The Different Steps to Convert Your Van, Van, or Truck into a Camper Van

In this tutorial, we will go over the tips for converting your van or utility vehicle into a camper van by yourself.

What Are the Different Steps to Convert Your Van?

To avoid surprises, everything should be planned in advance. I recommend making plans and gathering all the advice you've read.

I suggest purchasing materials as you go, as sometimes plans change along the way. That’s part of vanlife!

We can consider that there are 6 steps to convert your utility vehicle into a van:

1. Place the battens to level the van
2. Distribute the insulation across the entire van body
3. Run electricity throughout the camper van
4. Dress the walls with a wooden kit
5. Finish the wall covering
6. Install a conversion kit for the van

There will be many pictures in this tutorial because sometimes images speak louder than words.

We will focus on fully covering the vehicle. Insulation will be done with Armaflex.

After trying several options, I don't recommend Armaflex for insulating a utility vehicle. I explain here why cork spray insulation is simpler, more effective, and can be combined with Armaflex for those who want to enhance cold resistance.

How to Place the Battens in Your Van?

Before fully covering the van, I wanted to level all the walls for aesthetic reasons.

The downside is the loss of space, which is something to consider in these medium-sized vehicles.
The battens must be arranged in a way that allows for easy screwing of the plywood panels later.

You can glue them with Sikaflex when you’re on the van’s walls, and screw them in when you’re on a reinforcement part of the van.

For gluing:

               

You need to press the batten well to ensure that the glue spreads evenly. The grip is quick.

For screwing:

                         

It’s important to distinguish the vehicle reinforcements from the outer sheet metal. You can fix the batten using self-tapping screws. As a precaution, I preferred to drill a pilot hole and add a little “rustproofing” before screwing in the battens.

How to Distribute the Insulation Across the Entire Van Body?

Although we now recommend spray cork insulation, if you want to use Armaflex (which represents a certain budget) to cover your entire vehicle, I recommend two products:

• Armaflex self-adhesive AF 19mm, I explain here why to use AF (Microban technology)

• Armaflex 3mm tape for joints between two 19mm Armaflex pieces, and for small finishing details that are hard to do with 19mm material

To insulate your new home with Armaflex, it’s quite simple: after measuring the dimensions of your van, cut the Armaflex pieces with a utility knife or scissors:

Then, simply glue it (one side of Armaflex is self-adhesive) directly onto the van body:

            

The Armaflex tape is used to finish the edges of the van walls or join two pieces of Armaflex when the vehicle body’s contours require splitting the installation. This avoids thermal bridges:

Below is a photo gallery showing the step-by-step insulation of my truck with Armaflex:

How to Run Electricity Throughout a Converted Van?

When it comes to electrical installations in a van, you need to be cautious and ensure that safety standards are followed.

Depending on your background, I suggest 3 options:

• Our portable battery solution if you want to be able to remove your electrical setup at any time, or if you want to use your battery outside the van, for example, to charge a speaker or phone by the lake.
• If you have no knowledge of electricity and don't want to spend too much time on this part, hiring an automotive electrician seems like the best solution.
• If you have some knowledge or want to learn, you can run all the wires from the main battery to the auxiliary battery, and from the auxiliary battery to the van's accessories. Then, you can have your auto electrician crimp the cables and check the installation before connecting everything. This saves him time and saves you money.

I’ve over-optimized the installation to avoid any risks (better safe than sorry), using 25mm² cables with 100A fuses and a separator coupler to connect the two batteries.

For my accessories, I generally used 3mm² cables because my most power-hungry accessory is my compression cooler, which only uses 1Ah during peak consumption, which is very low.

It’s important to consider using low-power accessories when living in a van.

For example, I’m always surprised to see 230V outlets in a van.

For equipment, I suggest:

• Prefer a compression cooler (more expensive upfront, but this technology is incomparable) over a thermoelectric cooler. I explain here why.
• Prefer good insulation, and if necessary, a heating system like Webasto, rather than using an electric heater that exploits the Joule effect, which creates energy loss and consumes a lot of power.
• Prefer a 12v (car charger) to 19v continuous adapter to charge your laptop. Why use your laptop charger that converts 230V AC to 19V DC? We end up converting 12V DC from the battery to 230V AC to convert it back to 19V DC. This is energy-hungry, and every Ah counts when living in a van.

This basic electrical diagram covers most vanlife scenarios:

For the connection between the main battery and the auxiliary battery, you can either pass through the dashboard or the outside. There is often a pass-through near the side door step of the van. That’s what I did here, running all my cables through a plastic conduit.

How to Dress the Walls with a Wooden Kit?

We just need to cover the van’s walls to turn it into a camper van.

