15 Smart and Stupid Details On My Van | RAM Promaster camper conversion

My friends, I put 40,000 miles on this van this year traveling the lower 48 United States riding my mountain bike the entire way, so I have this video to tell you all the

smart

and

stupid

things I've done. I continued with this truck. This is a 2019 Ram Promaster 2500 with a 136 wheelbase. I have a link in the description with all the nitty-gritty

details

about the build. I have a spreadsheet. I have maybe four or five other videos. about this truck, so go there if this is the first time you're hearing about this and want more information. It's just about the fun things I've learned over the past year, so first and foremost, the

smart

est thing I've done on this.

The van was taken to Colorado Springs when it was completely empty and they equipped it with wayfarer vans. They plug and play

camper

vans. You present yourself. They take four hours. They build it and you're ready. They tell you to build your first truck. for your enemy your second for your friend and the third for you I don't have time to build three different vans, let's go now, but wayfarer vans have built hundreds of these

camper

van kits and now they're moving on to four transits. They have a lot of experience and they've done it well, of course, there are a million things you could criticize and say, "Well, this would be great or this would be better, but to start working from the beginning, trade your time." for your money and experience its totally worth it most of the things you see here come with the wayfarer kit this box here i made it with my friends it didn't come with the kit the bed came with the kit the kitchen sink this came with the kit, the floor came with the kit, the ceiling came with the kit, these really cool magnetic blackout curtains came with the kit and I also added a fan in my kit, it came with wool insulation, some metal side panels, some top panels of fabric.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something in the link in the description. If you're really curious about it, it would have taken a lot longer to do it myself or have someone else do this for me as it was, it was only about 90 days. from me saying hey, let's do it, let's pull the trigger until wayfair was able to get me on the calendar and get it going. It was a really great process to get up and running so quickly, but of course I have to have a couple of criticisms about this whole thing. I think the first

stupid

thing in my truck is the sink situation.

The Wayfarer kit comes with a kind of sink pump that you try to put the soap in your hands and you try to pump out the water. and it's just like no, we can't have this, so I bought a new sink faucet that was compatible with an electric pump and I ran it and it was still making a mess of water, I turned on the faucet, I washed my hands. Water was still splashing everywhere, so to solve that problem I bought a small foot paddle. You simply click your foot once and the water starts spinning. You don't make a big mess everywhere, but it's such a difficult thing to deal with. to take out the paddle every time you wash your hands, I really learned a lot from this whole process, what I really need to do is get a knee paddle or a knee button so my knee can touch it somewhere small and inconspicuous with a small button, it doesn't need to be something that big, so I'm still repeating this.

Another smart move was to use the swivel seats and footrest to turn this into a workstation. I spent a lot of time here working. on my laptop eating or just sitting and looking out the window at a national park, which was very stupid of me. I didn't think I wanted a refrigerator for some reason. I thought I wouldn't have many fresh vegetables. In the van you need a refrigerator, all kinds of cold drinks, things that you save for leftovers and that you can eventually take just to have some cold things after the hot days. I don't know what I was thinking, but the refrigerator is a must-have item.

The smart and absolutely critical thing I did on the van was have this cute little blackout divider blind. It's so nice to have privacy in an instant. I have magnets on this thing so the blind can reach right to the interior plastic of the van and almost no light leaks in, it's not perfect but it's really good, it's not intended to be a super stealthy van setup and I'm sorry if you have a fan on top of your truck, you are not stealthy, anyone who knows knows that. Oh, fan means there are people inside, valuables, but if the bad guys come by my truck and put a flashlight against the windows, there's nothing to see unless they've already seen me from afar, they're taking a big risk coming in. and find me nothing and while we're on the subject of the old fan here, I think it's actually stupid to only have one, this thing can't push or suck in air unless you have another gaping hole, like your windows down or doors. it's a little cracked, it's almost useless to have just one fan, if I had to do it all over again I would definitely do two fans because you could actually move the air, it seems silly to say because everyone getting the vent fan is what everyone does, but I feel like this van isn't insulated enough anymore, enough air is already passing through the various weather seals and the bad roof or whatever, I don't know, a normal fan would have been a desk fan. alright, instead of this like 300 fans, another super smart thing we did on the van was build the solar energy system.

You just have to watch a lot of YouTube videos, make a lot of mistakes, correct those mistakes and eventually you will have something that is It's so cool, so self-sufficient, if the power goes out in my personal house, I could have this because I have solar panels and I can have power and I can connect. It's so awesome that it's also not connected to the truck's battery so they are completely separate systems my truck will work whether all of this works or not. I have two large solar panels on the top of the truck. I have a big old inverter and two big old batteries.

This is a big, old system I edit on. my laptop carries stuff, it's fantastic. Always when I walk into people's driveways, if I'm traveling with them the next day, they say, hey, you need power, you need an outlet, no, I'm fine, how about another stupid one? It's the road shower at the top, I honestly thought about using this thing. It's basically a container of pressurized water that you can use to spray your body after a ride, take a shower while you're on the road, I don't know why. I thought I'd have the balls to go out into a parking lot, hose myself down, and take a shower in my swim shorts when I can't even record this video if anyone's around in the parking lot right now.

