I have been camping in my 1990 Chevrolet Silverado Blazer 2-door for the last 20 years. When I removed the back seat there was just enough room for a 3/4 sized (Hollywood, as some people called them) mattress to fit between the wheel wells and from the back of the console to the tailgate.
After all those years with my wife and I getting older, she decided we needed a little more room so she found me a 2001 Chevrolet Express van with low mileage on the internet. After checking it out and taking it for a test drive we bought it on the spot. It was a nice passenger conversion LT model with all the bells and whistles available in 2001. I will chronicle the changes I made to transform it into my Class B- motorhome in the next few postings. I call it my Class B- (B minus) motorhome because it is just a regular van without the raised roof.
Camping at Custer State Park, SD in February, 2015.
Camping and visiting Scott's Bluff National Monument, NE in October, 2014.
After all those years with my wife and I getting older, she decided we needed a little more room so she found me a 2001 Chevrolet Express van with low mileage on the internet. After checking it out and taking it for a test drive we bought it on the spot. It was a nice passenger conversion LT model with all the bells and whistles available in 2001. I will chronicle the changes I made to transform it into my Class B- motorhome in the next few postings. I call it my Class B- (B minus) motorhome because it is just a regular van without the raised roof.
Camping at Custer State Park, SD in February, 2015.
Camping and visiting Scott's Bluff National Monument, NE in October, 2014.
I have not done any camping since back in August. Not that the weather wasn't nice, it has been great for this time of year. Today, in northern South Dakota we had temps in the 60's which is really great for this time of year. What has taken me away from camping was selling our big house in the small town of Roscoe and moving to our smaller house near the campus of Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD. It was my wife's winter house when she worked for the University and now that we have been retired we decided it was time to downsize and rid ourselves of 40 years of accumulated "stuff." We went from a four bedroom house with a four car garage down to a two bedroom home with a one car garage. That meant that a lot of the "stuff" had to go. Good turnout at our rummage sales and good response from local online rummage sales helped a lot. Naturally I had to get a storage space big enough to put the Corvette and the camper conversion van in for the winter. We are really enjoying our retirement in a larger town and, especially, with the University so close we can attend a lot of free music recitals. But today with such nice weather I decided it was time to upgrade the conversion van camper with an Maxi-Trac 8 foot awning from NAPA. Installation was a breeze. I just drilled four holes in my roof rack mount and bolted it up. Now I am going to plan a camping trip in the near future and try it out. I am sure it will work slicker than our old 9x9 Gander Mountain one. We will keep it and maybe use it as a free standing one for a picnic table. I will update this post with a picture of the awning extended in use on our next camping adventure.
As I and my wife are getting up there in age, we grew tired of the small 4 inch screen of our GPS unit in the van. Recently I upgraded to a Garmin RV 890 model with an 8 inch screen. We both can see it much better and love all the extra features that our little one did not have. I made a larger DIY mounting for the slot in the van's dash and it works very well.
We are using our van camper conversion a lot the last couple of years due to COVID. We can go off by ourselves camping without much people contact. Now I don't make any major changes, just a few small incremental improvements is what I like to call them.
Recently I upgraded my 110 volt system by adding an external outside outlet box on the van frame closer to the front end. This gives me a place to plug in my blue rope lights and a small maintenance battery charger for the van main battery. When we are camping for several days we often turn on the vehicle accessory mode to activate our WiFi hotspot in the van. The trickle charger guarantees that we do not run down the van's main starter battery.
Recently I upgraded my 110 volt system by adding an external outside outlet box on the van frame closer to the front end. This gives me a place to plug in my blue rope lights and a small maintenance battery charger for the van main battery. When we are camping for several days we often turn on the vehicle accessory mode to activate our WiFi hotspot in the van. The trickle charger guarantees that we do not run down the van's main starter battery.
I recently ran across a new use for our ice maker on one of the posts I frequently visit. I may have to try this on our next camping trip. The bottles melt the ice into water which is reused by the ice maker!
Somewhere while checking Facebook I came across an ad for a Radiate brand portable campfire. Being an avid DIY'er (growing up on the farm and being a high school science teacher for 39 years may have something to do with it) I decided I could make something like that.