I recommend 3mm poplar plywood for this. The goal is to cover the walls for aesthetics, so we don’t need too heavy or thick material since we will need to bend the panels to fit the vehicle’s curves (windows, doors, wheel arches, etc.).

To cut the plywood panels to the correct dimensions of your van, I recommend making cardboard templates first. You may lose a bit of time initially, but it prevents unnecessary cuts and starting over.

To make more curved shapes, soak the plywood in water for an hour, then gently bend it to achieve the desired curve. Let it dry on the template, and the poplar will become even stronger once dry.

          

          

Tip: Sometimes it’s easier to soak and bend a piece larger than necessary (to avoid breaking during bending) and then cut it to size once bent and dry:

Here’s the photo gallery for this step of covering the van walls:

Finishing the Wooden Cover

Your camper van is almost done.

As seen in the previous gallery, we need to fill in the gaps between the different plywood parts.

For this, there are two options depending on the size of the gap.

• If the gap is less than 2-3mm, you can use wood filler. You can also fill the screw heads with it for aesthetic reasons and to reduce thermal bridges (cold can rise from the body to the screw head).

          

• If the gap is too large, since it's a van, and everything will shift slightly over time during your trips, there’s a risk of cracks appearing at the junctions of the panels. In this case, use acrylic joint for walls-windows. The benefit of acrylic joint is that it can be painted for a perfect finish.

          

Here’s the gallery for the finishing touches with wood filler and acrylic joint:

Don’t forget to sand the dried filler for a smooth finish:

Here’s the gallery for the finished sanding of the utility vehicle:

 

For the ceiling, and for lighting the van, I added bulkheads to the ceiling light.

The benefit of bulkheads is that they are very lightweight (since they are hollow inside), which is a plus since the ceiling battens are glued. It also allows me to easily run my electrical wire inside the hollow part. I added batten offcuts at the ends and filled the gaps with wood filler to create a result that looks like solid wooden strips.

          

Here are more images of the bulkheads:

We just need to paint the entire van and the bulkheads.

Be sure to protect all the surfaces you don’t want to paint.

Tip: I applied a primer before painting for better adhesion.

          

For those who are more concerned, you can add semi-leather around the doors and openings to ensure no water leaks behind the panels when you open the doors and it rains.

You can cut it with scissors and glue it to the body on one side, then staple it onto your battens on the other side

          

(You’ve got it, if you wish to do this step, it must be done before fixing the wooden panels)

How to Install a Conversion Kit in a Van?

The hardest part is done, now we just need to move on to setting up the furniture in our mobile home.

Here’s the result of the empty van:

For converting the utility vehicle, there are two options.

You can create a fixed conversion from A to Z by yourself (bed, kitchen, furniture, etc.)

For my part, I wanted to:

• Have an affordable, modular solution based on my needs (whether I’m alone, with a partner, with a bike, a motorcycle, etc.)
• Use the van during the week to avoid having a vehicle dedicated to leisure (and thus paying for 2 insurances, 2 maintenance fees, etc.)
• Be able to remove the conversion kit in 5 minutes for using the van during moves or trips to the dump, in short, keeping its utility vehicle function.
• Find a compromise for my budget (between low cost and quality)
• Have energy, gas, and water autonomy, but without making it a priority since I enjoy stopping at campsites to meet other vanlife enthusiasts
• Have a large, comfortable bed (which is the case with Combeing since the kitchen isn’t fixed inside, so we use all the available space). Don’t overlook the comfort of the bed, which is why I chose the HR35 option for mattress density, which is recommended in vans.
• I also added a heater, which we only use during winter or when traveling in Norway.

 

I also spent 3 years on a road trip in Australia where I converted a van and a 4x4 by myself. This experience in Australia also allows me to compare rented campervans since I started with that step.

The cost of the conversion turned out to be as expensive or even more expensive than having it done by a professional who guarantees an experienced result.

That’s why I chose the Combeing conversion, which meets all my expectations.

I made an appointment and was able to try their kit in my own vehicle to visualize the result.

Convinced, I left with my conversion kit the same day.

Here are the images from the 1.5-hour appointment:

Finally, here is the final result and a few images from real travel conditions, with nights at campsites but also wild camping:

The shower option allows me to be water independent when wild camping.

For the kitchen, a small cube designed with a gas bottle takes up little space and can even be taken outside when at a campsite.

Today, after being a Combeing customer, I liked the concept and the company’s social and environmental values so much that I joined the team. I hope this experience will help you in your van conversion project because I know there are a lot of questions when you start vanlife.

We have a team of enthusiasts, and whether you choose our solution or not, we will be happy to share our experiences, so feel free to contact us, we’re here for that.

I hope all these tips will be helpful, I tried to detail the different steps for converting your van, no matter your budget.

Safe travels to all