It all began with a simple plan: to buy all the materials - including the base vehicle, but excluding my own time and build a camper van of sorts with a total budget of £2000. For that, the 'rules' were that it needed to be able to provide basic living and sleeping facilities for 2 people (and a pretty big dog) for at least a long weekend, and be able to cart mountain bikes, boats and kayaks, or climbing and ski gear, and ideally for most of the fittings to be removable in case I wanted to shift bigger kit.

I'd had big, expensive MPVs and 4x4s in the past but found that you always have a concern in the back of your mind about damaging it or creating a big dent in your wallet on running costs and manufacturer accessories to transport gear about. I had the use of a company vehicle, but this was to be my own main set of wheels. Furthermore, there's a limit to what you can carry in a small BMW saloon without having to take everything to bits, and kit strapped to racks can have a habit of walking (with help from theivin' tw***). Moreover, a lot of the activities I get up to mean you end up caked in mud or soaking at the end of the day, and didn't want to have to queue up for changing facilities before heading back home.

As a nipper, some close family friends had a van as their second vehicle which they used to head off windsurfing in. They always planned to add some home comforts, but never got around to it. I'd noticed a few folk at the bike tracks with van conversions which looked ideal, but when I googled them I found that even a conversion of an ex-lease van might still cost well over £10k.


But I saw that as just a small challenge. Looking at a few parts catalogues my brother-in-law, Rich, had kicking around I worked out that the basic domestic bits wouldn't cost that much. As my main vehicle, I wanted to be sure I wouldn't feel embarassed turning up anywhere in the van, so it would need a 'cool' angle. I knew also that there were tired-looking vans about for not too much cash that still had life in them if you looked beyond the surface, and at the end of the day if it all went wrong the experiment wouldn't lose me too much cash and I'd at worst be able to sell a still shoddy ex-builders van on elsewhere. If the initial experiment was successful and then at the end of a year the vehicle would cost too much to get it through the MOT then I could just buy a similar van and transfer the bits across.

So having come to these latter conclusions over an afterwork beer with my former colleagues Gayle and Si, the 2-grand van concept began its path to becoming a reality.

Over the following pages, I've tried to post rationalise what I did: the inspiration page lays out where many of my ideas came from - the commercial conversion outfits I looked at and other references I used; the plans & drawings section shows the basic scribbles I worked from; the materials page sets out all the bits I needed and how I sourced them - including the base vehicles I considered, how I made my final decision, and how I bought it; the on the road section gives a bit more insight into my early experiences of using the van, and there's also a section covering the kit for carrying sports gear; in running costs I set out a basic overview of what it costs to keep the thing on the road and compare this to running a car; and finally, as this kind of project never really has an end, I'm profiling my ideas for future developments - some of which are incarnated and some are still just on paper. Enjoy!