The Van Conversion part 1

Hi guys, I’ve put together a bit of info on the van conversion cos I thought a few of you might be interested in how we got it together 🙂  Enjoy!

I initially had the idea of converting a van to do a short trip around the top of Scandinavia.  To explore that wilderness by camper van seemed like the perfect choice as I wanted to be free from worry about accommodation etc.  That quickly morphed into a more ambitious plan for both the van and the trip!

Selection of the Van

Although people have converted many different types of van successfully, for me buying a VW transporter was always likely to be the right choice.  I’ve owned a few vehicles from VW Group in the past which have always been comfortable and reliable- the only question then was what age, condition and features should it have?  I quickly realised that second hand values for T5 Transporters are both high and robust; I needed to lose my prejudices about what constituted high mileage to get something for a realistic price.  There were vans on sale that already had 250,000 miles on the clock.  I considered this far too much but settled for a range between 100,000 and 150,000 as the best compromise between useful life left and cost.  The specification of the van was another brain teaser.  I knew that I wanted a hatchback tailgate and probably a nice paint job eventually but would it be worth spending a lot extra on these things, especially the paint, when I was already doing a big conversion job on it anyway and would almost certainly damage it during the process.  Long or Short wheelbase was another big decision to make but in the end I chose the practicality of driving and parking a SWB van (which fits in a normal size space) over the extra room of the LWB.

In the end I found Rosy for sale (now renamed Seline… in honour of a hurricane survived!) in north London.  As a standard white panel van with 103,000 miles on the clock she represented the perfect blank canvass and with a full service history I hoped that she would prove to be a reliable investment.  Having parted with £5000 in notes I felt like a threshold had been crossed.  This really was happening and needed to get my stuff together and get the van converted and ready to go.

Specification

The interesting thing about converting a van from scratch is that there is no template or formula for what the layout of it should be.  Obviously the VW T5 Californias have a certain layout but there is no requirement to follow this.  If it works for you then its ok!  This left me with the problem of working out exactly what I was going to do when living in the van; having no experience of even using a camper van before made this somewhat difficult!  Nevertheless, a wild camping trip with Aoife to Devon at the beginning of June help to crystallise the ideas that I had already had:

• Pop up roof- a must for someone as tall as me.
• Tailgate- barn doors didn’t cut it in the rain as it could fall straight into the van.
• Side windows in the front of the van only- it isn’t nice to sleep with your head next to a window.
• Sink with running water and hob using camping gas.
• No toilet or shower- the van space is too small to make this realistic.
• More cupboard space for food and clothes than a factory California conversion- you need quite a bit of stuff to be comfortable.
• A fridge.

The trip also had the added benefit of getting me excited about the trip ahead.  Even camping in an unconverted van was a big step up in ease and fun from using a tent!

The Build

I decided that it would take me two months to convert the van and get it ready to go.  This coincided nicely with when Aoife finished work and would be ready to go.  Of course, having set myself a comfortable deadline I then proceeded to fill up almost four weeks of this time with other (fun) activities.  Everything took longer than expected and I came across many issues that I hadn’t anticipated.  A very early example was that I assumed having a woodworking workshop at my house and building tools would mean I had everything I needed to do this.  How wrong I was!  I spent the first two days going back and forth between the house, Screwfix and Halfords to pick up the right size and type of sockets and drivers to even work on the van (ever heard of a Spline bit?  No, I hadn’t either!)

Having got all my tools together, I started but stripping the inside of anything that I either didn’t need or didn’t want damaged.  Everything was boxed and kept; having already looked for some spare parts for the van I knew that everything that came off could be sold.  In the end, I sold both back doors, the roof rack, the bulkhead and a few other odds and sods for a tidy sum making a nice little addition to the budget.

The first job was to do all the dirty modification work namely the roof, windows and tailgate.  The roof was manufactured as a kit which I needed to pick up from Manchester and I picked up the fridge and bed frame at the same time.  I made a separate trip to Barnsley to pick up the tailgate which I got from a scrapyard for a song (yes, cheap enough to be worth the 8 hour round trip!).  So having got everything, and with a deep breath I started cutting holes out of the van!

Thats all for now…  More about fitting out the van next time!