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

[_hein_]

Great that you are taking the time to document. But so far you have embarked on a very labor intensive build which may not be the best practice for others to follow. Wish we could have helped you with one of our adapters for the fan install and some Thinsulate(TM) accoustic/thermal insulation that is engineered for vehicles. We can probably still be of value to you with some of our other Sprinter build items. How are you mounting your solar panels? The best way is to support the load off the roof rails. Where are you mounting your house batteries? Do you have an electrical plan/schematic? Has that van been maintained properly? I would suggest running it over to Dennis at Linden Engineering in Golden for a full checkup before you hit the road.

Sorry to be sort of matter of fact and a bit critical. We are here to help.
All the best,
Hein
Impact, Inc
54l 49O 5O98

Our coolest Sprinter product: https://youtu.be/Lu_KqLADXUQ?list=PL6hY8o9nJCeIoAMc5x_s1gE6S2_XH6Z4i

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Great that you are taking the time to document. But so far you have embarked on a very labor intensive build which may not be the best practice for others to follow. Wish we could have helped you with one of our adapters for the fan install and some Thinsulate(TM) accoustic/thermal insulation that is engineered for vehicles. We can probably still be of value to you with some of our other Sprinter build items. How are you mounting your solar panels? The best way is to support the load off the roof rails. Where are you mounting your house batteries? Do you have an electrical plan/schematic? Has that van been maintained properly? I would suggest running it over to Dennis at Linden Engineering in Golden for a full checkup before you hit the road.

Sorry to be sort of matter of fact and a bit critical. We are here to help.
All the best,
Hein
Impact, Inc
54l 49O 5O98

Thanks so much! It's definitely labor intensive and is definitely not suited for somebody with out any kind of mechanical skills. I REALLY wish I would have seen the fan adapters before installing those. After several HEAVY rainstorms we are still dry as a bone, but those adapters would have made for a cleaner install. But Hey, that's why I'm making these videos; to educate somebody on how to do this stuff and inform if I find a better way to do things after the install is done (like those adapters). The house batteries are mounted in the 'garage' area right in front of the wheel wells centered up. (700 amp hours of batteries). The interior electric is already finished. I'll upload some of the random pictures in a post here in a minute after I pull them off of my phone. The solar panels will be fastened to an Aluminess roof rack. I have heard of Linden Engineering a bit and seems like a great shop. We are actually doing the build in Oklahoma where we are also taking care of some family issues. We will think about running it by there when we have to go back to Denver to get it registered.

That door prop is pretty awesome! Definitely a good thing for just cracking the door, eh?

I've got no problem with constructive criticism. I wouldn't make it as a blogger if I couldn't take criticism. lol

 

[_hein_]

Thank you for your gracious and understanding reply.
PM your address. I'll send you one of the door props.
Didn't realize you were back in Oklahoma. My wife and
I grew up in Kansas and we lived in Wichita before
moving out to the PNW. We have family in Denver.

 

[WanderingBison]

We are FINALLY starting to see that! We will be in Ottawa in mid July. I'll have to hit you up on things to see between Ottawa and BC. That's a lot of ground to cover and I know there is a LOT there!

Hey Nate,

Hit me up on your cross Canada trek if you'd like. I've been in Winnipeg, Manitoba for five years and I'd be happy to share some spots to visit with you and give you some tips about Ontario on your way to Ottawa too. You're also welcome to an urban parking spot while your here - it's a Condo tower but if you guys need something in the city.

We just ordered a 2017 Transit to convert and eventually full time in so I'd love to see how you're doing. The van won't be here until July (or August ... argh) so I'll be learning but not much sharing.

Thank you for sharing your work!

Let me know.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Thank you for your gracious and understanding reply.
PM your address. I'll send you one of the door props.
Didn't realize you were back in Oklahoma. My wife and
I grew up in Kansas and we lived in Wichita before
moving out to the PNW. We have family in Denver.

