The Transformation Is Nearly Complete! Building A Van For The Arctic Winter

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We’re so close we can almost taste it! In this weeks episode the van really starts to feel like its becoming a cozy little home on wheels. We get the water system up and running, gas system functioning, the water heater and diesel heater working, the cupboard doors on and the drawers in and the bathroom finished. Jon shows how simple it is to fit an after burner unit which makes our cheap diesel heater work in the same was and expensive thermostat controlled heater. I make the mistake of leaving Jon unattended filming for the morning and we share our tips and things to look out for if you are considering converting one of these vans.

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00:00 Intro
00:57 How to fit locking latches to cabinets
03:00 Fitting the doors and drawers
05:59 Waterproof bathroom door
08:55 Vanlife toilet chat
10:33 Completeing the plumbing
11:32 Testing the plumbing and heating system
14:27 Winter waste tanks
16:02 Electrics
17:02 Tool Talk Tuesday
18:55 Bungee gate
19:27 Home made duck board
20:02 Fitting the afterburner
24:32 Things to look for and know about converting a Sainsbury’s van

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Welcome to what will hopefully be the penultimate episode of this fan build so with the ending sight let’s show you how we got Here all top Tuesday you are getting on my last nerve today we got a floor I’m super chess I heard you needed someone strong these you not need all you need it’s a Puppy you look like a German shot Putter so now you’re up to date let week seven begin so we thought we’d start this episode where we finished off last week and get the drawers in and the doors on and we really like these push button catches because you haven’t got to remember to button the hatches when you drive off

Because your handle is your catch um and they’re just really simple little push button pop in and out and lock on but there can be a bit of a pain to fit so I’ll get done to show you how we get them in the right spot so these catches

I’ve got a bit of a LoveHate relationship with them because when I first started fitting them they’re absolute nightmare to fit but I’ve come up with a little jig idea that makes them fitting real simple so I’ll show you how to make it so first just get a

Bit of scrap wood about 12 mil bit and you got to drill a 26 mil hole through it anywhere on the wood and once you drilled your hole put your latch in get it square with a set square and then just screw it into your piece of wood

And then once you screwed your piece of wood push the button so the lock comes out but make sure you hold the button cuz if you let go you notice it drops back a couple of mil so hold the button out and then get your smaller scrap

Piece of wood and butt it up against the lock like that and then screw this piece in and then that’s your jig made so all you got to do is find a door you want to put your your little latch in where decide where you’re going to have it and

Then just drill through there and then you can do five six seven doors or drawers whatever even many you need so obviously it depends on what Gap you’re running on your inset drawer door so I Run 2 mil so that’s why I do it like that so then you’ve got a millimeter for

Your little plate that it catches on and then also so a millimeter of like spare space for the latch to open and close on beautiful so we got the door on and now I just got to fit the lock catch so that’s the little catch that this lock

Secures on to stop the door from opening so what you got to do is you got to lock your door and stick that catch on the lock and then just get a little set square and then just push your set Square so it touches the lock like that

Lock it up and then you can put it on your side of the cupboard and then fit your bracket On was I right in wanting the Shaker yeah they do look a bit better I have to admit sorry repeat repeat that one again Jess was right I have to admit get In I got a question for you would you leave your tour box unlocked and unattended in a public place well if you use the internet without a VPN especially on public Wi-Fi then it’s like leaving your toolbox full of personal information out in the cold with all our drawers

Open not on my watch so today’s video is kindly sponsored by Surf Shack and surf shark is a VPN which means virtual private Network and it works by encrypting your data between your device and the internet so it keeps you protected from big companies and from cyber criminals and worst of all to

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These ones that I’m pretty sure he’s never even bloody used and all my personal information was leaked all over the internet as well as encrypting your information Surf Shack also blocks ads trackers and malware allowing you to surf the web safely and keeping you safe from breaches so if you’ve tried searching

For Aussie wheelbarrows since I’ve shown you this little beauty then I got news for you surf shark lets you change your virtual location so not only can you perve on Aussie wheel brows but you can get for Aussie prices too surf shark puts the whole world of

