CONVERTING my VAN into a BUDGET OVERLANDER - Gladys 2.0
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You may remember what my van looked like when I first bought it. I bought Gladys on June 6th of 2016. In August of 2016 I built out Gladys and created Gladys 1.0. I've been making casual upgrades as I've been going like a light bar, and Abel Zyl made me a little bookshelf in there, which is dope, but recently I embarked on a five-week adventure through Baja California, Mexico, Baja Sur, all the way down to Cabo, and I had to make some decent upgrades to Gladys to make sure that she was up for the challenge.
I immediately bought a dirt bike because I mean, isn't that what you would do? I had to figure out how to carry the dirt bike, and so then I had to mount a hitch on Gladys. I went under the van and I started to install the hitch because it seemed pretty straightforward, but as it is with everything, I ran into hurdles. I had to take the van to a shop here in Yucca Valley and they punched out old bolts that were in the way. I went to install the hitch and found out it wasn’t fitting, that and doing it on my own was proving difficult. I took it back and they got it installed for me.
I had to move the spare tire because of the dirt bike, so I had to put that on top of my van and then I put the trasharoo up there. Every once in a while it was falling in front of my rear backup camera, so that was a problem, so then I decided to just drill it and mount it straight into the door. I bought a motorcycle rack so that I could carry the dirt bike down to Mexico. I stopped by the swap meet in Yucca Valley where I got that black box and first aid box, which is a beauty. If you're ever in the area, I definitely recommend checking out the swap meet. The black box kind of acts as my outdoor garage now that it’s mounted on the back. A lot of people are afraid of drilling and cutting holes in their vehicle, and I've never really understood that. My thought is as long as you seal it properly, you just mount stuff to your vehicle.
Gladys had a few rust spots that I tried to take care of. I'm not a doctor nor a mechanic nor a physician, but I did clean the wound and tried to get rid of any rust and dead areas. Scrubbed it up all real good then I sealed it with truck bed liner. I ended up doing that all the way around the bottom of Gladys. There's one main spot down near the passenger side fender that was pretty significant that I ended up using gaff tape, screen from a window screen, and then more gaff tape and then truck bed liner. Definitely not the conventional way to fix it, but it works because it. I also added an exterior light, which has been quite useful. Highly recommend exterior lighting, especially if you plan to go into more remote areas.
I mounted some max tracks to the side of the van. You are going to get stuck eventually, and so I did get stuck and they came in handy, but not as handy as I wish they would have because they didn't get me out. I made a bed extension so that I'd no longer have to sleep diagonally. I also upgraded from the original cushions to three inch memory foam. they're not extremely comfortable, but they're not bad.
The arb awning was tricky. I put it up, but the roof of my van is concave. Five out of six bolts are mounted, while the last one is just filled with silicone so it doesn't leak, but it's totally on there. Other things that I have added in addition are a Dometic refrigerator. That thing is great. It's huge so I can hold like a gallon of whatever type of drink you want and a week's worth of food. One of the great things about that fridge is that it's got a monitor on it so if your battery bank is low it won't cycle, which means it's not just gonna destroy your battery bank. Added a shelf into the window which was helpful, and basically made a whole bunch of small upgrades.
All said and done, this is Gladys 2.0. She's got 200 watts of solar going into a 200ah battery bank, which powers a DC compressor fridge, a 1000w inverter, two lights and a fan. That also charges camera gear during the day and by night just runs the fan. Gladys has 102,300 miles. She gets about 15 miles to the gallon give or take depending on the roads and the fuel quality. I keep a gallon of propane, 12 gallons of fresh water, three gallons in a solar shower.
Common question I get is, "Dylan, how did you make that dope ass floor?" Well this is how I made it. Basically, first you got to get a giant map. I glued the map to the plywood with spray glue and then I was gonna cover it with polyurethane like 80 times until it developed this like thick resin, but the plywood was warping and whenever I straightened it out it created bubbles. So I used Lexan which I found on Craigslist, cut it to size, screwed it down, and that's how you create that floor.
That’s it!
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