I built the WORLDS SMALLEST CAMPER (that you can drive)

In this video, we're going to build the world's smallest camper that not only can go anywhere, but it can stay there for as long as you want. This video all started when me and my brother found this tiny van on Facebook Marketplace. This van is sick! It's sick! This van is from 1999 and it's actually a Subaru, imported from Japan, and it had the steering wheel on the wrong side, 71,000 kilometers, and believe it or not, four wheel drive. Four wheel drive? Four wheel drive! We can camp anywhere! Now to convert this van into a camper, we'll be adding a lot of stuff, so we actually weighed the van before we did anything to it. 2,380 pounds. That way when we're done, we can come back and see how much we added. Once we got this van in the backyard though, I took some shots to show you there's a surprising amount of room inside. Look at that ceiling height! Alright, step one, completely gut this van. Let's do it. Oh yeah! Look at that! That, my friends, is an empty van. Once the back of the van was empty, we actually pushed it in our shop where we could start working on it. Well the first thing we gotta do to this van is put a floor in there. Putting a floor in the van was going to be a little tricky because the engine was actually in the back, so when we put the wood in, we had to frame around the engine where in case it broke down one day, we could work on it. Because this van has the engine in the back, it's slightly higher there, so we had to take our wood and go straight across, and it leaves us with this big ol' empty space. This is going to be where our tank goes and our electric system and all that. It's actually going to work out perfectly. But for now, we gotta cover all this in plywood. After adding some insulation over the engine to make it quieter, we basically put down four different sheets of plywood. Only two of these were going to be permanently mounted, which means in two years if the van engine stops working, we can fix it. Then on the other side, we started to add our wall. This was kind of scary because I literally screwed into a door that would never ever open again after this. It also felt very wrong to do this. Dude, it's like super dark window tint. But we had to black out the windows we weren't using, that way you can't see the wood and insulation from the outside of the van. So we got this wall framed out, it's pretty much ready to go. This side's a little bit harder. The other wall was going to be our kitchen, which means we needed to make a cabinet that can hold a microwave, refrigerator, and a sink. So this is a perfect template. It fits right here along the side. All I have to do is cut this out of plywood and then I can start building that cabinet. With Colby using that cardboard template to make that piece of wood, the cabinet was able to fit perfectly against the side of the van. That is going to be really, really cool. Him and my dad then permanently mounted it to the wall with metal self-tapping screws and then added a place for a backsplash and a TV. Building it like this allowed us to keep the sliding door where we have easy in and out access. Then they added a cabinet on the ceiling to give us more storage and help separate the driving area from the living area. Now that I finally got all this cabinet stuff done, it's time to build a countertop. For the countertop, Colby actually cut a 2x4 into a bunch of little pieces, glued them together, sanded them, planed them with the router, and made a really nice countertop for like $2. Oh, that looks beautiful! Look at that! Wow, that looks good. With the skeleton of our van really coming together, it was time to start running the electricity. The main focus of this van is being able to take it anywhere and live in it for basically however long you want. So this electrical system is fairly complicated, but for now we're just wiring up regular plugs and regular light switches, just like what you'd find in a house. So for now, the van's only source of power is a plug on the outside, which means it has to be plugged into the grid. It's not much, but one light in this van works! Progress baby! So now we're starting the long process of putting in all the stuff we need to be completely off-grid. For those of you watching who may not know or be familiar with this, off-grid pretty much means that this van is going to have electricity and water anywhere. So this is our fresh water tank. This is how we're going to store our water for the shower and sink. As I'm sure you can imagine, having water on the road is extremely important, and in this van we were able to fit a 21-gallon tank. That's enough water for a shower every day for a week. The next off-grid thing we needed to add was electricity, and it all starts underneath this seat where I'm going to completely remove the stock battery. The stock battery in this van was good, but it was too small, so we replaced it with two giant ones. After I put the batteries in place, I wired them up in parallel to get a combined total of 220 amp hours, which is almost enough electricity to keep an iPhone charged for a year. Back to our water tank, we had to fill it up somehow, so I added a nozzle on the outside where we could hook it up to a garden hose. Oh, look at that. Then to get water out of the tank, we needed a water pump. These things are really cool because they sense whenever you turn something on like a sink, and they just start pumping. See? Back