My dad took some road trips with his grandfather when he was a kid and he thought that he should take us on a similar road trip. He looked for a camper for a while and finally got a popup camper. he found that it really hurt the vans gas millage and took a long time to set up and take down.
The problem with this was we drove to a different park every night so we where always setting up the the camper and taking it down all the time and we wasted a lot of time doing this. When we got home he started coming up with a way that we could all travel in the van. the goal of the project was to:
1) fit 7 people comfortably for the trip
2) not change the gas millage very much
3) set up and take down in less than 30 min
4) sleep 7 people at night
5) change back into a "normal" van in less than a week
Here is what we started with this van.
This inspiration
then we added a bunch of stuff to it
on the front there when two rails bolted to the bottom of the van that the front rack mounted to. The front rack had a spare tire (mini spare for a van this size, scary) underneath a spot for two water tanks. the front of the rack also folded down into a tow hitch in case the van broke down (another long story). In case we ever need to to for help when the van broke down, we had a old 50cc scooter that also fit in the front rack.
in this next picture you can see the rack with the tanks bike and bug shield removed. just under the van you can see the mini spare warped in a vinyl cover.
on the back we had a the "chuck wagon". it was built on a metal frame and was really heavy and could have been built a lot lighter.
The whole box could be swung away from the van by pulling pin and rolling it back of the trailer jack
once the box was swung away all the inside of it could be accessed. this made the inside much more secure from the pirates of the road... yeah...
The inside of the chuck wagon was quite well equipped with a storage cabinets, a fold down counter, gas range, gas oven and even the kitchen sink. One of the water tanks could beset on top of the box to give running water for washing dishes and things like that.
The back bench was taken out and replaced with a shelf for luggage and a small bench over the wheel well. The spare tire was replaced with the mini spare under the front rack to make room for the ice chest that even has a tube to drain the melted ice water out of the back of the van. under this shelf the parents had their sleeping quarters (the other foam mattress is not shown in this picture)
the front of the van had a few modifications to make it more livable but the only big change was adding a skylight that was the access to the upper level. while the topper was on we had a three panel hatch so we could change the sized of the opening (full open for packing, middle third for more floor in the topper and closed for driving). One of the thing that we had to watch out for is the air pressure opening the hatch up while we drove. we would often put something heavy on it before we closed it to keeping it from opening up.
The topper was found at a junk yard and was bolted to plywood frame. The plywood frame clamped on the the vans gutters to keep it from flying off. in the from of the topper there where two turn buckles that locked the topper down during travel. when we set up for the night all that had to do was unlock the turnbuckles lift the top (by hand and it was heavy!) and let the prop rods fall into place.
To get the topper off dad put a winch and pulley system in the barn that picked the topper off the van and stored it in the roof of the barn . Sadly wood bees ate the wood that the pulley system was mounted to and so a few years after we put it up it fell but did not hurt anything.
As you might have guessed the whole thing was invented built and tested by the only family crazy enough to try it. here are a few pictures of it on the trip.
at night all light up in a camp ground.
breakfast at craters of the moon
Somewhere in Canada!
belt broke on some lonely stretch of road, fortunately dad has a habit of keeping the old belts under the seat when ever he normally changes the belts so we had an old set that we put on.
Me with the open road in front of me, story of my life.
Sis waking up after a few hours on the road
this is roughly where the trip took us. There where a lot more stops that are not marked and yes we did drive almost non-stop from Tennessee to Glacier National Park (2k miles just in that leg!)
and when we finally got home the grass had grown and we where ready to stop for a bit (three weeks in a van with seven people will take it out of you).
A great trip that will never be forgotten and in a Van that I have not see anything like
1 comment:
Very very cool
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