I have been wanting a camper van for quite a while and really looking at the older VW's. My wife and I and our baby boy LOVE hiking, but we live 2-3 hours from the good trails. So day trips involve a lot of tiresome driving. Car camping can be tiresome too with the time to setup and tear down camp. Thus the desire for a camper to get us out into the woods for the weekends and provide shelter, cooking, and a shower would be nice (requested by the wife).
Well it just happens that my father, an Airstream enthusiast, has decided to part with his 1995 B-190 camper built on the Ford E350 platform. He's giving me a great deal on it that I can't pass up. So I'm pretty excited and have been reading up on what I can do to make the B-190 more capable for weekend adventures. We go to get the van in March and have our first big, two week trip planned for May (mostly paved roads though, visiting state parks). I'm going to keep the mods mild to start with until I've used the van a bit and make sure it's what we want to keep for a while.
If we decide to keep it, then my plans include:
1. Removing the 1980's look pin stripe graphics, paint bumpers black, etc. I want to get the aesthetics away from "grandpa's RV" and more to "adventure van".
2. 4" or 6" lift (Action Van suspension kit), I can install it myself, no problem.
3. Beefy wheels with mud/gravel tires
4. Further down the road install a rear differential locker of some kind (air, automatic, something)
I'm getting the van at a real bargain price, so I can't really see throwing $5,000 worth of Aluminess bumpers on it or a $12,000 four wheel drive system. With the horrible weight, high center of gravity, and terrible departure angle that the B-190 has I can't really imagine doing any rock crawling with it or getting into anything so bad that I would need 4X4. I'm thinking that for fire roads and some mud the lift, better tires, and rear locker will get me 95% of the places I would want to go in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
I'll post up some photos from our trip (12 hr drive one way) next month to get the van. In the meantime, any input on the general direction I'm going with this van?
Kirk Bristol
Well it just happens that my father, an Airstream enthusiast, has decided to part with his 1995 B-190 camper built on the Ford E350 platform. He's giving me a great deal on it that I can't pass up. So I'm pretty excited and have been reading up on what I can do to make the B-190 more capable for weekend adventures. We go to get the van in March and have our first big, two week trip planned for May (mostly paved roads though, visiting state parks). I'm going to keep the mods mild to start with until I've used the van a bit and make sure it's what we want to keep for a while.
If we decide to keep it, then my plans include:
1. Removing the 1980's look pin stripe graphics, paint bumpers black, etc. I want to get the aesthetics away from "grandpa's RV" and more to "adventure van".
2. 4" or 6" lift (Action Van suspension kit), I can install it myself, no problem.
3. Beefy wheels with mud/gravel tires
4. Further down the road install a rear differential locker of some kind (air, automatic, something)
I'm getting the van at a real bargain price, so I can't really see throwing $5,000 worth of Aluminess bumpers on it or a $12,000 four wheel drive system. With the horrible weight, high center of gravity, and terrible departure angle that the B-190 has I can't really imagine doing any rock crawling with it or getting into anything so bad that I would need 4X4. I'm thinking that for fire roads and some mud the lift, better tires, and rear locker will get me 95% of the places I would want to go in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
I'll post up some photos from our trip (12 hr drive one way) next month to get the van. In the meantime, any input on the general direction I'm going with this van?
Kirk Bristol
I'll have to call and arrange a time to stop in to get a first-hand look at what the potential of this rig is. You can probably help to "sell" the wife on the idea of making our Airstream more off-road capable too. :-D