to the batteries, it's great to have a ton of power and all, but you can't use any of it without the inverter. This little box turns the battery power into the AC power we all know and love in our houses. Alright, so now when I flip this switch right here, it should turn on the inverter, which it does. These batteries are also kind of worthless if they die, so we have two main ways to charge them. Finally, after like a hundred builds, we listened to you guys and bought some solar panels. On a sunny day, these things are going to generate 200 watts of electricity, which in perfect conditions will recharge our batteries from completely dead in about 12 hours. That's good in theory, but not good enough, so I also wired the batteries to the alternator. That way when the engine's running, they're charging. And after 48 hours of making this van completely off-grid capable, it looks the same, but it's off-grid. Next, it was time for arguably one of the coolest parts of this entire van, the shower. Earlier in the build, Colby and I installed a super small hot water heater underneath the sink for the sole purpose of being able to take a warm shower wherever. Whenever we're lucky enough to get sponsors, I always try and make sure they relate to my life, or at least the video we're doing. And recently, I got a pair of Raycon Everyday Earbuds. One of my least favorite things about going to the gym every day is showing up with dead headphones and then having to suffer through a workout with no music. That really doesn't happen with these Raycon earbuds, because if they're dead, they have a quick charge function, meaning I can charge these for 10 minutes and then get 90 minutes of usage out of them. And it's super convenient, this case supports wireless charging. All right, we are finally going to paint these cabinets. These earbuds are also sweat-resistant, which is great because I spend a lot of time in the sauna. But not only are they durable with a 32-hour battery life, they also have active noise cancellation that you can turn on by just gently touching this for one and a half seconds. These are high-quality earbuds with a lot of premium features. And unlike their competitors, they're not charging you a ton of money for them. Plus, Raycon's offering my viewers up to 20% off site-wide. Just go to buyraycon.com slash presidentche, and you can get up to 20% off everything on Raycon's website, including 15% off on Raycon Everyday Earbuds. Again, just go to buyraycon.com slash presidentche, take advantage of the deal, get yourself an awesome pair of earbuds, and you'll really help our channel out in the process. Thank you so much to Raycon for sponsoring this video, and let's get back to the van. Now that the cabinets were painted, it was finally time to finish the other side of the van with a nice, super-thin sheet of plywood. Oh yeah, she fits. Look at that. That's a pretty fit. I'll admit, I wasn't crazy about the plywood, because I like drywall, but it turned out great. Alright, we gotta figure out the ceiling. The ceiling was kind of complicated because we didn't have anything to screw to. You see that metal the boards are covering up against? Well, that's the only layer of metal. So if we put a screw through that, it would leak. Our solution was using spray foam as an insulation and a glue. Once this stuff dries, it's nearly impossible to rip off, so we held the ceiling up with little pulls while it dried, and after it was done, it looked amazing. At the end of this video, we're actually taking this van camping, but not at a regular campsite. It's going to be in the middle of the woods. So one thing I definitely wanted to add were exterior lights where I could see all around me in the middle of the night. Alright, so these outside lights look sick, like that. So this is our shower area right here, and we want it to kind of look like your typical shower. So we're going to put some subway tile all the way up, and it's going to look awesome. We also got a little area in the kitchen for our backsplash that we're going to put this tile on too, so it'll all match. Because we didn't want anything to crack, we actually filled the gaps of the tile using black silicone. Alright, so our van is looking amazing, but inside these cabinets, it's pretty rough, so Colby is going to fix them up and make them look awesome. Meanwhile, I'll be in the front installing the vent fan. This is just going to suck air from the outside, put it inside, and keep us cool when it gets hot. The reason we chose this vent fan over an AC unit was pretty much down to how much power they use. This fan only uses 100 watts on high, where an AC is going to use 10 times that. Meanwhile, Colby insulated inside the cabinets on the window and the wall, installed our appliances, and put the shower hardware on. Oh my gosh! It's like a hair dryer! This van was getting pretty close to being done, which means it's finally time for trim, where we can cover up the wire, the nail holes, the gaps, and just make it look neat. Alright, now it's time to tie everything together by giving this wooden wall a nice coat of white paint. With everything looking pretty much insane, it was finally time to put on the cabinet doors we built, where both sides of the van matched. Now the only thing left is that ugly floor. Remember how in the beginning of this project we had two removable sections in the floor? Well, we still have those, and we can't leave it looking like this. So