The Ulitmate Road Trip Vehicle

Alright guys welcome back on A up another video for you guys here today, so we are camping, hair on the beautiful McKenzie River here in the Northwest Territories. I'Ve been getting a ton of questions on our van, so I figured today is a good day to shoot a quick tour of the vehicle and answer as many of those questions as I can for you guys so stick around and check out the video all right. So, let's jump right into it, so the van is a 2006 Chevy Express Cargo Van 3500 series. Now the vehicle does have a 6.6 Duramax diesel. So it's not gasoline. It is diesel. I get quite a few questions on that. You guys can see that I have the van heavily modified line-x paint, lift kit with the four-wheel, drive conversion and some custom aluminous front and rear bumpers, so I'll walk around and give you guys a little look at that here now so, like I mentioned the number One question I get that when people see this is what kind of paint is on the vehicle, so I had went with line X. We had done a color conversion from white to black and had done a full line X conversion on the vehicle. Now, given my remote situation up here in the Northwest Territories, if you guys have been following my channel, you know I do quite a bit of outdoor activities. Hunting camping, different things like that, so I figured the lonex paint would be, will be awesome for my environment that I'm in for rock chips for scratching different things like that, and it's been amazing so far now you guys can see the front of the vehicle. There is very, very dirty yeah. We had been on the road now for the last couple of weeks, living out of a van here doing our summer road trip every year, so we really haven't had a time yet to give this a good clean. So I apologize about that in advance, so, like I mentioned, we went with the Luminess, which is a company out of Sandy California, and these guys custom-made this front bumper. For me, it is welded aluminum all powder-coated idea of the winch box here on the front. Now, unfortunately, I haven't installed a winch in this vehicle yet, but I am using it right now as a storage compartment, so just have some diesel conditioner some oil, some coolant. Just some general vehicle maintenance supplies in the front bumper right now I do have the Ridgid custom driving lights that has been installed here as well. I do have the attachments on the front here for, for wan na hook up a strap or any towing implements, and on the bottom here for the foil drive conversion, I decided to go with the independent front suspension versus the solid front axle like I say we Use this majority of the time for road tripping, so I figured the independent front. Suspension would be a lot smoother while traveling on the highway. Now we do have some 17-inch ultra rims on here with a 35 inch Toyo 82 Xtreme tire. These things have been fantastic. Absolutely love these tires very aggressive and it's a great compromise between a highway tire and an off-road tire. So coming around the back here, since we've been talking about bumpers, we do have the full swing arm for the spare tire on the back, as well as the recovery box. Now I get a lot of questions on the recovery box watch. The purpose and idea of this, and basically it's just a external compartment - we use it for a propane gas, our barbecue, our stove - and we have a few items over here as well that we typically you know like to put in here generator extension cords external lighting, Different things like that now on the side, I did go with the shovel and axe carrier, so that just keeps that on the outside of the vehicle and it's very accessible now these swing arms on the back here, obviously they swing all the way open. There are pins in each corner which you can secure the swing arm from closing if it's a windy day or if you're parked on a hill, but for purpose of demonstration. Today, I'll just keep these open and on the back here, this is the coating that we use. If you guys want to google it basically line-x, you can check that out on youtube or check out their website, they're very, very good at what they do so on the inside here now keep in mind. This is basically, like I say, just an open cargo van. We use it as a road trip vehicle and the intended purpose. Right now is it's just a big metal tent for us, so we did install a queen-size bed in the back. We do have a memory foam mattress here, it's very very comfortable. Now the design for this bed was built very specific before these action Packers. So we typically have five of these action Packers underneath the bed and each one of these action Packers one would be, for example, tools, roadside equipment, booster cables, etc. The other one would be kitchen supplies. We have two up front there, which is mine and Vivian's clothes. So all over clothes boots, everything that we take with us on a road trips, fitness out of the exaction Packers and they fit very snug underneath the bed and it's an excellent way to to travel by using these action packers to organize and usually v action. Packer is just more miscellaneous, just larger items that we like to take and put in there as well. So you guys can kind of see a view from the back down to the front. There lots and lots of lots of space in the back here as well. In this bumper we have another storage compartment back here right now, I just have actually get Jack. That'S in a rear bumper here right now, and we also have rigid lights in the back as well that are hooked up independently off the reverse. So I can turn these on and off manually without engaging the reverse on the transmission coming around to the side. Here we have two big barn doors on the side, I prefer the barn doors over the panel. Basically, when you go