you know read
25:16
something um if somebody else is in in the bed but yeah just getting a look here
25:22
you can kind of see the width of this fridge stack so we' got the ism
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Cruise 130 just going go up to about right there and then we're going to have a convection microwave um wired end to
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the top and yeah this is going to be a great setup uh again underneath here um we've
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got enough room for I believe it's two six gallon or two s gallon water
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tanks I think we're maybe using the six gallon um uh but that's that's the width there
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and then you can see the rat sink and the dimensions I showed you
26:06
that is about as shallow as you can put uh this
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sink in the van trying to see where I put my tape measur where did it
26:21
go yeah that's pretty much all I got for this tour um for the guys for you guys that are still watching if you have any
26:26
questions uh yeah the next minute or so just uh I'm going to go to the back and talk about the
26:32
ecoflow power system and then between now and then if you have any questions um I'll see if I can answer them really
26:39
quick before we end the stream let me say hi to Nova she's just
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hanging out having a good time all right so what we're doing for
26:51
ecoflow in this van is we are doing the uh I believe it's called the
26:56
independence kit but this is the 5 kilow Hour battery so it's a roughly 406 amp
27:05
hours so four car size batteries if
27:11
uh for simple terms but we're using that and then we're using the powerhub
27:18
itself so uh the powerhub this is where all
27:24
this all of our connections are going to go so this first one we're going to have a 60 amp DC to
27:31
DC uh this second one we're going to have 30 amp DC to DC this third one is
27:39
where we're going to input 580 watts of uh rooftop solar then we've got our battery
27:47
connection for the battery I just showed you so that'll be connected the second battery
27:54
connection is going to go to the uh uh this is actually going to supply
28:01
the power for the nomatic cooling uh Believe It or Not third uh this is designed for their
28:09
smart generator so if you wanted to buy that and then top this off if you were off grid that is where you could
28:16
integrate that this one is the shore power so this is our shore power input for the system
28:24
uh we've already wired that and conveniently there's a John and Susan wanted an
28:29
outlet in the back of their van but since this is going to be in the back of their van we've got an outlet right there so you've got a 20 amp uh 110
28:38
outlet really nice and then if we come over here uh
28:43
we've got our uh AC out um and that AC out is going
28:48
to uh the this
28:54
guy so this one we've talked aled about this box before
29:01
so this box is powered by these two plugs so this Powers the 12vt uh
29:09
accessories and then this uh Powers the 110 you know 120
29:15
volt and so this is that distribution box and you got the two cables that come in so the AC cables come in here and
29:24
those 12vt DC cables comeing over here and then everything is set up very neat so
29:32
you got your line neutral and ground for all your household outlet power here so
29:38
if you kind of split this in half you've got household power with all your standard break Breakers just like you
29:44
would have in a regular house and then it divides and then over here you can
29:49
see I've got my um these are just temporary so I keep everything organized
29:55
but this is where all the lights all the light switches the max fan um water pump
30:02
all that's going to be connected here so it's a really uh it's a very DIY friendly
30:08
system you're plugging stuff in you're not having to crimp connections or anything like that and
30:16
uh yeah I'm I'm really excited to to power this on and to finish up let's just show you
30:23
uh what cables we have over here so this looks like a kind of a mess
30:29
but the nice thing is uh we're going to have a panel coming straight across here
30:35
uh we're actually mounting our battery over the wheel well so we can reclaim as much garage Spa garage space as we
30:43
can and then over here we've got our plugs so just to give you an idea of how
30:48
simple this system is and I'm going to clean this up I got some grease on it uh but this is our battery
30:56
cable but we got to be careful this battery cable um this one is actually the
31:03
nomatic cooling 48 volt system they just use a battery cable because it's a
31:08
direct 48 volt connection if that makes sense it's almost like you pluged this
31:13
into the battery and you turned on the the AC unit so cuz uh yeah the uh the
31:21
way it passes through uh these two these two are taped off and wrapped a bunch of times because
31:28
these are actually live right now this is our uh this is our alternator
31:35
one and then this is our alternator 2 uh so this one is going to be
