With some new upgrades and having a much too long winter this year, it was time to hit the road and do some climbing in the Boondocker demo van. We were excited to get it out on the road again with the graphics and new features.

First stop on our list was, as it many times is, Bishop California. We did some hiking and biking around the Bishop area, thoroughly enjoying the ease of storing the bikes in the van. And with the wind in the Bishop area while we were there, it was hard to beat having the cushy interior to lounge about after a long ride or hike.

Boondocker in the Buttermilk Country

Boondocker in the Buttermilk Country

After some cardio workouts in Bishop, we headed down to Los Angeles to visit with friends and show the van off. One of the best things about the Mercedes/Dodge Sprinter van is it’s friendly street manners. Even driving on crowded Santa Monica streets is no problem – you almost feel like a regular compact car.

Finally it was time to hit the rocks. Vegas was next in order. Climbing in the Vegas area is incredible. The first two days we spent in Black Velvet Canyon in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. It’s fantastic to be able to climb in 70° temps in the canyons while Vegas roasts at over 100°!

Boondocker camped in Lovell Canyon outside Pahrump/Las Vegas

After doing some multi-pitch, it was up to Mt. Charleston, just north of Las Vegas. At over 8,000′ elevation, it’s always nice and cool up there. It’s an absolutely breathtaking area, with tall limestone walls and pine trees everywhere. Honestly, one of the most beautiful climbing areas anywhere, in our opinion! While a bit “manufactured”, the climbing is fantastic. Super athletic and difficult, it was nice to be able to spend some quality time here and actually send some routes.

Dave climbing Straight Outta' Compton, 5.13a at Mt. Charleston, Nevada

Boondocker camped at Mt. Charleston, Nevada

After Mt. Charleston, it was off to Maple Canyon Utah, always fun climbing. On the way, we cruised through Zion National Park. Zion never fails to impress – one of these days we’ll have to make a trip specifically to do some canyoneering and climbing there!

Boondocker in Zion National Park

Boondocker in Zion National Park

Five days of luxurious camping and climbing in Maple Canyon yielded us some good, fun sends, but no pictures. I guess the familiarity and fun of Maple Canyon had us focused on the climbing and not sharing the Craftsman Vans experience through the camera and our blog! One of the highlights of Maple Canyon, however, was the unexpected 10 or 15 people that showed up in our camp to check out the Boondocker van. We’re used to giving tours of the van to a couple people, but 15 people at once was fun!

Until the next trip…

“This thing is a freakin’ mansion!”. Yeah, we tend to agree, but we like to call it a “van-sion”. Brian was pretty psyched to be heading out with us on the inaugural run of the “Boondocker” demo van. And the van really does feel like a mansion – at least to us! The plan for this month is for 3 dudes to hit the road – first to Ten Sleep Wyoming to climb for 10 days. Then head down to Maple Canyon Utah to get some steeper climbing in. After that, it’s over to the Sierra’s in California for, yup, more climbing, but also some backpacking and cycling.

The first thing to do was to fill up and weigh the van. With 3 guys, a bike, tons of climbing gear, full tanks of gas and water, the van weighed in at 8300 pounds. Not bad – still decently under the chassis GVWR.

Driving the van, we easily forget that it’s nearly 4 tons of steel. Changing lanes, cornering, parking lots – the Sprinter takes it all in stride, making life easy. The van is nice and quiet on the road too. It’s easy to hear the driver/passenger conversations even when you’re sitting in the back seat, 6 feet behind them and doing 65 mph!

We just hit Missoula Montana and have only had to fill up once in Lewiston Idaho. Thus far, we’re getting ~21 miles per gallon, driving 65 mph on the freeways, and 55 mph on the smaller highways. Yes, the Dodge Sprinter chassis and it’s Mercedes diesel engine is by far the best way to travel!

Here’re some photos of the Boondocker on it’s maiden voyage. Nothing like diving straight into the deep end with the project rig!

