WHY WE'RE DOING THIS ... After returning from a 10-day road trip to Northern California,
we realized how much money we spent on hotels driving our Dodge Caravan instead of spending our nights in campgrounds or an RV park. So we returned with a credit card bill to pay off and started our search on the internet for a Class-B motorhome. We soon discovered that relatively new models were too expensive, ranging from $40,000 to $80,000 depending on the model you bought. There are cheaper alternatives, but those are older and require more attention. We had formerly owned a Class-C motorhome which gave us between 8 and 10 mpg when we traveled. This time we wanted a vehicle that gave us better mileage, was maneuverable in traffic, and we could comfortably use it for camping. Not finding a reasonably-price vehicle that had what we wanted, we decided to buy a cargo van and customize it to what we wanted. That lead to our purchase of a 2007 Ford E350 Extended Cargo Van, with a 5.4 liter engine.
We purchased it for just under $10,000. We started searching on the internet to see what others had done with their van conversions, but we found very limited information on actual conversions to campers. Rather, we saw finished conversion projects, but no detailed account of what was done during the conversion. In the months to come, we'll be showing you step by step the process of our conversion. We'll post lots of photos and as much detail as we can. We hope you enjoy reading about our project!
