The plan
My plan is to have something I can securely take mountain bikes and have as much comfort as I can fit in the van. So it needs to be warm, have heating, hot shower, toilet, garage (thus a fixed bed), cooking facilities and a few other bits. I also want to be able to accommodate a decent size social gathering of 6 to 8 people, as well as make it 4 birth.
What you see above isn't the first iteration, and it's not the final one either in all likelihood, but it's very close to what I'm pretty sure will be the final plan.
Main features, from left to right (front to back of van) are:
- Double seat on the driver's side and single seat on the passenger's. These will expand out to make another bed.
- Coat storage
- Shower
- Kitchen
- Fixed bed over garage
I'm also planning on having a lot of electrical power, so a large 300Ah battery bank and 690W of solar. This is because I plan on using electricity as my primary energy source, such as cooking with an induction hob and heating water and air. I will be having redundancy in the system in the form of a diesel heater. The idea of using electricity gets difficult when heating water, as it requires a lot of energy, so to get past this I'm going to install a calorifier to take heat from the engine whilst driving.
In the garage I'm going to have slide out trays for bikes to go on. I may have to have them mounted transversely, along with the bed, in order to fit them in.
Acquisition
After much searching in a very dire second hand van market, I bought a 2017 Peugeot Boxer L4H2 (extra long wheelbase, high roof) in October. Despite having 188k miles on the clock, it's in excellent condition.
On the way home everything electric started failing. Turns out the alternator died. Thankfully my RAC membership came in use, and I got it back to the dealership who replaced the alternator.
After that it got home just fine.
Day 2
I decided to give it a proper drive around some local roads, get used to the van, see how it is to drive something other than motorway. I, of course, can't have nice things, and subsequently cuddled a stone wall with the van.
Oh well, that's what fully comp insurance is for I guess...
Preparing the van
First real step is to get the bulkhead out. There's a selection of bolts holding it in place, two of which have rounded off heads (for whatever reason) so you need to use a dremel (or similar) to cut a groove in the top so you can use a screwdriver to remove them.
I also removed the ply lining the following day. Turns out there's also some factory installed plastic fiberboard type panels behind them, which were a bugger to remove. It was all mounted with lots of plastic push fit things, and required use of a mini crowbar to get them out.
I then taped up the floor to get an idea of the layout.
After that I removed the headliner, so I can get to all the nooks and crannies to fill with insulation.
Rear view camera install
I wanted to improve visibility as there's a huge blind spot which is the rear of the van. You can hide a whole car behind the van and not see it in the mirrors. I went for one of the kits from China that replaces the top rear light. I also bought a pre-made adapter to solder the brake line to the existing socket, instead of tapping in to it. You could make your own, as it's simply a TE Connectivity MULTILOCK 040 2 way connector, but to get the parts required ordering in bulk.
The kit came with a 10 metre video cable that also has a power line. I believe this is supposed to be used to tap in to reverse light line to turn on the screen automatically, but I'm using it to get power to the camera as I'll have it on permanently.
I routed the video cable in to the existing wire loom split conduit. I designed and 3D printed a tool to help with this, as it was quite tedious trying to split open the conduit and feed it in entirely by hand. This tool worked like a zipper to feed the wire in and made quick work of it.
Sliding door handle
The OEM handle is OK from a commercial use point of view, but it's not super friendly in my opinion. I've taken an attempt at improving it, but it's still prototype at this stage. I'll get a feel for how this one goes and then improve on it. The beauty of 3D printing is that you can iteratively improve on a design easily.
So my first thought is that a 45º handle would make things a lot easier. You could push down to open, and pull up to close. I still stand by this, however this doesn't work in practice; the handle hits the side of the van before the door fully opens.
This is the same as the first attempt except it's now vertical. It's still nicer than the stock one, probably because the longer handle makes it easer to work the latching mechanism, but I feel like there's room for improvement.
Swivel seats
First thing that makes it more camper-like is to get the seats facing the wrong way. I would've liked to have a single passenger seat, however currently they're super expensive (£500 used) and hard to find. Same for driver's seats, too. So I've gone for a swivel base for the double seat. This does have the advantage of having more seating options, but at the expense of being able to easily get in to the cab from the van body.
(I forgot to take a picture of just the base in place, sorry)
The driver's side does look like a kids chair in comparison, probably because it's leant back a bit, but it's only a centimetre or so lower.
Auxiliary air suspension
One of the issues with campers is that the rear suspension is always under heavy load, meaning the suspension is always half compressed and resting on the bump stops. Air suspension is a way to counteract the affects of this. The outcome is improved stability and ride quality, plus it can give a means to level the van. Auxiliary air suspension is a set of air bags that replace the bump stops and it's a (supposedly) super easy install. Protip: remove the spare wheel so you have lots of room to move about.
It wasn't all smooth, of course. A van with this many miles, even though it's not that old, is going to have some corrosion. Unfortunately this made the removal process of the bump stop cups quite difficult; I had to enlist the help of a friend who ended up welding a socket to the cup to get the purchase required. It's a pretty shit design.
Repairing the van
I took the van to Orion Motors, who did an awesome job replacing the side panel as well as some other bits from the incident not pictured above. The panel seam is better than factory finish!
The sliding door no longer squeaks, either!
Next steps
The next thing to do is to get the external features in; windows, tanks, solar, etc. Once this is done I'll start routing conduit for wiring, followed by insulation.