I purloined a 7 1/2 inch fruitcake tin from my wife and started melting wax in my woodshed. I cut up some paper egg cartons and distributed the pieces throughout the wax, then let the wax set and harden. It seems to work great.
To put it out, I just put the cover back on. You do want to let it set awhile after putting it out so the melted wax from using it doesn't slosh over and leak onto your hands. Yes! I speak from experience because the lid does not seal it up so it is leak proof. It will never replace a real campfire, but we could use it on the picnic table under the awning on a rainy day.
The camping trip we were on when I tried my new DIY campfire on was an Easter camping trip to Oahe Downstream Campground which is below the dam and north of Pierre, SD. With temps in the high 70's for the first week in April it was fine camping weather. We heard this cardinal before we finally saw him. He is small in the picture because I knew I could not take the time to swap to my 800mm lens before he decided to fly.
It must have been a fine weekend for fishing as the bay below the dam's stilling pond was pretty crowded. I am guessing the fish were biting in this area.
I purloined a 7 1/2 inch fruitcake tin from my wife and started melting wax in my woodshed. I cut up some paper egg cartons and distributed the pieces throughout the wax, then let the wax set and harden. It seems to work great.
To put it out, I just put the cover back on. You do want to let it set awhile after putting it out so the melted wax from using it doesn't slosh over and leak onto your hands. Yes! I speak from experience because the lid does not seal it up so it is leak proof. It will never replace a real campfire, but we could use it on the picnic table under the awning on a rainy day.
The camping trip we were on when I tried my new DIY campfire on was an Easter camping trip to Oahe Downstream Campground which is below the dam and north of Pierre, SD. With temps in the high 70's for the first week in April it was fine camping weather. We heard this cardinal before we finally saw him. He is small in the picture because I knew I could not take the time to swap to my 800mm lens before he decided to fly.
It must have been a fine weekend for fishing as the bay below the dam's stilling pond was pretty crowded. I am guessing the fish were biting in this area.
I had a question in another van forum about my mini-levels I use to level the van. The question was: "How do I level my van?" I checked back through all my posts and realized I had never addressed this problem. I use some home made ramps from 4 pieces of 2 x 8 x 10 1/2 inches for the larger ones and 2 x 8 x 9 inches for the smaller ones. When finished cutting them I added a piece of sticky back step tread material. Some of the tread material is rubber only but the stuff I used has a sandpaper like finish and I stapled it to keep the ends from curling up. I can use 1 ramp per tire to go up 1 1/2 inches and a long one and a short one to go up 3 inches. Sometimes I use a double on one wheel and a single on the other wheel if I am sitting on a slant. I have even used a double on one wheel, a single on the other side and a single on one of the front wheels if I am both slanted and lower in the back.
I store them in my blue box attached to the bumper hitch of my van where I store my camp chairs, camp stove, little propane tanks, fire tongs, ax, etc. I find that backing up on to the ramps works better than driving forward on to them as attested by the slippage marks on the short ones.
I store them in my blue box attached to the bumper hitch of my van where I store my camp chairs, camp stove, little propane tanks, fire tongs, ax, etc. I find that backing up on to the ramps works better than driving forward on to them as attested by the slippage marks on the short ones.
KaLvan wrote:
Really have enjoyed reading through your post and all you have done. We are doing a similar build on a 2014 Chevy Passenger Van. We put a 3/4 inch plywood floor down for our base. We are curious how you have attached your cabinet and bed into the van. At this point, we plan to leave all the factory walls in place, so don't have points of attachment in the van walls, just the plywood floor we have installed.
Also, by any chance, do you know where in the back passenger area there are airbags installed? We don't want to inadvertently set those off with our build!
I did not remove any of the floor nor the passenger seat brackets in the back of the van. I used them to mount my bed frame and my kitchen unit.
I made some brackets very similar to the picture below and mounted the top three holes to my bed frame and kitchen unit so they were positioned over the top of the seat brackets.
I pulled the locking pins out of the seat brackets in the floor, then slid my fabricated brackets down into them so the locking pin would engage the single hole in my brackets and locked the pins in place.
For the rest of the van floor area that had floor seat brackets that I did not use, I ordered a special piece of carpet with seamed edges like floor mats and put it down to cover up any exposed, unused floor seat brackets.
I will do some research on my van and the service manuals to see if I can locate the passenger airbags and get back to you on that in another message.
