Who does the conversion? I have been thinking about that route, specifically on an FE gas.
Me. Plenty of experience, have a shop, and people say my work is better than what most convertors do, and I can customize it exactly as I need instead of working to fit into someone else's idea of the market. However this is a big undertaking in time and capital, knowledge and frustration, so having an "independent" convertor/smaller shop do the conversion will probably be much less expensive than the most well known convertors and from what I've seen, about the same quality, although I am still shopping for next rig. Worth exploring to save some money on the build so you have money to actually build/have it built and for travels.
I too am thinking of the gas engine. Having owned several diesels and two now including a diesel Sprinter, I was sold on the benefits of diesel, primarily safety and fuel economy. However, the fuel economy differential of the new gasoline engines is minimal to the diesels, and once adding in costs of DEF, maintenance, etc, I've calculated that most Diesel engines will take 100,000 to 150,000 miles to pay back the added upfront costs of that engine option, which makes no sense, as the time it would take to make that back by driving 150,000 miles, let's just say at least 7 years, I'd have doubled my money spent on the engine cost with investments and likely sold the vehicle for a newer one by then anyways, so why carry around DEF, manage it, deal with fewer fuel stations and pumps offering diesel, and adding travel frustrations when traveling in zones without low-sulphur diesel? Add in traveling with others that all have gasoline engines which would prevent sharing of spare fuel resources. Plus the performance of the gas engine, reduced noise, smell, smoke and particulates, plus DEF issues (obtaining, maintenance and shut downs), why do it to save a few hundred bucks a year in fuel 5-10 years from now? I'm all for saving fuel and adding range, but a payback that never pays back without much other benefits anymore is a hard one to justify to my decision matrix.
