[Build] Backpack 2.0 - A Climbing, Hiking, Paddling, Biking, Adventure-mobile

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Hey Expedition Portal! Allow me to introduce myself (as I am a chronic Lurker...). My name is Nate. My wife (Steph) and I gave up the 'typical' american dream and a job as a career firefighter, and her an accountant, about 4 years ago to leave the state where the sky tried to kill us multiple times, the tornado laden, Oklahoma.

I hate when the sky tries to kill me...

Anyway, my wife and I moved to Denver to be closer to the activities we loved. Skiing, hiking, rock climbing, paddling, and biking.

Adventure!!

In the fall of 2015, I lost my dad to cancer. He had been a firefighter for 25 years, retired, and was about 2 years from being able to draw his retirement. He had planned on moving into an RV and traveling across North America.

I was actively trying to get on another fire department in the Denver area.

I don't know how much you know about cancer rates and fire fighters...but it's not too good. I was headed down the same path.

Struggling between the love of that job and wanting to try to live until I'm 100 and see every corner of this globe, my wife helped me pull the trigger...

In January of 2016, we bought a HUGE RV and traveled North America. We traveled from Colorado to Utah, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Cali, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma (...and Nicaragua... but not in the RV)

We are hooked.

We loved the traveling, but HATED the huge RV we were in. It was geared more toward people who had conversations about portable dog fencing and residential refrigerators in their RV's rather than discussions about IPA's, climbing, hiking, and paddling, like what we seek out.

Anyway...

It was natural progression to want to try out the #vanlife.

We sold the RV, and JUST bought a van.

This thread will be it's story. A-Z, Beginning to end, alpha and omega... Okay, maybe I'm getting a bit carried away, but I want to share what we are doing with our van build. I'm sure we will do some stuff wrong, and some stuff right, but in the end, it will be OURS and I want something to be proud of.

This will be primarily focused around our Adventure Blog and our YouTube channel, but will be posting all of the text and videos and most of the pictures in this thread so you don't have to leave Expedition Portal if you don't have to.

At any rate... Hello! and I hope you will follow along! 1st bit of actual content coming up soon!

 

[Corneilius]

Welcome....obligatory "Pics Or It Didn't Happen". What kind of van did you go with?

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Bringing Backpack 2.0 Home.

Now, an introduction of the van! We left Oklahoma on a trip to find a sprinter. There was one or two in the next town over, and there were some as far away as Pennsylvania. We were willing to travel and we were not coming back without one. Stephanie and I loaded up in our little Fiat 500 and took off.

We had a budget of 15,000 and were looking for a 170" hightop NVC3. We were limiting ourselves to the NVC3 because of the added length, height, and the ability to mount a winch in the front bumper. The price was limiting us to the pre 2010 range.

There was a sprinter in Tulsa we checked out that was a 2008 170 NVC3 that they were asking 17,000 for. Since it was the closest one, we figured we may as well look. There was rust around each of the wheel wells in the inside and was rusted through at one spot. RED FLAG. HARD PASS!! lol. I don't want to start out with a rusted through spot. An oil drip later and we were out of there.

We were in route to Chicago to see a few really clean looking ones. Stephanie was checking Craigslist along the way and as we were coming up to St. Louis she found one that looked like it was pretty nice. So she emailed him and got an appointment to check it out. About three hours later we arrived at his place and there were about four sprinters on his property. We had stumbled upon a family owned hardwood flooring business that primarily used sprinters for their service vehicles.

Actually looked over it for a bit and took a test drive it seem like he was in really good shape and for the price of 12,400, we figured that this was the one. I had 190,000 miles and the DPF filter had already been replaced as well as the turbo. After a mild fiasco of trying to find a chase bank to get a cashiers check we exchange keys for check, attached the Fiat to the back of the sprinter and started heading back to Oklahoma where we would begin the build.

Here is a quick little video of the exterior of Backpack 2.0 (with drone flying practice... lol )
(I can't post links yet, so... youtube dot com slash watch?v=YDQ_psuE2Fg)

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Welcome....obligatory "Pics Or It Didn't Happen". What kind of van did you go with?

Thanks so much! Haha! You beat me by like two minutes! I couldn't formulate any more proper sentences last night, hence the delay. lol

 

[ORYGUN HIACE]

Just a real deal steal! Nice work Nate&Steph

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Just a real deal steal! Nice work Nate&Steph

Right?! We thought so too! Even after 2 nights in hotels and the traveling, we still came in about $2,300 under budget. Score! That'll buy a bumper!

 

[Corneilius]

Thanks so much! Haha! You beat me by like two minutes! I couldn't formulate any more proper sentences last night, hence the delay. lol

Ha, I guess I should have been more patient. Nice van.

 

[irlylikevans]

Super nice van. I'm looking forward to your build! I wish I had the courage to take the plunge like you.

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Super nice van. I'm looking forward to your build! I wish I had the courage to take the plunge like you.

Thanks so much! I'm pretty bad at motivating other people, but one of the things that motivates me is when I see an old guy say; "I regret not..."

Wow...

