Author: Andy

We headed out on a week long trip to put some miles and nights on the van. We had a range of weather, temps, camping locations, and beautiful scenes to take in. With nights in Winthrop, Curlew Lake (north of Republic), Keller Ferry (on the Columbia river), Vantage. Here’s a few pictures from along the

Andy
September 27, 2019

I decided to add a trickle charger to the Van starter battery. This ensures that the battery stays topped up during periods of storage between trips. I was finding that if the van sat longer than a couple of weeks it was draining the battery down. The charger simply hooks up directly to the battery

Andy
September 27, 2019

We took a weekend camping trip to Lodgepole which is fairly high up on Chinook Pass. Temps got a bit chilly at night, but overall everything worked great. This was the first trip out with the new screen setup for the slider door. It worked perfect. Was great to keep out the mosquitoes for sure.

Andy
June 30, 2019

So I wanted to hang some lights off the awning to light up the evening. First stop was to figure out a way to hang them. There are number of commercial solutions to the problem, but I figured why not build something for now and see how it works. I took some 12″ lengths of

Andy
June 26, 2019

We wanted to add a screen door to the side slider so I picked up this screen door from Amazon as the basic materials. For $33 it seemed cheap enough. MAGZO Magnetic Screen Door 60 x 80 It was wider and taller than needed, and I had to make a cutout for my exterior dog

Andy
June 25, 2019

For some unknown reason the base promaster does not have an armrest on the passenger seat. So I found a very similar one on Ebay and got busy installing it. I ended up making some brackets out of 1/8″ steel to place the mounting point in the same location as the driver seat armrest. I

Andy
June 17, 2019

The next trip was on June 1st. We headed to the heart of the cascades south of Randle WA, East of St Helens, and West of Adams. It’s about 40 miles from the last cell tower and quite remote. That said, there’s almost a hundred camp spots in the Iron Creek campground. We pitched camp

Andy
June 2, 2019

For the first trip out we decided to use a state park. They have electrical and water hookups which would be good to have for heat in the early season. We rolled up easy as can be. Don’t really take up much space as this was a full pull through camping spot. For late April

Andy
April 21, 2019

I installed a Fiamma F65s Awning. It mounts to the existing roof pins with a bracket kit for the promaster vans. It’s nicely fit to the top and fairly low profile. Of course now the top of the van is lopsided 🙂 I also picked up a 3d printed mount that uses 3M VHB tape

Andy
April 15, 2019

Adding some final finishing details to wrap up the build. Here is the mounting solution for the Berkey water filter system. It has a fitted mount on the wall with Velcro straps to secure it to the wall during transit. Will be best to make sure it’s fairly empty or at least not full when

Andy
April 3, 2019