Boondocker on the road near Wild Iris climbing area

Boondocker camped somewhere in northern Utah

Boondocker at the trailhead to Arrow Canyon outside Las Vegas

Parked at the Clark Mountain climbing area

On the way down from the Clark Mountain climbing area - yeehaw!

Outside Kennedy Meadows California

It’s about the little things. After living in our vans so much of the time, we’ve come up with a bunch of little things that, we think, make Boondocker much more livable while on the road. Here are some of the little things we think help:

• Bookcase – we add a small bookcase and map holder behind the drivers seat. When you are heading to new crags or a new mountain biking area and have a few guidebooks to carry, this makes life a lot easier.
• Gear Loops – in the cargo area, we’ve installed velcro gear loops on the walls. This allows you to keep camp chairs and other gear up, out of the way. It gives you more space for bikes and backpacks in the main cargo area.
• Tuffy Lock Box – Who doesn’t travel without expensive equipment and worry about it in their vehicle these days? We all go backpacking and leave our laptops, cameras and other expensive items in the van. So we’ve tried to ease fears of theft by installing a large Tuffy lockbox in the cargo area of Boondocker. Not only does it give you peace of mind, but it also doubles as a table for cooking or preparing food on when you extend the drawer out.
• Blackout Curtains – Boondocker comes equipped with blackout curtains, for those times when you want to sleep in past sunrise! Sorry, we don’t think the standard RV curtains cut it. Not only do blackout curtains let you sleep in, but they also make it easier to stealth camp, since people outside the van can’t tell someone is inside with the lights on.
• Under-Sofa Storage – Instead of filling the under-sofa area with water tanks and other electronic gear, we’ve left it open. Now you’ve got a whole lotta’ storage available inside the cabin for food, gear or whatever else you can think of.
• 12v Electrical Outlets – We like efficiency, so whenever possible, we use 12v adapters for all our electronic gizmos instead of running off the household AC inverter. Laptops, iPhones, and a lot of other equipment can be run directly off of 12v cigarette lighter style adapters. To make that easier, we add at least four 12v DC outlets throughout the van interior.
• Reading Lights – We’ve placed four reading lights that can be aimed on the ceiliing of the van. Aim these wherever you are at and you have a nice, warm light to read by. While these are standard bulbs and aren’t the most efficient, from what we’ve seen, the light is just so much more pleasant to live in. LED’s still have a harsh light that we think just isn’t worth the gains in efficiency. Plus, with the 450 amp hours of battery and 520w of solar, these little lights aren’t going to make much of a dent in our power!
• Flush Mount Lights – For over the sink/kitchen area, we’ve used flush mount fluorescent lights. They are efficient and good looking, fill the area well, and have a reasonably warm temperature. No cheap looking surface mount lights here.

Reading lights and flush-mount lights

Under-sofa storage

All in all, we think it’s ideas like this that make the Boondocker van the most functional, comfortable conversion camper van on the market.

Now that we have the electrics and plumbing roughed in, it’s time to get the walls up. First off, we’re going with Ultratouch Cotton insulation instead of fiberglass in the walls. We think this is a better choice environmentally as well as for it’s sound deadening and insulation properties. In the ceiling, we’re using 2″ closed cell foam with a layer of reflective bubble insulation below. This should keep the heat out when the sun is baking the top of the van, and it very light weight, keeping our center of gravity lower than if we were to heavier fiberglass or cotton insulation on the ceiling. And finally, we like to cover the walls with fabric – it gives the interior of the van a softer, more comfortable feel.

And now that the walls are up, we’re installing the bed platform in the rear of the van. The bed platform is 6′ long and the full width of the van. We’ve placed the bed platform just high enough to fit bikes underneath, in the cargo compartment. The wall under the bed platform has been crafted to have two cabinets. We’re also using the bed platform wall to house the electrical components like the solar charge controller, water tank gauge, on/off switch for the water pump, radio amplifier and subwoofer and the inverter remote control unit.