31:41
providing 60 amps of DC todc charging and then this second one is going to
31:47
provide 30 amps um that's just how their system
31:53
works uh the next thing is their they got their PV uh input which is solar and
32:00
it's already on a solar cable uh and it believe it or not they actually already
32:06
give you mc4 connectors so if you don't even want to deal with
32:13
splicing this you can directly connect this to solar this comes with the
32:19
cable you don't even have to to worry about that uh and
32:25
then uh what we have have uh our last thing we just installed with our last
32:31
live stream is the um Shore power so that's our shore power plug so they give
32:36
you 15 ft of cable enough for 30 amps of uh Power for
32:43
charging and so that's wired up to our furion 30 amp Shore power
32:49
outlet so that's all installed looking good
32:56
um
33:01
and then last but not least we have uh all of our other wires for the van so
33:06
we'll have uh our water pump we'll have all of our LED lights all that stuff
33:13
we've got a 110 cable ran that's going to be for the
33:19
um microwave the cable you see right now that's actually the
33:24
12volt 12 gauge uh for the isotherm Cruise
33:31
130 and then I said we're going to mount the battery right there so we'll Mount the battery there and then this is the
33:38
template that ecoflow will actually give you to um tape on you'll drill your
33:44
three holes for the main bracket uh now what I'm doing is I have
33:50
like a two layer system so these are quarter inch panels that we got from AVC
33:56
rig somebody asked me what AVC means so uh AVC is a custom uh van component
34:06
manufacturer they manufacture wall panels they actually me manufacture these uh these foam window
34:13
pill spacers so they just they make van products they also build Vans
34:18
too um but what I'm doing is I'm taking their two panels which are a quarter
34:25
inch and they're going to be bolted to van and then I'm making my own halfin panel so you can see how this is just a
34:32
nice smooth clean and it's a piece of/ inch Baltic Birch it's extremely strong
34:39
and uh that is actually where we're going to be mounting our uh brackets too so we actually have
34:46
these uh uh let me see if I can grab grab
34:53
some people call it the Ikea modification but
34:59
essentially you can uh you can buy these uh it's called a impressa bed frame
35:07
bracket and so there are two of these on an IKEA bed uh but we're actually going
35:13
to install um 10 and that's going to give
35:18
us our are this way these brackets when they go in they have a
35:25
slot and so if uh John and Susan actually wanted to take these beams out and open up the
35:31
back of their van uh this is just a really simple
35:36
solution uh you know for a bed so also if you guys are interested
35:43
I'm thinking about turning this into a product as well so just a pre cutout
35:48
sheet um and it's it's very custom if you guys can see it's already custom cut
35:55
to the wheel well and it's one sheet and the cool thing is behind here we're
36:02
going to use Riv nuts and it'll be actually bolted to the van so you have this nice structural Baltic Birch bolted
36:09
to the van uh five brackets on each side and
36:15
those two panels combined together are going to give you that ability to have a
36:21
uh a bed system like this that's actually removable and it's a really DIY
36:26
friendly way to just put a bed in it's simple and for me it's not even DIY it's just it's such
36:33
a straightforward simple way to do it um we got some more people in the
36:38
live stream hope you guys are doing great we are doing a quick update tour of John and Susan's van uh they came in
36:45
the shop today and I staged the van so that they could get an idea of what it feels
36:51
like uh as we get closer to the end because um it's not really showing off
36:57
that the van looks done that might be what people are saying but trust me it
37:03
is more about we are at the point to where we can't really make any tweaks to
37:09
the design because we'll be going backwards if we need to make a change in the future so today was really to
37:16
visualize what the van looks like close to being done so that everything are
37:22
hard numbers and we know exactly where everything is going and everything feels good there's no changes or modifications
37:28
needed and we're ready to move on to the next process which is funny enough uh
37:35
taking all this stuff out of the van so you put it in the van to make sure it's right and then you're going to take it
37:41
all out so you can upholster it um drill the holes so that like the bed frame and stuff can be bolted
37:47
in but uh that's really just part of the van process you know you build something in and then you get it right you take it
37:53
out you uh you modify it um what's nice is this ceiling is this
38:01
is permanent so I won't be taking this back out that's why this is going into a like such a slow pace because once it's
38:08
insulated and sound deaden the next section moves in and uh we won't be going back so now we have this
38:17
final panel right here this is the final ceiling panel once it goes in I'm going
38:23
