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Ford e350 full sized V8 van

Started by Behemoth_haftaa, May 10, 2017, 09:01:00 PM

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Behemoth_haftaa

The van is at the mechanics now getting new shocks, ball joints etc.

Going to get the van title transferred and the license plates this friday.

I work full time in an office and spent the winter in a camper at an RV park.  The cold, lack of bathroom/kitchen was not a hardship, the characters who lived in the RV park were sheer hell to endure.

THese are my goals and hopefully in this order:

1. Park the travel trailer, live out of it partially when its in storage. Spoke to someone who will let me park the travel trailer and will meet with them on saturday.

2. Clean out the van of dirt and shelving units start lining the bay with insulation and cladding.

3. Check out Habit of Humanity "Restore" stores to collect shelving units to lay bed across and get kitchenette going.

4. I've got a Kitchenaid camping stove, camping toilet, I will pull out the RV kitchen sink to put in the camper....

My goal is to be fast and cheap, later overhaul it to be pretty nice; but for now I will be living out of it while I do a skoolie conversion and plan to live in the skoolie conversion this winter.

Therefore the stealth van is going to be practice for the skoolie.  In addition to the fact I really want to camp this summer and not having neighbors around. 

A solar array system is going in, along with propane for the camper stove; I've got the propane tanks already, a pure swine interverter, AGM deep cycle marine battery (probably will have 4 of them by the end of the summer.)So this is definately off the grid project and I've got a Hudson map that I will spend the next week marking up with stealth camping opportunities.

My 5 year plan is to camp this summer in a stealth van, build the skoolie, tear down the travel trailer rebuild the travel trailer into a THOW, sell the THOW, put the profit into a Cash Deposit, and start looking for land to buy with the proceeds. By age 47 at the latest I want to put down a foundation for a straw bale house with geothermal, solar water heater, solar array, wind turbines...


At age 43 I just got my driver's license and want to live with the smallest carbon footprint possible and since americans carbon footprint is 60-70% housing, I want a off grid how carbon fuel use home to off set the driving I will be doing.  By retirement I hope hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be a thing, especially full sized trucks. you can dream right?

Totally looking forward to waking up iin the morning, having coffee and eating my GF granola with milk keffir with a door of the van open taking in the morning sunrise in a park parking lot somewhere, plug in a extension cord to a park building or picnic shelter (thats what the map is for to keep track of spots). Then wash my face and teeth,  get dressed, drive to a park and ride, park the van, get on an express bus to downtown.  I am really looking forward to this and have myself a gym membership already.
The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair.

Camper_Dan

Sounds ambitious...  Good Luck & keep us posted!
Smiles are extremely contagious,
Pass them on!!!

sparkyboy

Cheers on a worthwhile project! Can you post some pics once the van is back from the mechanics? Van life is really the best. I only started since the girlfriend and I fight too much and she finally kicked me out! I'm not going back, hahaha!
Keep us posted on your progress!
Sleeping wherever you want to stop is a privilege that a lot don't get to experience