Tools in your hand with no location restrictions on your searches no no joh another bonus feature about surf shark is it lets you browse Without a Trace so no one can see what you’re looking at you can try surf shark risk-free as as a 30-day money back guarantee they’ve

Also given us a massive black Friday discount for you tool Ling Legends you get 6 months off if you use the code true blue at the checkout we’ll put a link in the description so get yourself surf sharp protection and keep all your information locked up So the next job we on with is the bathroom door before we can fit the bathroom door I need to make a frame for it so I did have a look about and I couldn’t really find anything that I liked there’s only one thing I did

Really like and that was called a tamber door but it’s like a material door like a roller blind um but I see a few reviews on them and they seem to crease a bit Jess would break it in 2 minutes and then we couldn’t really Chuck loads

Of gear in there as well like skis or coats or anything like that so yeah we’re going to go with this idea um because obviously we got all the walls are waterproof as it is so we didn’t want to put a shower cut or anything

Like that so all I’m going to do is I’m going to get some aluminum angle and then we’re going to screw it to the frame and then it’s slightly wider than the wall as well um so what I’m going to do is run a bead of silicon all around

The inside so it’ll be nice and sealed and then for the outside I’m going to put a little bit of foam strip on the outside of it and then when you shut the door that will seal on there and then obviously all the water will just run down and into the shower Tray Winter’s here might be cold and dark but how cool is this Sunset morning everyone we have a door check out this little beauty this is the most privacy we’ve ever had in a B I never thought about that yeah but but yeah we got it on got all the frame on and I was really happy with that come

Out Ed the joins and everything like that yeah we’re just going to put a bit of stick on foam to seal the door to the Santa Cloud on the back and that I’ll do that treat so yeah really happy with it I’m very happy with this situation but

I’ve got to tell you about my little Adventure last night it oh for goodness sake so I got in the old Rabbit Hole last night of the YouTube you know where you just sort of like go deeper and deeper and just look at random stuff I

Won’t go into too much detail what some of the stuff I found you don’t want him to go into detail anyway one of the things I found was David Beckham’s 10 most famous free kicks right and it got me thinking you know in football go footballers they score a goal and then

They’re giving it afterwards and that I thought that’s how we need to Embrace Life a bit more so look watch this get in there get in there want to be like that we got the door fitted yes come on yes yes eight billion people in the

World and I choose this PO but don’t you think it’d be great if we like when you achieved something you celebrated like a footballer like when they score a goal so like you change B delivery drivers once you’ve done your delivery you walk out the gate and you just give it a

Chiggy yes got that delivery done in there now goon boy is finished with his snor I want to show you our toy to now hopefully this is a position I will never have to be in especially after I learned my lesson about house Liquors in [Laughter] Slovenia get In never again so this is our separate toilet and it’s an eyew watering £800 but it’s our third one so it gives you an indication of how much we like it we like it for a couple of reasons first is it’s easy to dispose of the waste but

Most importantly they really don’t smell cuz chemical toilets can get quite whiffy whereas these are brilliant and I’ll show you how that happens so when you open the toilet you’ve got this part here which diverts your number ones and number twos go in the back here and when

You sit down that flap opens so you’re not greeted by your unattractive things when you lift the lid and if you didn’t know it’s when ones and twos mix that you get the really awful smell so keeping them separate keeps the smell to a minimum under here you’ve got so this

Flat lifts up and you can see here there’s a little tube and that’s got a 12volt fan on it that exhausts all of the gases to the outside so you do need a 12vt cable to come to it and you need to put a hole to the outside for it to

Vent and then the Wii goes into this container here which just slides out to dispose of it and then you can put bags in the back here to uh contain your number twos so it means you can travel smell free even when you travel with an

Animal like John so it’s a big day today it’s probably the most nerve-wracking day of a v build as well because we got to commission everything so we got the water heater the water system the night heater and the drainage as well so we’ve got a few little bits to do on the

Drainage and then it’s crunch On if you wondered how the half hour tea break agreement was going from a couple of weeks ago let me show you the current situ situation I got my toast in my pocket and I pluming the other [Applause] One moment of Tree right you ready ready turn the water pump on then stop oh God cuz you got the shower on oh go plugged the shower in and turned it on your great first I didn’t put that in there yes you thought you did like what is that noise all turn the

