DirtWhiskey
Western Dirt Rat
Lots of great info here so I'll try not to repeat it. I lived in a Westphalia for a few years back when I was a dirty hippy doing map work on public lands. Well I'm still a dirty hippy so... Oh how I miss those days. Have lots of friends with Sprinters and Sportsmobiles. If I went van, I'd get an older Sportsmobile with solid axles and a wide variety of power trains. Fairly simple to work on, can be made to have bigger/softer tires, solid axles, diesel options and fairly low profile, can be had for 60-80k and modded for under 100k.
Main question for full timing is the bathroom/shower and cold weather. I've seen some dope bathroom/shower combos in vans but making vans cold weather worthy is a different story. It's doable but way harder than a TC with lots of options where everything is in the insulated envelope. If going pop-up, very few of the newer ones (OEV, etc al) have a real bathroom and shower. Might not be important for you but mission critical for me (read: the wifey). Seen some decent bath setups in the flat deck side entry Hallmarks, Outfitter has a side entry pop up called the Juno which is cool, not flatbed specific but would still work well on a deck. But the soft sides on all of these are sub optimal for my use. I like it quiet, a little more secure and most don't have any cabinet storage up high. Too bad somebody doesn't make a modern version of an Alaskan camper: hard side pop up, removable, made of composites and a full bath.
So we made some compromises and went hard side flatbed side entry. Only off the shelf units that didn't involve a year or two year lead times was the Northstar American Hero which is a unicorn. We lucked out and found one that fit on my flatbed. The main reason for the flatbed is the additional storage and boxes that you can install and the side entry. We went with a truck camper for all of the reasons stated above by Trestle. Choose your truck , choose your gvwr, tires, powertrain etc. With the height of the truck, we have to be careful about which trails are go on. But 70% of our travel is in the Southwest and not on Forest roads. If we want to go deep we park the camper unload it and explore without the camper. It's a series of compromises for sure.
Main question for full timing is the bathroom/shower and cold weather. I've seen some dope bathroom/shower combos in vans but making vans cold weather worthy is a different story. It's doable but way harder than a TC with lots of options where everything is in the insulated envelope. If going pop-up, very few of the newer ones (OEV, etc al) have a real bathroom and shower. Might not be important for you but mission critical for me (read: the wifey). Seen some decent bath setups in the flat deck side entry Hallmarks, Outfitter has a side entry pop up called the Juno which is cool, not flatbed specific but would still work well on a deck. But the soft sides on all of these are sub optimal for my use. I like it quiet, a little more secure and most don't have any cabinet storage up high. Too bad somebody doesn't make a modern version of an Alaskan camper: hard side pop up, removable, made of composites and a full bath.
So we made some compromises and went hard side flatbed side entry. Only off the shelf units that didn't involve a year or two year lead times was the Northstar American Hero which is a unicorn. We lucked out and found one that fit on my flatbed. The main reason for the flatbed is the additional storage and boxes that you can install and the side entry. We went with a truck camper for all of the reasons stated above by Trestle. Choose your truck , choose your gvwr, tires, powertrain etc. With the height of the truck, we have to be careful about which trails are go on. But 70% of our travel is in the Southwest and not on Forest roads. If we want to go deep we park the camper unload it and explore without the camper. It's a series of compromises for sure.
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