VAN LIFE UPGRADES For Extended Overland Travel

Overlanding means different things to different people. To some it means a short and intense exploration off the beaten track. Four wheel drive is mandatory, the trails almost always challenging. To others, overlanding represents long distance travel, the traversing of complete countries and sometimes, as is the case with our expedition, entire continents. We're under no illusion that this 46 year old vehicle is probably not the best choice of rig to drive around the world, but driving a vintage van around the world is part of the challenge for us. Regardless of vehicle choice, us overlanders have one thing in common and is that we all have to adapt and evolve our rig so that they can meet the demands of the journey. So during our five year expedition from Chile to Arctic Alaska, our vehicle was woefully underprepared. So in this video we want to share with you how we are preparing this rig to overcome some of the challenges that we'll face on this massive journey. We've mentioned these modifications before in our build series and some of this information is going to be new, so we are breaking this down into two sections. This video is going to be about how we are extending our time off-grid. Extending our time overlanding in a small form factor adventure rig has a lot to do with space management. You must bring all of the essentials to live off-grid and on the move. To keep weight at a minimum we bring limited equipment. Each item in our adventure rig must be essential to our expedition. Storing it in a functional, easy access and lightweight system is the key. Back in 2018, right before we left the Pacific coast of the Americas, in the weeks before pointing our compass east and beginning the long drive to Australia, we called into a tiny town in central California, Los Osos. Home to leading experts in camper van modification, GoWESTI. My name is Jad Josie. I'm the general manager of GoWESTI Camper Products. GoWESTI is all about innovating for VW campers. So we supply parts and accessories for these iconic vehicles. GoWESTI are our overlanding consultants for this expedition. They have a strong R&D team who develop equipment to improve the capability of these iconic vehicles. They also love a good adventure. By the way, that's Sahi's GoWESTI CEO and Taylor the VP. This is what I meant by they love an adventure. Yes, they are a business that develops parts, but they also own and drive these vehicles daily. Their advice and expertise in our build has been invaluable. They helped us build this custom bumper to adapt the GoWESTI swing system for use on our 73 bay window combi. In my opinion, this is one of the best systems you can get for any overlanding, especially what you guys are doing. I agree. I don't even know how we live without it this long. The other advantage of moving all that stuff from the roof down to here is you save on gas mileage, clearance when you're going through trees. This is right in your slip stream. Yeah, that's a very good point. Another option with your spare tire setup is this reverse spare tire carrier where the spare sits backwards so you can get the storage space. It's cool because it turns the width of the wheel into a nice little storage area where you can fit tow straps, more bulky stuff out. I like the idea of putting all the weight over the back of the bus as well because that's much better. When you start piling weight on the front, you really notice it when you're off road. Due to the limitations of our US visa, this was as far as we got. We had to put the swing away system design on hold at that time until we had driven across the USA and shipped our combi to Europe where the combi swing away bumper evolution the swing arm system. We ended up putting the door on the inside so when it's locked people can't get into the door here because it looked like it'd be quite easy to get something behind here and pull it open. So we've done that so nobody can get into it when it's closed and it's very secure. All I need to do now is fix the attachments to the gutter here. We need to reinforce the gutter where the boxes and stuff are in the back so I'm cutting up a pipe here and then I'm going to use the stuff to rubberize it so it's not going to scratch the paint and the metal. Then we're going to just put it in the gutter so it just makes it a bit stronger for the clamp to clamp on. It just coats it in rubber so it should dry in about half an hour and gives it a nice rubber coating. Having this jerry can on the side here and on the back is just a great location for us. It gets it out of the way, it's not blocking any view in the back of the window and I wasn't going to start this expedition without a decent jerry can. I don't know about you guys but I've had terrible luck with plastic ones. They never last very long, they're not very strong. If you drop them or you store them and something hits them they can crack easily. A steel jerry can was an absolute must. I looked to see which ones that NATO and the military are using and they're using the Wavian one so I got this Wavian jerry can. I got it from jerrycan.co.uk. They supply all sorts of different colours for water, for diesel, for fuel and they also have these really cool carrying units which can be locked which is really important for us because I can't tell you how many times, actually I can, three times I've had jerry cans stolen from the outside of my rigs. The seal on the lid on these are replaceable so if they do perish after time you can replace them and continue to use the jerry can. They seal down really tight and they've got a pin that goes in and pushes it down even further so you know you've got an absolutely secure lid and you're not going to leak any fuel which is why it can be stored on its side. Compare that to a plastic lid on a cheap jerry can that you get from a gas station. This is just in another league entirely, way better. I've got to say after using the Swing Away system for a few months this system is absolutely phenomenal. It's one of my favourite features about the