Pump on again who we got a leak Jess turn the pump off it’s it’s off pump off it’s off it’s off J take the fuse out where J take the fuse out hang on I turn it off it can’t be John you know what we got to do though don’t you

What One n one n no l One n no words next and most important test now we’ve got water could I make a brew see if this Gas Works e we’re cooking on gas go on go on what you got to do it I’ve told you I’m not

Doing it looks like I’ll have do then Co on then we got gas so we’re two for two and we’re going to go for the big double for the big finish so let’s see if the hot water heater and the desel heater work so switch the hot water heater

On sounds promising but we got to wait half an hour to find out if that one works so let’s go with the diesel heater staying on I hear something heating up yeah I haven’t put the um the After Burner control unit on yet because I want to

Make sure it works properly with this one and then I’ll fit that one I’m trying to convince Jess to do the cinan for the next celebration that is not happening she’s not having it it is been pouring with rain come on you got to do

It for the team you do it for the team the people want to see you Clansman now it’s a no for of me we’re three for three diesel heer Works a treat and it’s toasty and warm in here so let’s test the hot Water she is hot look at that oh it can barely hold a bowl we’re doing it into the bowl by the way cuz we’ve just siliconed in the sink well that is a big win cleans me it isn’t eh no bloody cleans go on cleans no it’s not happening but I am

Absolutely buzzing so now we got those big things ticked off the list we wanted to show you a few other things that we’ve done and we keep forgetting to show you so we’ve got the window blinds in and they just slide down at the top

There or come up at the bottom bug mesh which is brilliant John’s got the garage ligh in as well someone did ask me why we call it a garage I don’t know it’s just a just a man life thing isn’t it and that light was actually off the

Original body as well we just repurposed that yeah we love a bit of recycling and then waste tanks so we’ve got an 18 L waste tank that we’ve put underneath neath the shower and that’s hidden behind the max tracks and we’ve decided that we’re only going to shower in

Places where we can immediately get rid of the water because otherwise we couldn’t get high enough inside the van to have the waste tank inside for the shower and then for our sink because we need to use that all the time and can’t just dump it straight away we’ve got a

21 L waste tank that we’ve put in the garage here John set it up off the floor the same as he has with the freshwater tank and the battery to stop it from freezing and we’ve got an electronic waste valve on it as well to make it

Nice and easy to empty so we don’t have to get into the garage to do it the other thing is we’ve got the vent here to let warm air into the garage to stop things freezing back here and John’s cut in down the side of this seat here with

The router a little strip out so you can see the side of the freshwater tank and that way we know what our levels are because otherwise you’re wasting power with an electronic level gauge and they quite often mess up anyway so you can’t go WR with a little manual viewing

Station another job we got done got this door on the electrical cupboard so one of the comments I got was will I need to pull my fridge out to get to any of the trips or anything like that no that’s why I put this door in so I can get to

Anything if anything goes and also I got quite a lot of stick about having the electrics behind the fridge cuz everyone was saying it would run too hot so I run a very similar system in Australia and it was like 40 degree days most days and

It would never missed a beat so I think it’ll be fine and also what I have done as well is I’ve installed a vent at the bottom here a vent around that side of the cupboard a big cut out there for the battery and then also the fridge only

Comes to about here so there is a big air gap between there and one of the reasons I’ve put it there is because I need to keep the battery warm so obviously because being a lithium iron battery if the temperature of it drops too low it won’t work and it won’t

Charge so I’m hoping it does stay reasonably warm in there but only the similar sort of temperature as the cab so what I have done is I’ve taken a bit of your advice though so thanks very much for the comments and I’ve installed a little computer fan on the inside near

The vent here so what it will do is just create the air flow and it should get rid of any heat in that so I’ll run that 24/7 so it should be all good so Jesse is on with some admin this morning and she’s foolishly left me in

Charge of filming so I think you know what’s coming we might as well start the day and the the best possible way with some triple tea to chalk Tuesday she’s also told me that I’m only allowed to review van Bill specific tools but she’s not here so we’re going to review this