That really gets me going. I would HATE to be nearing the end of my useable time in life and legit regret not doing something just because I couldn't.

It's definitely not easy, and definitely has it's struggles; but it's all about moving forward, ya know?

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Removing The Floor of our Sprinter - Prepping the DIY Campervan: EP 2

Youtube Video -->[video]https://goo.gl/k3RezP[/video]

If you want to see all of the pictures and another block of descriptive text, and the youtube video, check out the blog post at: adventureinabackpack.com/how-to-prep-a-campervan-floor-for-a-diy-campervan-build/ , Otherwise... Just keep reading!

Welcome to the very first episode of our camper van build's how to section. Let's jump right in. The first thing that we did whenever we got our camper van was remove the old flooring. The floor was covered in a three-quarter inch plywood material that was not very good to have as the base of the camper van build. Removing it, fortunately, was a pretty easy process.

In our Sprinter, there were tiedowns all up and down the length of the floor that need to be removed. This is accomplished by using a torx key (There area link to ALL the tools we used in the Blog Post Above).

After all of the bolts were removed it was time to pull up the plywood. We started to pull the plywood and realize that the plywood was also held down by Velcro. Although this is not a big deal, it just took a little extra muscle. In the front of one of the pieces of plywood there was a rivet. Rivets are removed by simply drilling off the head of the rivet with a drill bit that is slightly bigger than the hole of the rivet.

Once we got all the plywood out we cleaned the floor. We cleaned the floor with just water and some degreaser. It always kind of makes me nervous cleaning metal with water, but it was necessary to get up all the old grease that was on the floor.
After we cleaned the floor and inspected for rust we set up a fan inside of the van to dry out any remaining moisture.

Luckily we found very little rust. The rest we did find was able to be cleaned up with some sandpaper and a quick coat of Rustoleum.

 

[RememberTheFallen]

Looking forward to see where this goes!

My wife and I are about to do the same as you next month. I am leaving EMS for good (8 more shifts!) While I do not have a cancer risk like firemen do as a paramedic, I find the job to be soul sucking.

We are just budgeting 3 months on the road because we have cats and the MIL doesn't wanna watch them longer.

May I ask what your new career is?

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Looking forward to see where this goes!

My wife and I are about to do the same as you next month. I am leaving EMS for good (8 more shifts!) While I do not have a cancer risk like firemen do as a paramedic, I find the job to be soul sucking.

We are just budgeting 3 months on the road because we have cats and the MIL doesn't wanna watch them longer.

May I ask what your new career is?

Thanks so much! I hope it's expeditionportal worthy by the time we are done! haha

That's so cool to hear that you are making the jump! I know what you mean about EMS work. I did it for just a bit before I got on the fire department, but I didn't really do it long enough to get burned out. I did see the toll it took on the medics we worked with (we didn't run ALS engines or ambulances. Ambulances were contracted out by the hospital) and it seemed like they were either crazy, or hated their life... :/

We have two dogs we will be taking with us. It will be a challenge...but we don't really have any other choice. Maybe dogs are a little more apt to going outside than cats are though... IDK...

New career is two-fold. We have been running our Adventure Blog for over a year now, but it's not making enough money to call it a career yet...lol. Travel blogs do indeed work...but they take SO long to mature to the point that they can make enough money to put food on the table...well...we won't really have much of a table in the van... but you get where I'm going... lol

To have an actual 'money maker', Steph and I have started up a Small Business Consulting gig where we help small businesses grow. Stephanie has a Masters of Business Administration and is crazy smart. She writes business plans, financial forecasting, growth planning, and other stuff to make business plan for growth and look good for investors and/or business loans from banks. I do web design, graphic design, photography, videography, search engine optimization (making a website show up higher on google), and social media management.

 

[RememberTheFallen]

Awesome!

Thanks for the info. It is always nice to see other people making it after quitting the rat race. I am super excited but nervous at the same time.

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Awesome!

Thanks for the info. It is always nice to see other people making it after quitting the rat race. I am super excited but nervous at the same time.

No problem! If you ever need anything, feel free to reach out!

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Removing the Seats of our Sprinter. Ep 3

New Update! We have been doing more deconstruction than we have editing videos, but I'm getting caught up.

https://adventureinabackpack.com/vanlife-tutorial-how-to-remove-seats-from-a-mercedes-sprinter/

[video]https://youtu.be/pXJcQgiO1oY[/video]

Those seats had to go! One of the first steps we needed to do in our DIY Mercedes Sprinter Campervan Conversion was to remove the seats. We needed to clean under the seats. We needed to not tear up the seats during the conversion process. We needed to get the seats out of the way, and lastly, we will be installing swivel seats.

Removing the seats was pretty straightforward. The bolts that needed to be removed were some kind of star looking bolt that I have not googled the name, but I'm sure somebody will let me know what it's actually called. At any rate, I was able to get them out with a standard socket and ratchet.

The bases of the seats were held in with 4 bolts per seat. There was also a torx bolt that held the seatbelt to the seat. Lastly, there is an electrical connector under the seat that can be squeezed and separated.

Up next is removing the headliner!