No problem buddy! Yeah, I still have a house in Denver, but it's being rented out. I've been traveling for the last year-ish in an RV and sold it at the start of the year to build this Sprinter. All of my family is in Oklahoma so I have tools here and I had to take care of some family stuff while I was here. But believe me...I don't claim Oklahoma as home. lol

We absolutely LOVED traveling through the PNW. Honestly, some of the most fun I've had in my last year. We didn't get to spend enough time there this past time and missed a lot, but we will be back!

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Installing Walls in our DIY Campervan

Let's have an update shall we? So, being up front...we are actually pretty much done and have already taken a road trip, but due to several things plus a computer that has a hard time rendering 4k time lapse videos, the video editing process has taken a while. Fear not! We are rapidly catching up. Installing walls, Installing the ceiling, building cabinets, electric and solar, plasti-diping the exterior, swivel seats, and flooring is coming right up! Thanks for bearing with me. Without further hesitation... I present...

Installing Walls:

Full (more descriptive) Blog Post: http://adventureinabackpack.com/installing-walls-in-our-diy-campervan/

Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVLwUqYuRhI

After we installed insulation in our DIY campervan, it was time to build the walls. Finally, the part you'd see in the final product of the build.

We opted to NOT run wiring in the walls as we were not 100% sure exactly where we would need wiring. We opted to run all of our wiring external the walls in a wire chase and wire loom. It will still look good and finished, but will be a lot more accessible, which is always welcome...

We attached 1x2's to the body which then gave us a good attachment point for the walls and ceiling. The walls are made of a thin particleboard with a dry erase marker board covering. It cost about $13 per 4x8 sheet at home depot/lowes.

We chose this material because of how easy it would be to clean off. It will literally be just a wipe of a rag and it's clean. How nice!!

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE!!! The way we scribed the wheel wells and the walls is NOT recommended. Since making this, we have found a MUCH better way to scribe those close cutouts. The way we did it will give you a super rough estimate and will work in a pinch, but PLEASE only use that method on a cardboard template and not on the actual board itself. We will make a separate video talking about a better way to scribe out a cut like that in the near future.

All in all, we are pretty happy with how it turned out. If we could have done 1 think differently, we would have given just a little bit more of a gap all the way around the panels to allow for expansion. We did have one board expand a bit which caused bowing that we (Steph) had to trim after the fact to fit.

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Installing the Ceiling in Backpack 2.0, our DIY Campervan.

Full Blog Post: http://adventureinabackpack.com/installing-ceilings-in-diy-campervan/
Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqj-Bepup4

One of the first "statement" pieces of our DIY Campervan is it's ceiling. Stephanie came up with the idea to use old/barn wood for the ceiling to give it a rustic look. Mother nature felt it necessary to blow down and break our fence and we took the oppourtunity to upcycle the broken fence into our ceiling. Don't feed the landfills! Anyway, the process was pretty straightforward. After taking the panels off of the fence, we sealed them with some polyacrylic clear. We didn't sand them as sanding them made them look new again, which is not the look we were going for. During the 'destruction' process, most of the panels broke in some length or another which gave us a very random set of planks to work with. Working from the center out with black lathe screws, we attached the planks to the furring strips in from the 'building walls' step.

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Installing Cabinets in Backpack 2.0, our DIY Overlanding Van.

Full Blog Post: http://adventureinabackpack.com/van-life-build-building-custom-cabinets/

Youtube Video (Epic Timelapse): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X12lHY4nkAY

You know that feeling you get in a project where you feel like everything is actually coming together? We are there in our project...

If you have been watching/reading our youtube videos and keeping up with this build, we have tired to do a good job of doing actual tutorials of all of the steps. Cabinets is not going to be like that... We are not cabinetmakers and although this is not our first set of cabinets we have made, they are the first set of cabinets that we needed to look good. (all the others were 2x4 and osb cabinets for garage workbenches and storage, lol) At any rate, I didn't feel comfortable teaching anybody how to make cabinets. That being said, I believe they turned our satisfactory and my goal of this video and Steph's goal of the blog post was less about a step by step guide, and more about opening up your brain to how you can do this yourself. If you only watch one of our videos that we have put out so far, this is the one to watch. At any rate, feel free to ask any questions about the cabinet build process and I will answer them the best I can. I look forward to the feedback on this one. It's all coming together.