Plasma cutter so for any of you who don’t know what a plasma cutter is it just basically Cuts metal and the way it does it is by you plug your compressor into it and you get your torch you get your work piece what you’re going to cut

Then you press your trigger and it creates an arc and then once it creates the arc it blows compressed air through the little tip there so when you run it along it just blows the steel out so it’s really good because it keeps the workpiece nice and cool and then it

Means you can do patterns and everything like that and also you can cut really thick steel so I’ll show you how it works and then I’ll explain why you need one of these little Beauties in the workshop so yeah it’s that simple really obviously that was a real thin bit of

Steel that I did there but it does cut real thick steel so this is a bit of 10 mil steel here and obviously you can see where I’ve cut it with the with the plasma cutter a nice curve so I used that to make this uh trenching Digger

Bucket so I wanted one to put pipes in the ground and that so if I’d have tried to do this with a grinder well it taken me years to do so whereas this is all one piece and I cut it out with nice with the the plasma cutter and it come

Out real good so yeah another little good addition to the workshop So Jess is still on with admin so I wonder what I could do to stay out of Trouble let’s make a [Applause] bungee m everybody boring old admins out the way so I can get on my first proper job of the day and I’m going to make a duckboard for the shower tray cuz those stainless steel show trays are brilliant but all my days they are cold on your

Feet in the morning you can buy duckboards but they are ridiculously expensive so you know us I’m going to make One So now the bung is on I need to get on with fitting this afterburner control unit for the nigh heater so with the cheaper diesel night heaters when they get to the certain temperature you selected they’ll just go into a low power mode but they’ll keep Heating and

We find you just end up roasting yourself out so with this unit you can set it to your desired temperature so say 20° and then when it gets to that temperature it will cut off and then when it gets below that temperature it will cut back in again so it’s a lot

More comfortable so I’ll show you the unit so I’ve got the controller on the side there with a temperature sensor on it as well just pull the fuse that goes to your night heater so it’s got no power going to it and then unplug your old controller and basically plug it

Into this bypass Loom so now basically what’s happened is both controllers are set up and this is how you’re going to transfer all the settings so now it’s all plugged in this is powered up so you click left twice into the main menu and then you go up to heater tuning

And then then you press right and then you press up and it says adopt LCD controller settings and then we want to press right to inherit them and then you got to put the password in which is 688 and then it’s storing all the settings and that’s it done so now all

The controller settings from the original controller is stored into this and then all you got to do is just unplug your old controller from the loom and then leave that one connected and it’s job done now there’s all sorts of settings you can change in this there’s

Altitude settings you can do like days of the week timers so it comes on at certain times and things like that you can connect it to your phone Wi-Fi Bluetooth all sorts of stuff but if you’re a bit simple like me you’ll just set the setting on the controller and

Just leave it at that so one other thing I forgot to say is these After Burner units aren’t compatible with every diesel heater so you’ll just have to check to make sure that yours is compatible uh but I’m over the moon with how uh how both the units work work

Together and how the lavender is as well so the fuel pump on it is brilliant you know how some of the cheaper ones they sound like a woodpecker when they’re going well this it’s almost silent like we used to have an ever spatcher before and it’s even quieter than that so

Really happy but yeah like I say I think this is the way I’m going to go with these two units remember every camper I do from now on got some new clamps guys so these are the unwind clamps I was on about the other day but we get these

Little Beauties 13 quid off of uh eBay and then you just slide off the the original plates cluck them in and then you got some speed quick Gramps for Corners yeah show everybody your clamp Dan you were just doing yeah this is what he was doing

Jess I don’t want to look silly on social media that ship has sailed not bad for a bit of scrapwood hey it’s just made out of the off cuts from the bed frame so free which is always a good one I know it would have been better out of like bamboo or

Something but we don’t plan to actually sh that like I said it’s just to keep our feet off of the cold floor in the bathroom so let’s see if she fits e be beautiful not bad Jo not bad thanks boy and while I was making that John’s made

This little frame to go over the pipes here so obviously we need to paint it and fill it but it’s going to pop in there and cover those up and obviously the table’s going to come over the top of it so you won’t see that John also