to trace it out on the top just like I did this one and then we'll cut the
38:28
holes out the panel will go up with the insulation
38:34
and that's pretty much it um it won't be coming back down uh again because the final process
38:42
of this van is to install this very good smelling Cedar this stuff
38:48
has made the shop smell so nice um so this is quar inch tongue and groove uh
38:57
naughty Cedar and let's see if I can get the company's name there's a lot of these
39:03
Brands uh but this one I find to be just the best and uh so it's called Pacific naughty
39:11
Cedar the only place that I can find it is Home Depot if you guys are wondering
39:17
um but yeah each box contains six pieces 1/4 inch by 3 and 1/2 in by 8 ft long
39:26
and the 8T uh it's like that's the golden number for Vans because let me
39:32
explain why when this piece goes in
39:39
uh from the front of the van where we're going to bump it up against that uh headliner from that spot all the way
39:47
even the curve to this rib right here is exactly eight
39:52
feet so I don't know how that works out but ex from here to this rib half of this
40:00
rib is 8 feet so what's great is you do the whole ceiling there's no
40:06
seams front to back um and then the last all you have to do to finish the seams
40:12
or you're just coming from here to here and just doing these planks in the back
40:18
and uh I it just yeah it couldn't couldn't have turned out any better with uh if
40:24
you're doing a ceiling design like that for example so yeah we're doing the uh
40:30
ceiling like that um at the beginning of the stream uh I was talking
40:36
about uh what all this metal tape is and we're just controlling the air flow we
40:41
just want to seal this up so that when we put our four-way stretch fabric on
40:47
here everything is ready to be wrapped now if you don't know what
40:53
four-way stretch fabric is this is one of I'm talking about so this is your
40:59
typical fabric so this is a marathon and heather gray and it's kind of it's kind
41:06
of stiff it's hard to wrap this around contoured surfaces um but then this stuff right
41:14
here this is our four-way stretch fabric and it's about a qu of an inch
41:22
thick but I'm going to hold this camera really quick or actually I'm sorry I'm going to put it down just bear with me
41:29
really quick get this lined up there you go so this is a it's called four-way
41:38
stretch because you can it has like a memory to it so if I push my finger in really hard you see how it keeps the memory so
41:47
look at that so you can imagine if this is going around uh some weird surface
41:52
you can go in both directions to actually put this around an edge and
41:58
then you can just kind of tug on it um you know move it around with your
42:03
hand and then watch this and so now you can
42:09
see it's like magic it's gone but then if you twist it it'll keep
42:16
this Contour shape so for example those foam pieces that are inside your camper
42:24
van uh like the ones that cover the airbags that's one a lot of people really don't
42:31
enjoy upholstering because it's pain in the butt well the four-way stretch fabric that is that's that's what you
42:38
want to use is the four-way stretch fabric yeah so we got a lot of people on
42:44
the live stream um if you guys have any questions put those in the chat I'm
42:50
happy to answer them uh we're kind of doing a tour of the van today so what we
42:55
did is we had our customers John and Susan come in and just finalize some details so we wanted to finalize that
43:01
the bed height was okay um that our Kitchen Gallery orientation uh you know the width of
43:07
everything how our uh jump seat position is uh we went through on where elre
43:14
placement needed to be uh we added a spice rack shelf over the Kitchen Gallery it's going to be pretty
43:20
cool uh rearrange some things um I just really went through the checklist on
43:26
everything that needed to be checked off the list before we uh really got going
43:31
on the van and you get past the point where if you want to change something it's harder in
43:39
the future than it is right now um yeah so if you guys have questions
43:46
ask away I'm going to do one one more quick uh actually let me grab a sip of my
43:53
coffee over here been talking a little too
44:00
much you guys can hang out with Nova she's just taking it
44:12
easy um for anybody that's watching if you guys uh this is your first time on the channel thanks so much for checking
44:18
out the stream um pretty much anything you've seen done in this van there's either a live stream or a video
44:24
dedicated to it just kind of explaining more than what I'm talking about right
44:29
now by the way if you're wondering we will be installing a crl t window on
44:35
this passenger side and uh
44:41
yeah so yeah basically our meeting today was walking into the van checking out
44:47
how everything fits you know holding on to the handle getting in the van and just uh you know really
44:54
double-checking um how everything this van is going to
45:00
feel uh when it gets uh close to being done so we're going to have a jump seat
45:07
right there right here we have a drawer a isotherm Cruise 130 fridge and then a
45:14
microwave a convection microwave stack so we've stacked all those components
