Ex-MAS PILOT BUILDS A MAXUS CAMPERVAN | MALAYSIA

Watch our behind-the-scenes video on our Patreon page. When you click subscribe, remember to hit the notification bell so you never miss a video. Morning Captain Nick, do you mind giving us a royal van tour of the interior and exterior of Sumandak in detail please? Sure. So here we have Sumandak. That started out as a kind of a bread van actually. It really looked like a piece of junk heading for the breakers when I bought it. With rain sweats everywhere, wires hanging, no windows when we first bought it. We had to fix the windows. And with a coat of paint and some elbow grease, as they say, it came out to be the way it is. I have configured this van to be one with a permanent bed at the back and a small little lounge in front. It was not a difficult choice because it's pretty easy to design this, mainly because it's meant for two people. Okay, this van I chose the one with the diesel engine, 2.5 intercooled turbo. Just about 140 horsepower, tons of torque, about 380 Newton meters. More than sufficient for the needs. Few reasons why diesel. Much more reliable and based on my own usage experience. There's also fuel economy. About 600 plus kilometers on a full tank of gas. That's about 70 liters, I think. Unfortunately, this is a manual. I wish it was an auto. It would have made things easier, but it's very difficult to get an auto van, auto panel van that you can stand in. So we live with the manual. Thankfully, the clutch is fairly light and the gearbox is not notchy at all. So pretty easy to drive. Power steering, windows, power everything, ABS and airbag. So the safety part of things are very well taken care of. Center locking came standard with the car. So that's pretty handy. Just walk away and lock the thing. And I put in this Android television setup, which is really, really fantastic. It's geared up with the rear camera. This Android thing is magic. You can tether it to your phone and it operates like a normal Android tablet. Which means you've got Google and all that. And that's great. You can YouTube, you can get sounds, you can get music, Spotify, all of this. So you don't tie up your phone. You only tether your phone here. So this is a very good addition. Apart from that, I added a couple of extra USB. You can never get enough of USB outlets. The rest, I kind of left it at standard. Okay, the usual cubby holes and storages up here. You've got your glove box. Stuff you can put on top here, which is pretty handy. Smart tech and stuff. You have a cubby hole here, a small one here. And people have asked me, why don't you put a nice box here? Which means quite a bit more storage. Maybe 30 liters worth of storage for light items like pillows and blankets and stuff. I don't see the need for now. And the great thing about not having that is that I can just stand up from my driver's cabin and go to the back. We were really in a quandary. We were really undecided what kind of fridge we want to get. There's a type that opens here, which is great because it slides into a cabinet. And then normally with two sections, a freezer and a fridge compartment. But that's not pricey. Number two, it's immobile. It cannot be moved around. It's not mobile at all. So we decided on this top-loading fridge. This is huge. This is 72 degrees. The disadvantage of this fridge, it runs as a freezer or a fridge. So if you've got vegetables and you've got minus 15, the vegetables are not going to last very long. I reckon we overbought the size of the fridge, so we may decide to just sell this off and buy two smaller ones. One to run as a fridge, the other one to run as a freezer. So that would work very well. The disadvantage of that is that it doesn't matter how big the fridge is, the power consumption is the same. So you kind of lose out in that. But the other advantage is on a smaller fridge, the power duration will be lesser because you've got less area to cool. But power consumption is about the same. To sit down, which works very well with this swivel seat for two people to have a conversation, to sit down and chill and relax. And the top of the fridge acts as a kind of a makan table where you can put cups and all that. We've got a recess for the cup to make sure it doesn't slide around. Okay, there's this idea of us now that we want to refit a kind of a cabinet similar to the one that you see at the back there. For some extra storage space, but that's another. Maybe when the van goes in for some refurbishment, we may add that. Aircon. Everybody talks about air conditioning in Malaysia. Everybody talks, oh your van, oh it's going to be hot in the afternoon. And I thought the same thing. But you have this huge problem of power. It is pretty okay if you have shore power or power from the house that you can plug in and run the aircon. You go to a campsite, I don't think people are very happy if you're taking kilowatts of power off their campsite. Then they're just charging you RM15 to RM30 a night. So that's one. The other one is genset. Oh, I hate genset. It smells, it is heavy. You need to put it far away. You disturb other people. Buying the petrol. Servicing. Dirty. Also there's security. Waking up in the morning, genset is just not there anymore. That is why I explored, you know, common ventilation. And I found this fan fantastic. The prices for these overhead ventilators range from just about RM400 to RM1100. And I read all the reviews and they say fantastic is numero uno. It's the best. So I bought it. No regrets, it's incredible. Even on a hot day like 31 degrees, 32 degrees, 33 degrees. You close all the windows, you run this and it sucks in volumes of air. I've read somewhere in the spec that it changes the air volume in this van every minute six times. So, you know, if you do something smelly in the toilet, you know the smell will remain for just 10 seconds before the air is replaced. So this is really, really, really good. Highly recommended. And don't worry too much, guys, about the heat, about air conditioning. Put this van, open a window and the wind comes in gushing in and cools you down fairly nicely. Did you do any insulation to help your ventilation? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Insulation, double duty. One is for soundproofing because the panels do vibrate and that makes a lot of noise. And by putting that insulation, it does, you know, one is soundproofing. The other one is it keeps the heat out and the cool in. Or when we go to a cold country, keep the cold out and the van fairly insulated from the elements outside the van. And you did that for your roof, ceiling, wall, floor? Everything. I was like, you know, I was the accessory shop doing. Every panel we can put, we put. Pretty expensive. I looked at the good brands like Dynamat and all that. And the whole van will cost me like RM8,000 to RM9,000, you know. That's just way too much to spend. So I looked for alternative copies of the same thing and got a young boy to help me paste. And the whole thing cost me below RM4,000. So I'm pretty happy with it. And it works very, very well. Just squeeze that open. As soon as the van opens up 10 degrees, the fan starts running. And on a rainy day, you can actually put it like that. If it's not too heavy and it still functions very well. On a bright day, for maximum effect, just open it full. Okay? Yep, ready. So demonstration, like airflow, what does it do? Let's look at the airflow. I mean this fan, just 12 inch. You'd think a van with an open door would be cooler than one that's totally closed. Let's give this a go. Now it's totally closed. If you just open this window, and this window, then you'll be able to see how strong it is. The air coming in goes out this way. At night, you can close these two. Then you can open up the ones by the bed. Again, it comes in very, very strongly and comes out here. Would you suggest getting two of these? That'd be even better. Mainly because I found out when it rains, this thing actually closes. This is automatic. There's a rain sensor. So you can sleep. And when it rains, it closes automatically. So then you have no ventilation. If you have an awning here, you can actually put a subsidiary fan here. Feed the subsidiary computer fans and all that because it's shaded. So that would be a good addition, which I probably won't add at a later stage.