Thinks he’s biging clever and I haven’t noticed the Hideous bungee behind his head what are you all about the big bung that’s on the wall that was not approved oh yeah how did that get there how did that get there my bum I said no Bungie you got to admit it looks pry

Good though no it doesn’t look good it looked much better the way it was before but you’re lucky I don’t hate it because otherwise you’d be removing it and filling the hole so what you’re trying to tell me is we can put some more in it then no that is

It also wanted to show you how we get nice edges on things so you’ll notice like around the tops of the cabinets we’ve got no gaps and that’s because we’ve used this acrylic filler so on where it joins the white I haven’t painted it but inside the cabinet here

Where you’ve got a joint that you might get separation in I’ve used the acrylic filler and then painted it so don’t buy the cheap cork make sure you get this one uh it’s acrylic anti crack um and it paints up beautifully but the cheap one always goes yellow and you get cracks in

It so that’s my top tip for finishing those what are you doing at that bunged yes oh you’re such a KN so we’ve had a few comments as well and messages sent to us saying that they’re looking at going to get one of these Vans The Exchange Breeze and we

Love the messages like keep them coming even people that have bought them already as well so sent us pictures so cool yeah but we thought we’d go through a little few tips tricks hints and things like that if you are interested in go and look one anyway so the first

One is to check out the radio cuz they very often break like the guy that we bought them from he had seven all seven had broken radio screens but it was only £6 to replace it and the one we’ve got is like all singing all dancing even has

A speeder on it so that’s an easy fix the other one is the body roll like like we showed you last week these are real bad because they’re so high up and everything like that and they’re quite big box it is quite bad like even just

Parked up so I’d definitely put that in your budget to upgrade your suspension another one that quite a few people commented and we really appreciated was that they quite often come with either some foam in the fuel tank or a smaller fuel tank it’s the way they keep the

Weight down it’s not the case with ours but just check with yours that you’re going to look at that it’s got a fulls siiz fuel tank and then also the speed limiter so the speed limit on these they’re set to 56 or 59 or something like that so you’ll have to get that

Removed don’t go to Mercedes you pay like 10 times the price just a local um like person who does speed limits and things like that we had a look yesterday and you get it done for about 80 quid so the next one we wanted to say about is

Doors so we’re really happy with the doors that we’ve put in because they give us such a good seal and because of where we’re taking this van but if you were looking to do one of these we would recommend having a look at horse box doors they’re probably going to cost you

A bit more money but you can get them made to measure and you can just cut your hole slide it in Bish bash BOS done they were a bit of a fath out I was trying to get all the MIT joins perfect trying to figure out a way to get a

Locking system so that we could open it from the inside bit of a FF but that’s just something to think about so the next one is body work so on these the cabs normally good condition and they’re immaculately no rust or anything like that but the actual body where they’ve

Had a bit of a hard life from these dodgy SB drivers Al so they tell us anyway but um but no obviously because they had stickers on before they’ve probably had dings they’ve repaired them and then where they’ve pulled the stickers off like obviously the repairs

Are behind there and things like that so just be cautious if you’re not willing to paint it I don’t know what you’re going to do you know what I mean because you’re going to have to paint the inside at the very least so and with you putting doors in everything like that

But don’t be put off I really recommend roller paint in you’ll get a really good finish um if you don’t want to spend the money doing it or you can’t spray it so in terms of price this van cost US1 Grand and had 95,000 Mi on the clock so

That kind of gives you something to look at others in comparison with yeah and uh also where they come from so like the Mercedes actually sell them uh at the minute we’ve had somebody contact us who actually had this van and they sorted this van so you could check out your

Mercedes dealers but eBay if you go on eBay and St in Sprint a fridge van loads come up so that’s all of our tips for looking at these specific Vans we hope it’s helpful feel free to ask us any questions um and we’re going to have to

Leave you there for this week because we’re running out of time but next week make sure you come back because it’s going to be all the final finishing fun bits so I’m looking forward to that and don’t forget about that offer from Surf Shop they give you six months for free

With the link in the description see you next week got bungy oh for God’s sake