45:19
we're lifting the fridge off the ground for ergonomics just to make it easier so
45:25
you're not having to bend over to get into the fridge or load it I've got a piece of 2x4 and uh if you
45:32
guys watch humble Road you know he'll do this in cardboard um I don't want to do it in cardboard I
45:39
think cardboard is great if you have time to do that but uh I'm okay with
45:45
just uh doing some 2x4 mockups and masking tape it pretty much does it does
45:51
the same purpose uh and then we have our custom kitchen galley now again this is a demo
45:57
piece this is obviously I would not build something that looks like this for the final product this is uh again it's
46:04
more it's um a way to really finalize Dimensions uh actually we've set the
46:11
revati sink in there little piece of wood and it's just to really give the
46:16
sense of space so um we actually discussed about a partition right here which I think a
46:23
partition is uh it's great you know adds a little bit of style to the van kind of separates the area however that would be
46:30
good if you didn't have this over here cuz this is already going to narrow your
46:36
way of hopping up into the bed and if we closed in even more um it's going to be
46:43
really claustrophobic so what we've done is we decided on just keeping a pretty
46:49
much like a backsplash style piece right here just to keep off anything that's prepped for food or whatnot uh to not
46:57
get on the bed pretty pretty simple um but the dimensions of this
47:03
we've got um 38 in wide which I think is perfect
47:10
there's a lot of kitchen guyses out there that are always 41 and it's based really in my opinion on sprinters you
47:18
know Ford was kind of second as far as the evolution of the van conversions and
47:25
I think the Market has a lot of longer gals for the extended series but they don't have a kitchen Galley
47:32
for this size um especially one that takes into account leaving space for
47:38
this big knockout right here as well as this you know weird thing that Ford's
47:45
got going on over here for the door so I took that into consideration I also took
47:50
into consideration that the the market doesn't have normal drawers they're kind
47:56
of designed however they would like um so if you buy Cutlery organizers or
48:01
anything like that they just awkwardly don't fit in the drawer so what I did is I went found the standard drawer
48:08
dimensions and then just put them in here so these are standard drawer Dimensions uh it just happens that this
48:16
15x2 revati sink which you guys got to get this this thing is
48:23
awesome um it comes with all this it comes with a like a drain it comes with
48:28
uh this Butcher Block it's really nice um it's stainless steel I just got this
48:33
coverage so it doesn't mess it up um but then down here this is enough room for two sgon Jerry
48:40
cans and uh yeah so my goal and I'd love to hear you guys' feedback but I would
48:46
like to begin making these and selling these and I'm designing it to be flat packed so that it's cheap to ship um you
48:55
guys can can paint it whatever color you want and uh it's just a good base to start off
49:01
of so yeah let me know let me know your your feedback um if anybody's just joining we
49:08
are doing a little recap of our client consultation that we did today with uh
49:15
on John and Susan's build just finalizing some details and uh yeah we pretty much got
49:21
everything wrapped up um we got a lot of people in the live stream so if you guys have a question uh this is a good time
49:28
to ask me before I sign off here in just a
49:33
minute we're kind of probably going to hop off here in just a few minutes but um uh that's pretty much all I have I
49:40
guess I could go up on the roof and show you where we're at on
49:45
that so up here uh we've got 580 watts of Rich
49:54
solar now these are delic delicately stacked on top of each
50:00
other so don't worry this stuff is tough as Nails this Glass is very strong so I
50:06
wouldn't do anything like that but these are stacked up over here because we are finalizing uh the sealant for the rear
50:13
of the van and as soon as that's uh fully dry our lap sealant then we're
50:19
going to slowly take these up and then set them into place um we're using the
50:27
unaka and explores dolie uh roof rack
50:32
collaboration so this roof rack is amazing it perfectly holds 580 WS of
50:41
solar the room for a nomatic cooling AC unit and a Max fan so it's just uh um
50:50
yeah I wish I had this back into place I just need to finish working on this so that's why I haven't moved it but
50:56
but uh this it's a very high quality it's not sponsored in at all in this video it's just uh it's a very high
51:03
quality system um I've installed bunch of roof racks I've made my own roof rack uh done
51:10
two Flatline Vancover roof FL racks versus the version 1.0 2.0 and at the moment this one is uh
51:19
definitely one of my favorites to be honest it is uh maximizing the space on a roof I mean
51:26
if you are the one that's doing that which these guys are uh I mean there's really no other thing I can say than
51:33
that's an awesome thing to do so that's our Max fan everything's ready to go all we got to do is put lap
