Buying a van? START HERE + How we chose our van for conversion
If you’re thinking about buying a van and aren’t quite sure which one you should invest in, this post will be a great resource. There are a ton of vans available for purchase and it can be a confusing process deciding which one is right for you personally, or you and your family.
I’m sure quite a few people are wondering why we chose to completely restore an older van, instead of jumping right into our interior build with a new van. Believe it or not, it wasn’t just price. This post will go into all the details we personally considered when choosing our new home away from home.
A little background on us and our van for refresher, which I’ll go more into later. We’re two 26 year olds that are fairly shorter (this is important when picking out a van) and have two medium-large sized golden retrievers. We purchased a 2004 first generation T1N Sprinter in October 2019, and we’ve been working on restoring it for approximately 4 months now. This timeline sounds scary, but it should be noted that we both work full time Monday-Friday jobs and the van isn’t currently being stored at our house for bodywork. Therefore, we’ve only been able to work on it during the weekends when there was nice weather. If you have more time than us don’t let our bodywork timeline frighten you from buying an older van! Our restoration has finally come to an end so we figured this would be a perfect time to talk about why we went through all this trouble and chose to bring this van home in the first place.
So let’s start with the basics- your living space is very important and varies per family so let’s talk dimensions. We’ve put together a table with the specifications of popular vans bought for conversions in order to easily compare. There are pros and cons for each van and they generally depend on the family.
** All these sizes are approximate, we aren’t experts and don’t have each van model to personally measure ourselves- some sizes were either rounded down because when talking about dimensions for a home a little extra is better than not getting what you expected. It’s important to keep in mind that these are your starting sizes, once you begin adding walls and a floor these sizes may decrease slightly.
So now that we have some dimensions to reference, let’s talk about what factors we considered with all these dimensions in the back of our mind.
1) What are you planning to use your van for?
This seems like a strange question to consider, but it’s very important. What do we mean by this? Are you planning to use your van for weekend trips, lengthy vacations, part time van life, full time van life or are you planning to even take your business on the road with you? Whatever your reason for building a van may be, it will greatly influence your decision in choosing what type of van to begin that process with. All these reasons tie directly into measurements.
2) Where do you want to go in your van?
This is an easy question. One of the best appeals of a van is their ability to go where you want them to compared to a regular RV or even a bus conversion. You may be giving up space when deciding to convert a van, but you’re gaining the ability to take your vehicle many more places. All that being said, where do you envision yourself taking your van? Are you planning to use campgrounds, urban areas, or go off grid and off road? Different vans will perform better off road than others and depending on where you plan to camp you may not need to take up living space with certain items, such as a bathroom. It’s important to know that if you’re planning to go off road and want to snag a capable 4×4 van off the lot, the sprinter and transit are your only options. If you’re on a tighter budget but would like a 4×4, the Ford Econoline is probably your best option, as there are many after market kits that can turn your 2 wheel drive vehicle into 4.
3) Price
This will vary for everyone because everyone is different. If you’d rather buy an older van and do a pretty expensive conversion (like ourselves) that makes sense. However, there are a ton of scenarios that also make sense. Depending on trims, powertrain, etc. van prices will also vary significantly.
For us personally, we wanted to complete our conversion with no loans or debt, we only wanted to use money out of our pocket. This is why we bought an older van and chose to restore it from the start.
Our Advice: Do a trial run in the current vehicle you have now so you can see what’s important to you.
We’ve personally been through so many scenarios that eventually led us to a van (which was not always at the top of our dreams list, I’ll be honest). We started out only car camping with our tent and backpacking. As time went on, we got more into driving and cramming as much as we could into a weekend and then we began sleeping in the back of our 4Runner. Not long after that we built a cozy space in the truck bed of our truck covered by our camper shell. This design didn’t quite turn out as we hoped and we realized we definitely needed more room and an easier way to stand up and change without two dogs fighting us for bed space. This is how we landed on our van and our entire design. We learned exactly what we needed and what we could easily live without.