Used road 4 shower for sale. once, but I spent 40,000 miles on the road, one smart thing I did was stick with my little propane heating solution after spending a couple of really cold nights in the van and complaining on the video, all kinds of people came out The carpentry guy tells me to get an underbody diesel heater and spend thousands of dollars because it will keep the truck super hot. I'm fine, yeah, it's cold in the truck some nights. Yes, the propane heater is not that good. It could be, but these are very extreme cases. I will never be in wind chill stuck in the snow in the van for that one night a year that was like oh man I'm so glad I went all out and spent thousands of dollars. and I have to keep diesel fuel inside my truck to keep it warm, so here's one you might think is crazy, but I think it's smart to have an air compressor under the truck.

As a mountain biker you often find yourself needing to inflate your tubeless tires and doing it by hand takes a lot of effort but if you plug in the air compressor they work perfectly, you also find yourself in the van where the air comes down in the van sometimes, boom, blow them up or let them out if you're doing it. a little four by four is definitely one of those silly luxury items like the heater would be to me, but not this one, it's worth it, it's worth it, another stupid one that might end up being smart in the long run, but I feel like it was a complete fool to do it when I bought the truck I opted for Mopar's essential platinum synthetic oil change plan which was $1400 added to the price of the car but gave me 20 oil changes or 30 oil changes or a certain amount of oil. changes where it was like oh man, that's amazing, that's perfect.

I'm going to put so many miles on this truck. Oh, that's worth it. A couple things. First place I took the truck to change the oil after 10,000 miles. sunland park dodge chrysler jeep mercury trans am in el paso texas did not comply with the mopar premium protection plan so each oil change is 10,000 miles so i have done four oil changes this year but it will take many oil changes to achieve it. I can recoup the cost of that plan and every time I take this bad boy to the dealer it's not just an oil change it's 500 or 600 dollars in recommended service and of course they are just trying to scam you but you I feel so bad because you're like, "ugh, I want the truck to be good, I want the fuel injectors to be nice and clean, I want the crankcase to be clean, okay, let's do the crankcase cleaning, let's do the fuel injector cleaning, they just they live".

To take advantage of you, another clever item that I couldn't live without after driving thousands and thousands of miles in the truck is an aftermarket stereo head unit. I have a pretty nice Kenwood stereo that has Apple CarPlay. I have an iPhone and it makes it very compatible. You can say hello Siri, let's drive to Dodger Stadium and she will understand. Usually she understands it. This one also works with Android Auto, so if you have an Android phone, it works very, very well on big, long trips. The navigation has a big window for navigation, you can see what your podcasts are playing, your music is playing, it's a big change from having to flip through your phone, scroll and reach for it, it's hands-free, it's a big screen, It is invaluable to everyone I have spent hours traveling and it was also installed by a professional.

I tried installing it myself and it didn't work. I ordered all the parts from Crutchfield and then we took it to a guy who couldn't make it work, I think so. I ended up going to a third party and they finally got it going, oh man, it's not a DIY project. One thing that's a little stupid is that I upgraded the speakers in the truck. They are still not that good, but mostly because the road noise in the truck is Very, very loud. I usually drive about 75 miles an hour with this and it's very loud, you have to turn the speakers all the way up and the quality isn't as good when listening to podcasts, sometimes you can't understand them. you have to turn it up even louder, that sucks.

Another clever thing I can't live without is the rearview mirror camera. I have a camera attached to the back of the truck. A cable that reaches this screen. It turns on. It's electronic. I can see what's happening behind me. It is not a rearview camera. I still have my backup camera and it is fed through my stereo. It's just to see what's going on behind me because I have this blackout curtain down all the time. I have the windows blocked. in the back of the truck so I don't have eyes behind me unless I have this thing on, also it's always recording the video with the rear camera and it even comes with a front camera but the way it's tilted my windshield is so straight up and down that there is always a glare on the front video, it's a bit useless, maybe one day it will be useful considering my job is to upload videos for you, it seems very stupid to me that I've never done it.

My Wi-Fi situation was optimal. I never had a mobile hotspot. I never figured out a cost-effective and well-working way to set up my truck for uploading videos. I'm an extreme outlier when it comes to data usage. one of my normal writing videos is usually around 28 gigabytes because i have a 14 gigabyte extended cut going on patreon. I have a 7 gigabyte initial cut that goes to patreon and then a 7 gigabyte youtube cut that goes to youtube, so 28 gigs on a Monday 28 gigs on a Wednesday rinse and repeat over and over and over again and no I know if there really is a data plan even though many of them say oh no, no, it's unlimited, it is, no, I promise, it's unlimited, it's probably available.

I've seen them there, I've researched them, they cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month when it works perfectly well, I'm just looking for a place to stay for a couple of days. I upload, I even considered putting things on USB sticks. and just mail it to my brother because then I could go to my house which has a fiber internet connection andcharge everything in 20 minutes. Snail mail probably works better in those situations. I have to admit, I thought about buying a truck. It would be a little silly, but now after a year on the road, 40,000 miles on the truck, it's so good that I don't see a time when I don't have a truck, it may not be this truck, but you have all the reason.

To romanticize it, you're right to obsess over it and watch a million YouTube videos about it. It's great. I'll tell you what it's like that first time you enter a national park, find a spot, open the truck. you have a couple of sandwiches you have a couple of cold drinks it's magical, it really is magical, you see why people give so much importance to vans, it's the right tool for work, for a weekend adventure, for a long adventure, for any adventure, so stop. watching all these videos and just go out there and make it happen, it's time to go out there, enjoy it, thanks for watching, see you on the road.