51:39
cying on here and then do a lap seill around that and we're ready to go so
51:47
this is just ready to be popped on you can actually see the power wire it's uh it's all ready to go
51:54
too in a older stream we did uh all the awning tent
52:00
Windows um if you guys are interested in some really cool Windows these are the ones
52:07
you want and I'm not trying to sell you on them I'm just telling you
52:13
that instead of having a slider these are vented so when you open
52:18
them up you can actually leave them open if it's raining outside and you can't do that with a
52:25
bunk slider bunk slider the wind's going to blow the rain in
52:33
um so and it's it's a it's a substantial amount of
52:39
opening um now you're not going to get the same opening as that but again the
52:44
benefit is the fact that it does this awning
52:50
thing right here so it sheds the water and you're you can have this open
52:56
on a rainy day and I mean you know who doesn't want to have
53:01
the windows cracked on a rainy day when you're camping in your van that's pretty cool
53:07
right um yeah I'm not sure how many people that keep getting on the stream or new
53:13
or wondering what's going on but uh we are doing a quick overview of a
53:21
client update that came to the shop and wanted to check out progress on the
53:29
van um this is our ecoflow system so I'm
53:35
sure probably people that are still on the stream saw this but um that's where we're placing our ecoflow we're doing
53:41
the 5 kilowatt uh Independence kit so that's our big old 48 volt
53:48
lithium battery and then over here we've got our power hub that we'll be
53:54
installing um really really
54:02
awesome now I would have the swivel seats to show you guys but if you remember last stream I put this swivel
54:09
seat on I had to go back and uh disconnect the power
54:17
because uh the interior cargo lights were not
54:22
working and uh poke a little fun of myself cuz it was pretty hilarious to
54:28
fix so when I go through these Vans I make sure I disconnect all the power to the cargo lights I wrap them up place
54:34
them on the side so that they're never used again in a safe area and then I just kind of forget about it the next
54:40
thing I do is I come over here and I disconnect these ground cables it's just
54:47
a it's just a habit that I do just part of the process of converting a van however I forgot um I'm going to do it
54:56
later but I forgot for testing purposes to reground this so I reground
55:02
this right here but uh that was the reason the interior
55:09
lights weren't working so there was actually no reason for me to take this all out so just to show you even though I
55:16
kind of do this all the time you know funny things can happen
55:21
but anyway this is glad this is off because I can take the I can disconnect the battery and we are going to be
55:26
taking this really cool LED light right here and this LED light is going to be
55:34
connected to this and we're going to have a really cool light so that when you open your
55:42
door the light shines here you can walk in your van don't trip over yourself um
55:49
yeah pretty cool feature
55:55
all right guys that's about it I don't really have anything else I didn't see any other other comments come through
56:01
but make sure you guys are subscribe to the channel hit that notification Bell I go live at random times throughout the
56:06
day throughout the weekend and love to hear you guys uh comments questions in the chat um if you miss this video and
56:13
you're watching it later put that question in the comments anyway I'd love to answer it in a future video um don't
56:19
forget to check out van Builder hq.com we have tons of blog posts on DIY vans
56:25
uh how to build your van power kits uh solar panel I mean like kitchen Galley
56:33
ideas organization ideas we've got a ton of blog posts and uh a lot of great
56:38
pictures from all the shows that we go to throughout the year so check that out vanu hq.com and also check out the DIY
56:45
van build cheat sheet so it's a completely free cheat sheet that I design it is basically an Excel sheet of
56:52
the last three years of all of my Amazon purchases so so if you want to grab it you can go to Van hq.com and uh just put
56:59
your name and email address it'll be sent directly to your inbox it's got over 250 curated items curated means
57:06
that I have organized them so there's electrical there's storage there's solar there's uh the tools section is awesome
57:13
it's all the weird tools that I use like wire crimpers um the PEX a crimpers for
57:20
uh plumbing and stuff like that so check it out DIY van build cheat
57:25
sheet um it's going to help you on your DIY van build or just as a reference for Van products that you um can easily get
57:32
on Amazon but uh yeah DIY van build cheat sheet you can pick it up on vaner
57:37
hq.com all right guys don't forget to share this video if you liked it or share it to somebody that they may need
57:44
this video and help them with their uh van layout or anything like that um but
57:50
yeah that's going to do it for this live stream and uh hope to see you guys on the next
57:58
one
#Custom & Performance Vehicles