In front of the bed platform wall goes the two person sofa. This sofa folds down into a bed. Because the sofa isn’t as wide as the van, we’ve created a cubby hole at the same level as the sofa. When the sofa folds down into a bed, it is even with the cubby top and can sleep another person.

And finally, we’re installing cabinetry for the galley. The cabinetry gives us four drawers for ample storage in the galley. We’re also using a sink which is plenty large for rinsing fry pans – try that in the standard itty bitty sinks found in most conversions! And next to the four drawers, we’re going with a four cubic foot Norcold refrigerator. We don’t mess around with the smaller fridges – with our battery bank and solar system, we’ve got plenty of juice to run it. And with 3 or 4 people road tripping in this van, it’s definitely good to have space for fresh food.

And the finished product…

Now that we’re electrified, it’s time to move on to the plumbing system. Too many vans that are advertised for boondocking just don’t cut it when it comes to water. How long does it take to go through 12 gallons of water when you’re out running, hiking or biking every day? Not long. So we start with a 30 gallon water tank and place it directly over the rear axle of the van. While we might be able to mount it externally and save space, we think it’s more important to keep the water from freezing. Besides, if you need more room in the EB Sprinter chassis, you’re bringing too much stuff on your trip! We use the Shurflo Whisper King water pump to move that 30 gallons of water through the system. We made sure to get the most quiet pump – no one wants to hear the pump while you’re taking a shower or filling your water bottle.

For water up front in the galley, we’re using a Phoenix faucet that has the detachable hose. We get tired of vans with fixed faucets. Try filling a water bottle in small sink and fixed faucet – it doesn’t work very well. This faucet also has the selectable stream or spray so you can more easily rinse dishes. For drinking water, we’ve decided to add a top quality Nikken Pi-Mag water filter. It makes a nice complement to the Phoenix faucet at the sink. And finally, in the rear we are plumbing a shower so we can clean up after a long day of trail running.

After getting the stereo system roughed in, it’s time to install the batteries. After having batteries mounted outside the vehicle on previous vehicles, we decided to place the batteries inside on this conversion. This keeps the batteries warm, giving better performance in cold weather situations. It also allows much easier maintenance. It’s not much fun to try dropping 150 pounds of batteries out of the van just to check elecrolyte levels! We’ve gone with 4 Trojan T-105 batteries. This gives us 450 amp-hours of power for those times where the sun refuses to shine (yup, we’re from Oregon where we’re not accustomed to having the sun shine much). This should be plenty of juice to power all the other electric goodies we have planned. A battery isolator allows the van charging system to keep the house batteries topped up while driving.

Next is my personal favourite – the solar system! On the “Boondocker”, we really want to be able to boondock without worrying about electricity. So we’ve installed four Kyocera 130 watt panels up top. These are mounted permanently to the roof to keep the profile as low as possible. We’ve seen too many solar systems that add an extra 12″ of height to the van and we didn’t want that. Sure, these systems might allow you to angle to panels to the sun, but honestly, who has ever done that? In front of the solar panels, we’ve mounted a Thule fairing to keep wind noise and resistance to a minimum. These four panels are wired in series to provide ~68 volts to the solar charger. We’re using the Outback Flexmax 60 since it’ll take care of all our needs. One requirement was to actively vent the batteries when the solar charger is bulk charging. The Outback Flexmax provides voltage-programmable circuit for just such a purpose, turning a small computer fan to vent the batteries when voltages go above 14v.

While we’ll be running most systems on 12v, we’ll still have items that only run on 120v AC. We’ve chosen a 2000 watt Magnum pure-sine inverter and battery charger. This inverter gives us two 15 amp circuits for AC power. We’ve also installed a weather sealed connection on the outside of the van so, in the off-chance you’re not boondocking, you can plug in to shore power and run the van and charge the batteries from that source.

And to keep an eye on all these crazy electronics, we’re using the Magnum remote battery monitor. This monitor allows us to keep track of the battery banks state of charge, amps going in and out and so much more.