Yes, there are pictures below, but if you want to REALLY see the final outcome, watch the last minute or so of the youtube video: https://youtu.be/X12lHY4nkAY?t=18m54s

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Full Body PlastiDip on Our DIY Sprinter Campervan

Plasti Dip!!

Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCiwsU3NKlg

Blog Post: http://adventureinabackpack.com/full-body-plastidip-diy-sprinter-campervan/

Covering our DIY Campervan in Plastidip was not part of the initial plan. When we were planning out how we were going to make the outside of our van look more adventurous than the scratched up white paint with the faded remains of a plumbing van sticker, we were planning on having our van vinyl wrapped. To our surprise, when we were calling around for quotes on vinyl, we were getting quotes from $5,000 all the way to nearly $10,000! What? That's nearly as much as we paid for the van itself! We had planned on spending $5,000 on a really good quality exterior coating of some kind and having the exterior painted in an auto body shop was also out of the question. Actually, we couldn't even get somebody to give us a quote for that, they just kept saying it would be 'too expensive'. How about give us a quote then let us decide if it's too expensive? Sheesh... Anyway, one of the sprinter groups we are in on facebook has a member who sprays Plasti-dip as part of his job and after checking out some of his pictures of completed projects, we were floored at how awesome it looked! We started investigating this DIY option and after seeing that we could do it for well under $1000 (about $700 after it was all said and done with), we thought we should give it a go. It was pretty straightforward and I would recommend this as a cheaper alternative to vinyl if you are a detail oriented DIYer. And if you are not very detail oriented, there are places that spray this stuff professionally which would still be significantly cheaper than a vinyl wrap.

Our #1 Biggest Tip: Don't spray when it is warm, breezy, and in the direct sunlight. The plastidip will start to solidify before it hits the body panel and will cause the finish to be fuzzy. Check the video to see how we fixed this, and the linked blog post for more of Stephs tips.

Overall we are happy with how it turned out. Even if we have to re-apply in 3-5 years, we can reapply about 10 times for the same cost of one vinyl wrap. If you have any questions, we'd love to hear them! Let us know how it looks? Good color choice for an adventure van?

Oh, and... after PlastiDipping the Sprinter van, we couldn’t help but notice how bad the wheels and tires looked with this awesome paint job. So, although the project ended up costing less than $800, we ended up spending another $1600 or so on new wheels and tires… totally worth it!

 

[4x4pair]

Looks great!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Looks great!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

Thanks so much!!

 

[Anton2k3]

Hey guys, nice work on the sprinter! We're just starting out with our build so nice to see what other people have done. I notice you didn't put a vapour barrier in before then wall lining went up. Just a heads up, out first van (transit) was built like this before we ripped it out and started again...it rotted from the inside out. We ended up chopping half the roof off and replacing it. Gets condensation on the metal parts with no barrier. I know the foam helps as a barrier, but a sheet of plastic before cladding would help a lot.

 

[Nate_Yarbrough]

Hey guys, nice work on the sprinter! We're just starting out with our build so nice to see what other people have done. I notice you didn't put a vapour barrier in before then wall lining went up. Just a heads up, out first van (transit) was built like this before we ripped it out and started again...it rotted from the inside out. We ended up chopping half the roof off and replacing it. Gets condensation on the metal parts with no barrier. I know the foam helps as a barrier, but a sheet of plastic before cladding would help a lot.

Thanks so much!! I guess only time will tell, but we are well past that at this point. As we said in the video, we hated the insulation process because of the lack of good solid information. From the information we have gathered, it doesn't matter if there is a barrier or not because there are people with rust on BOTH side of that issue.