Watch and learn how to partially convert a Ford Transit Connect to go travel more!
Throw pillow just because it makes it feel way more homey and weird jenna and jeremy welcome back to our channel a place for travel fun and beautiful destinations now don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and turn on post notifications to tune in to our weekly videos you can find us on instagram at quench your adventure now on to the group
Stuff all right here’s a quick look at the exterior this beast this is the ford transit connect it is kippur red and kind of like a burnt orange burgundy sort of color depending on the lighting there’s seven seats inside and it’s surprisingly spacious okay hey guys quick sidenote about this van it’s actually my company vehicle for my sales job
So therefore i’m not allowed to make any permanent modifications to it so we’re gonna try to be as minimal as possible the very first thing we did when we brought it home was put down all of the rear seats there’s seven seats total in the ford transit connect and the five in the back go down in lay completely flat which is perfect for putting a
Mattress or building some kind of structure where to begin google of course i googled bed platform van life clicked over to images and just started scrolling looking for ideas so i scrolled and you see this image right here i’m about to click on it just seems so simple and perfect and for me not being super handy you know it looks like something
I can do so shout out to expedition georgia i checked out his instagram and man it looks like the guy does some cool stuff not too far from us so thanks for the inspiration man all right first order of business i just got in my draw-tite trailer hitch the trailer hitch for us is just to put a bike rack on to carry our bikes with us but you could
Also put a cargo carrier to carry some extra stuff outside the vehicle all right so now i am taking some measurements of the interior and it’s time to find some wood i decided to make the platform twelve inches tall forty-four inches wide and 66 inches long you might be trying to do the math 66 inches carry the one five-and-a-half feet i am almost
6 feet tall but being that we have to be as efficient and minimal as possible five and a half feet should be fine and it’s not like i sleep fully extended anyway the structure itself that will be underneath will be 60 inches or five feet long and then 3/4 inch plywood will be 66 inches long so the details of this structure i actually only needed
To 12 foot two by fours and then one large 3/4 inch plywood that was i think about four feet by like seven or eight feet so you’re gonna cut each 12-foot 2×4 in two to five foot long pieces this leaves you with two feet left over two feet is 24 inches cut that into 3/8 inch pieces for the vertical support pieces and then you’ve got four five foot
Two by fours for the long structures and then six eight-inch two by fours for the vertical support beams perfect alright our two pieces of wood now our ten pieces of wood ready to be screwed together if you guys didn’t know they will actually cut wood for you at lowe’s and it’s super cheap so do it alright guys i just left lowe’s man i got a lot of
Help in there which was awesome they cut up some of the wood for me so i got no pride as far as doing the work myself i haven’t really done any of this stuff before so this is my my debut my rookie season but i’m check it out got all the pieces in the back of the van now just need to do some assembling and screwing major shout out to one of my good
Friends here in north carolina daryl he’s just supplied me with this saw and this power drill a couple of these bits so yeah i’m gonna be doing some assembling at home here we go first time using one of these guys trying to trim this down taking a pencil and i’m marking the difference before cutting it not perfect but they’re pretty dang close and
I could maybe perfect at least that one a little better i got my to like frame pieces and i guess i got a couple options i could put the big platform on and go ahead and like screw it in and have it be one piece which would be really heavy so i’m contemplating could i keep them separate pieces but these would be a little too wobbly to just sit
That on and hope for the best so i would need to make this a bit more of a uniform structure like this would probably be one structure itself and then that would just be you slide on the board at the end we’ve got a platform some quick notes you may have noticed the extra plywood sitting in the background of that other video the previous video so
I use that cut it into three pieces to lay across the two rectangular support structures and i screwed those into place so that at least that bottom support structure will stay in place and then in this image the plywood is just sitting on top of all of that and the other note i learned this from daryl actually two by fours are not really 2 inches
By 4 inches instead a 2 by 4 is really only one and a half inches by three and half inches that doesn’t make sense to me but whatever the only thing i don’t really like is you know if you were sitting on the edge of it it’s a little unstable because it’s just sitting on there but for now i think that’s how i’m gonna leave it because it’ll be way
Lighter if i want to take it out all right jenna is home so when i took off before this was connected it immediately when i hit the breaks like slid into the back seat says i gotta shoot alright well i definitely need a fasten it in place so we’ve got six screws keeping it in place and a few other modifications we are gonna make so that it doesn’t
Slide around i think i’m gonna also put a piece that sits on the bottom of here to keep it from going side to side and it’ll connect to here so let’s do all right so to keep the platform from moving i put in these little pieces that are just kind of braced against the back there they’re not actually connected anything and then i put in this wood piece