with the larger vehicle, sorry, when you go with the larger rim and tire, if you have the sliding door, sometimes the door won't clear the rear tire here, so you can pretty much only open up your door half ways with the barn doors. I don't have any issue with that so again, this bed. Ah this is the front view what it would look like here and we have a 2 by 10. Actually that goes straight across here with a couple different latches on the side, so we can open and close there's 2 by 10 to slaughter action packers out once we're driving on a highway. We secure everything underneath we lock those latches. So if I do have to hit the brakes, everything isn't going to come. Sliding forward that 2 by 10 will kind of actors are retaining wall and I keep everything in the rear of the vehicle. So on the top here we have few LED lights. These things work quite well. We have a curtain up here on the front as well. We just took a steel cable, rounded across the top. Here, took a couple of turnbuckles and tighten that up, so we can close. We can close these blackout. Curtains - and I forgot to mention here in the back as well - we have blackout curtains on the rear window, so we just have velcro tabs that was just put on the sides of the window, so these things pop up or sorry pop on and off very easily. So if you are doing city, camping or stealth camping, it's quite easy to pop those up, and nobody would know that we are in the van. So this is basically how we travel. Like I say it's a big metal tent. This is our bed back here we have a small port-a-potty toilet, which is used for emergencies, only usually I'll take two or three coolers, depending upon what what the activity is or or where the destination of a roadtrip is that we just happen to have here with Us today, let's review guys can see there in the background, when I have a ratchet strap that actually runs through the rib of the side of the van and we stack all the coolers up there or take a ratchet, strap and tighten it down. So again the coolers don't go flying. If I have to hit the brakes pretty hard frontier. We have a fire extinguisher underneath the passenger seat just have a trauma kit here, an emergency kit. You know you're on the road you may come across an accident or if I have an accident myself, I have some supplies in there and on the other side, are those reflective triangles that you would set up in case of a vehicle break down now on the Front of the vehicle here come around here, really quick, just a standard cab in the Front's. Nothing too fancy these cargo vans are very, very basic. Give you guys a little bit of a look here, so we do have a trailer brake setup right here. So we do to do decide to tow. I do have the trailer brake option. Oil drive light switches right here now I want to old-school with the gear shift on the floor, so I can engage and disengage the foil drive without having to worry about any electronic mechanism there, and that's basically it up here. It'S like, I say, just a very, very basic front cab, not just being a van the motor actually kind of recedes back into the cab little bit, so we have what they call up here, a dark house, this whole piece slides back and I have access to The to the back of my motor, if, if I needed so for maintenance, so a little quick look down to the back of the van there tons and tons of room in this know about a few questions that I know I want to receive after shooting this Video and you're going to ask about insulation. Why isn't the vehicle insulated just a short answer for that? I try to keep everything I own very utilitarian, so it serves more than one purpose. I don't really want to dedicate this into a camper and, like I said, if I use it for for a number of different things, this bed here is very easy to take out. We have a couple of L brackets. That'S bolted down a seal to the floor. There so it would take me around 10-15 minutes with two guys. I could pull this bed out very easy. Now, I'm back to the cargo van capability in case. I want to move something big or what I like to do on the follow. There actually is. Take the bed out, I parked my full-size. Can I'm 800 quad on the back of here, for when we go hunting, I can drive that out. Put a couple sleeping cots back here in three or four fellas: could sleep in the van during hunting season so, like I say at this point right now: we only live out of this thing, maybe three months a year and it's been working well so far people Are going to say, is it very hot on this van? Well? Of course it is, it is a. It is a dark black van, so sometimes it can get a little bit unbearable, but because this is a diesel, I just run the AC unit up front. Just fire up the van run, the AC and it cools the van down on here very quickly and it's very tolerable at that point. So that's basically a real quick overview of the van here trying to keep this video under 10 minutes. So if you guys do have any more questions that you would like answered, please put them down in the comment section below. I will try to do the best of my ability to answer those for you just to give you guys a look here in the back. So this is the company who built the van Clydesdale 4x4. This is their website here, Sportsman for bar for calm. Any questions on that you can give those guys a call if you're curious about the bumper. It'S a Luminess products, Luminess calm, you can go on there and check it out and you can find out all the details that you want on the front rear bumper or the four-wheel drive conversion that we have done with the vehicle so appreciate you guys and then Checking out this video, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe please like and share and as always stay, safe and I'll, see you guys in the next one peace.