van, it's just completely freed up so much space inside that we were previously using for mechanical tools and jack stands and oils and all stuff you didn't really want to keep in the van. Having the tyre on the back is way safer than having on the front like a lot of people do. It's just worked out to be brilliant, it's one of my favourite features of the van and I would highly recommend anybody with a Volkswagen or any van to be honest to get something like this. I will say that Go Westy absolutely had it on the money with having these reinforcing bars attaching to the gutter at the top here. If you've got any kind of weight in this system, in this box, on the trays that they provide or with something a little heavier like the tyre and wheel it's definitely worth securing it because on its own just on the bumper if you're on a long bumpy road you will get a bit of movement and over time that may cause an issue which is why the Go Westy Swing Away system they put bars on their system up to here and why we have copied it in in our replica. As well as the rear bumper, as is typical with overlanding vehicles, we needed to make use of the roof storage so we fabricated a low profile roof rack. Not a great moment having to drill holes in our finished roof but it's necessary this is a much better roof rack solution so it should be worth it in the long run but I'm pretty nervous about doing this. Okay so since we are making holes in the roof we're using stainless steel hardware to go through and nuts and bolts in most cases but we've got two really good fixings into our strong beams which are over the b-pillar and near the c-pillar so we've got this tool here um what is this called what does it do this is for checking rafters right yeah nod cameraman nods so my dad uses this for checking rafters and stuff so hopefully it should be green and then it should turn red if there's wood behind it which is fingers crossed we're in the right place so right there where we've marked there is wood behind it so I know that we're in a good place to screw through this is a really useful tool thanks I'm glad you got this so I'm fairly confident that this roof rack t-track is going to hold it has a huge washer underneath like three or four bolt four bolts on each side and then two massive screws going into a big structural member here and here as well so this roof rack is not going anywhere it's not going to be for high loads because it's so high up this is really just to hold a tiltable solar panel rack some surfboards and probably an awning as well but it's necessary it's not really a good idea to tackle long range rough roads with heavy items up high as well it affects your center of gravity and also puts unnecessary strain on the vehicle however using standard hardware we're now able to bolt a variety of accessories to our rig using these t-tracks attached to these brackets we've mounted rigid solar panels we made a separate video dedicated to our off-grid electrical system which essentially gives us unlimited off-grid power but we should mention here for overlanding we specifically opted for rigid panels not only because they perform better but because they significantly reduce the inside temperature with the shade they provide but mostly because they last longer than semi-flexible panels and where we are headed we won't be able to readily obtain replacements easily having rigid panels also means we can tilt them so if we're working say in winter or when we're traveling near the extreme poles we can get better solar harvest pretty valuable another overland modification we made is to install this underslung gas bottle which is a lot bigger than one that we used to have we got this one from Go Westy and our main fuel source is LPG because we use it for cooking and for our hot water system so this allows us to stay off-grid for longer we do speak about our gas system more in depth in another video so go check that out it explains what our safety modifications are and how we installed this gas tank so go check that video out this water filtration system that we have installed is absolutely amazing at keeping us off-grid for longer it allows us to source water from a wider range of sources which means that we can extend our time off-grid we have a lot of hacks to share with you on how we extend our limited water off-grid so go and check that video out it's well worth watch the final modification we made to extend our time off-grid was adding a lightweight ARB awning whilst not typically an overlanding mod the awning does help significantly with climate control dramatically improves our ability to stay cool when we're traveling through hell's inferno okay that might be a bit dramatic but it does open up our living space when it's raining and it also helps us feel that we're not cooped up in our tiny home we were in two minds if we needed the awning for overlanding but honestly now we would not be without it got to give a shout out to Taylor at Go Westy for this awning when we swung in to pick it up they didn't have any in stock and he told me well i've just installed a brand new one on my van it's parked outside if you want you can go and take it off there and i'll put a new one in when on my van when they come back in stock honestly who would do that what an absolute legend that is the kind of people that they are at Go Westy that's why we're happy to call them friends and we're very very blessed to be able to work with them on this video cheers Taylor mate you're a legend hopefully with these upgrades we will be more self-sufficient in the challenge to come definitely with these modifications we feel more confident about tackling the world's roads and a big thank you to everybody who helped us build this rig we did not do this alone if you want to watch our build series click the link up here if you'd like to see a blog post about how we have built this rig and all of the equipment that's in it that's over there otherwise subscribers we are very much looking forward to taking you on an adventure so we'll be seeing you next time until then happy travels