Which i have glued and taped felt around and make it look nice and and not scratch up the vehicle so it’s sitting just perfectly in the corner there and then i’ve got this piece this piece and i’m gonna put a more few more screws in that just to keep this going side to side and then that keeps it going from forward and back and it fits perfectly
So that the tailgate closes with about a half inch of clearance in that last clip you noticed some of the felt around the wood that was darrell’s idea a great idea we made this little stop at joanne’s bought some put it around cut it to fit and stapled it in place this makes it look really nice and avoids any scratches after cutting the felt to fit
The platform we used some spray glue to help lock it in place stay pinned down we tried to use our air mattress for a weekend while we waited for our memory foam mattress to come in the mail it ended up being a little too high so we’ve deflated our air mattress we went to walmart spend 30 bucks on this foam mattress topper and we’re also going to go
Into lowe’s and buy some moving blankets to try to make kind of a cheap decently comfortable mattress that will give us more headroom at least until our nice mattress comes in the mail on thursday this week or get some real window shades we got one and that’s a second one but it’s from the dollar store so yeah you pay for and we need a bed i’m trying
To figure out if i can’t make a minimal window shade for the rear window by just cutting up some cardboard from the hitch box so taking some measurements and cutting some stuff up lots of cutting and shaping and applying duct tape to make these things fit in the windows but it’s so satisfying when it actually works the shapes of these windows are
Just very awkward like they’re impossible to just like measure and make work even with the one that i made i sat it down and traced around it to cut this one and still it’s really hard to like get it in there perfectly a little window shade update the one in the back is awesome boom side panel boom door other side other door and then we’ll be putting
This guy up there and i might do just some like i don’t know easier on the front windows maybe just something that like hangs from a i don’t know a hook on a suction cup or something simple why am i not surprised 5-inch gel memory foam mattress let’s go look at it it’s the lucid mattress five inches tall i just laid on it it’s super cozy now time
To trim it to fit so the bottom completely zips off and it’s actually a separate piece so we’ll toss that to the side now i unfolded the corners it was still you know inside of here so i’ve popped it out of there and i’m gonna actually have to cut into this part maybe i’ll cut it from just one side and then can slide the mattress out do whatever
Cutting i need i need it to be about 46 by 66 it’s about 74 by 52 right now so we got decent amount of cutting to do i’m gonna try to do it with just a razor blade to see how good it seems like such a waste you cut up a perfectly good memory foam mattress but you got to fit it in the van well here goes nothing using a razor blade to cut it but
It’s a very small one so how long will it take to cut through five engines we might go get a larger one we might have to babe i don’t understand yeah i know i just want to see if i could make what i have work and just wanted to start getting a cut but it’s good oh i want to make the mattress fit pretty nicely and i took these pieces of cardboard
And i’m shaping them neighbors riding around on his law four-wheeler i’m shaping them to fit this corner this edge so that i can go put this on the mattress upstairs and same concept with this edge for the back edges and trim it to fit jenna is working on putting a little string of lights around the perimeter of the inside and we’re starting to pack
Up for our first big adventure we went on a small adventure last weekend now we’re going on a bigger sweet all right we got it fitted in its it looks so good if you guys are wondering as far as dimensions go it is a little bit smaller than a full as far as the width a pole is about 52 or 53 inches this is about 46 inches but it’s
Perfect for us to be snugly cozy and warm together jeremy just spent a good amount of time cutting this bad boy up so it would fit so i think the brain yeah and i i cut it too round the corner to match the platform so you know this is just kind of getting stuffed under but it looks so time for us to make the bed we don’t even make our own bed at
Home how are we gonna make a bed in the wow we just finished installing the bed it looks so good it feels good it feels really cozy i laid on inside i haven’t laid on it in the van not too high where i’ll get upset and like claustrophobic yeah the finishing touch was the lights and this little throw pillow just because it makes it feel way more
Homey and you just slip on the side yeah it’s not a purposeful advertisement there but we did buy our trailer hitch from etrailer.com so shout out to them maybe they’ll sponsor us alright everybody that is the bulk of it our ford transit connect van conversion and now i’m sure you’re begging for a tour which we are in the works and also gearing up
For a much bigger adventure so stay tuned we will be sharing those things with you here real soon and in that upcoming tour video we’ll be showing you where we keep everything and talking a little bit about cooking going to the bathroom privacy where we park all that good stuff so if you haven’t already please subscribe like this video and we hope
To see you again real soon you can find us on instagram at quench your adventure and we’ll see you next week yeah
Transcribed from video
How To Partially Convert a 2020 Ford Transit Connect! #vanlife By Quench Your Adventure