After a wicked busy end of 2009, we’ve finally had time to make some progress on “Boondocker”. All of our van conversions start with a layer of Fatmat Extreme sound deadener. This is applied to all the surfaces of the van unibody. This keeps the van quiet while driving, makes a better sounding stereo system, and also provides some extra insulation. Once the sound deadener is down, the next step is to rough in the electric components. Wiring after the fact is a pain, so we make sure to do it right in the first place. Only the best conductors are used, and we always wire for a custom stereo system. In the “Boondocker” project, we’ve decided to go with a top-of-the-line Alpine system. This system includes a 7″ touch-screen DVD player up front plays the tunes and movies too. This is hooked in to the stock Sprinter van steering wheel thumb controls so you can still change channel and volume easily. Bluetooth is also included for hands-free cell phone usage. And while we’re talking about cell phones, we’re also adding a Wilson cellular antenna so when you are boondocking, you’ll still be in touch with an extra couple bars of cell reception. We’ve gone with the Alpine PDX-5 amp. There aren’t many amps out there that pack this much clean power into such a small package. The PDX-5 drives three sets of SPX-17Pro 6.5″ component speakers. These speakers are mounted in the front doors, a set towards the middle of the van, and a set in the rear doors. And no system is complete without a sub. Alpine’s 10″ Type-X sub gives a small package with big, clean sound.

Before diving in to the interior, the first order of business on “Boondocker” is to get some windows in. We couldn’t find a van with the options we wanted and factory rear glass, so we’ve installed windows into the back doors. We’ve also outfitted the sliding door with a full-size window with a pop-out for ventilation and extra light. We’ve decided to not do any other windows. After spending countless nights in our vans, we’ve found that windows just aren’t worth it. They reduce insulation in the van, and invariable add to the road noise. Besides, while we love vans, we love being outdoors more. If you’re just sitting inside the van staring out at the world, well, shouldn’t you just go outside?

After adding the windows, we turned our focus to ventilation. One of the best features we’ve installed is the Fantastic-Vent. This vent is installed towards the rear of the van and can draw air in or out. Behind the Fantastic-Vent, we’ve installed a sunroof that is directly above what will be the sleeping platform. This sunroof can be popped completely out in seconds and allows stargazing and fresh air at night. The vent and sunroof were both placed towards the back of the van to allow room for solar panels on the front area of the roof.

And for more ventilation in the front of the van, we install driver and passenger window visors so you can roll those windows down a bit, even when it’s raining. Between the front windows, sliding-door pop-out window, the sunroof and Fantastic-Vent, we’ll have plenty of ventilation, even on the hottest of days, to keep the van comfortable. Additionally, we’ve found the solar panels (we’ll be adding these soon) provide a whole lot of sun protection, keeping the van much cooler than without solar panels. So we should be set for some summer adventures, without roasting in a hot, stuffy van!

It’s time to start a new project, to breath life into another van project. After converting an older Chevy 4×4 van and enjoying it for awhile, it’s time for a change. The Chevy project (known affectionately as “Rhino” or “The Beast”) was great fun to drive. It got lots of looks and questions, and could go anywhere. The lviing system we created worked fantastic and was so nice for outdoor living and camping. But for long-distance road trips, Rhino just wasn’t the best choice. Being a 4×4 van and having a performance built, carbureted Chevy small block, it just wasn’t capable of getting good gas mileage. That hurts on long trips. Not only the wallet, but it’s hard to justify it environmentally as well.

So we’ve now embarked on the beginnings of our “Boondocker” project. We’ve picked up a brand new 2008 Dodge Sprinter EB van. We believe this is going to be the best platform to build on. Easy driving manners, the best mileage for any available van, and tons of space shout “road trip machine” loud and clear.

We’ve got big plans for the “Boondocker” project. This package will combine all our experience building road trip vans. We’re planning on a top class solar system, better cabinetry, smart space usage and more for this one! Stay tuned for more notes as our project continues.