our solution was to wrap everything in a nice black carpet. We went with the color black mainly because we didn't want any stains in the carpet, since it's such a small area, plus it matches. Now we just had to take the two removable pieces and wrap those in carpet too. To make them look really nice and clean, we covered the back side in black fabric, and then obviously the top in carpet. Then we used a carpet tool to put a ton of tension on this carpet to get it really nice and tight. That way we could trim off all our edges, then do the same thing for the other piece, and the end result was actually insane. Isn't that nice? And then, once you flip it over, look at that. It's completely professional. Moment of truth. Oh my gosh. Look at that. That looks nice. Now it's starting to feel like a camper. Look at this. Look. That's so cool. This is beautiful. The van is getting really close to being done, but there's one problem that we haven't been wanting to do this entire time, and now it's time to do it. The couch. The main problem with our couch was that it had to turn into a bed, so we had the idea of getting two pieces of wood connected with hinges. Pull it out like that, and now we have a bed. Fun fact is, Colby's actually really good at sewing, so we bought some fabric from the store where he turned it into basically a box. That's awesome, dude. Look at you. That's what I'm talking about. Look at you shine. That we could then put foam inside of. We like to save money by buying mattress toppers and cheap foam at Walmart. We then cut up our foam to fit on top of the wood, where we could make cushions out of the fabric. Then we took them back to the shop where we stapled the fabric on the wood permanently, and then we put the hinges back on. Alright, well, we have a couch. Ready? Yep. Oh! Wow! Oh! Look at that! Oh, yeah! With nearly two months having gone by, it was finally time to get our camper out of the shop and actually take it camping. Yeah! Alright, so obviously the weather has kind of turned on us, but that's okay. It'll give the four-wheel drive a real test once we get to our campsite, but for now, we're going to the gas station to get this thing weighed to see how much we actually put inside it. If you remember in the beginning of the video when we weighed the van with nothing in it, it was 2,380 pounds. Now we're back to the same weigh station to see how much weight we added. Alright, on this sheet of paper is how much this van weighs. The new weight, with a full tank of gas and a full tank of water, is 2,900 pounds. Wow! So that means we added 520 pounds. That's crazy! We kind of killed it. We did really good on weight. That's awesome. Alright, with our weight looking good, we started driving to our campsite, which was about 100 miles away. We're currently doing 110 kilometers per hour. Oh, now we're going up a hill, and it slowed down to 100. Are you flooring it right now? Yeah, she doesn't have a lot of power. Normally when we take things camping, we like to go to a campsite where they have electricity, internet, and everything's flat, but this van is different. It's meant to be out in the woods in the middle of nowhere, so that's exactly where we're taking it. We're in the country now, buddy. Oh, yeah. And the only way to get there is through a very muddy road. We're going to see how far two-wheel drive gets us. Let's try it, dude. For those of you who don't know, mud is about as slippery as ice. Oh, wow, that's sliding already. So we never, ever would have tried this if this van didn't have four-wheel drive. Oh, there we go. Oh, we're spinning. Because it didn't take long for this to happen. Oh, are we stuck? We might be stuck. Are we stuck? I think we're stuck. All right, let's put it in four-wheel. All right. Is it in four-wheel? Just like that, four-wheel drive. That easy? Yep. Oh, that was easy. This van went from completely stuck in the mud to crawling right out of it with the push of a button. And I'm really glad it worked, too, because that was the easy part. All right, now we've got one more hill. It's really steep, so we're going to see again how far we can get in two-wheel, and then we're going to put it in four-wheel. Is that it? Yeah, we're stuck. Oh, that didn't take long. Again, in two-wheel drive, this van just didn't stand a chance. But the moment we popped it in four, it had no problem. And once this thing got over the hill, it made it to our campsite no problem. Here we are. We made it. Well, guys, we did it. This is the world's smallest camper. We kept this one door, so this opens, and of course, the back hatch opens. This door back here, obviously, it's sealed shut. It's never opening again. This is our water tank fill up, so when we want to fill up our tank, we connect the garden hose here. Then, if we're ever at a campsite or hooked up to city power, this is where we plug in for city water, so we get unlimited water like that. This is our city hookup. If we want to stay at a campsite, we just plug this in, and we're no longer on batteries. But right now, we're in the middle of the woods, so everything is on battery. All right, now I'm going to show you one of my favorite parts of this entire van. Look at that, and we have 21 gallons to play with. I can aim it this way. If we're really, really careful, we timed it. If we're really careful with the hot water, we get about one minute before we run out. All right, well, that's the end of the tour. I mean, there's only so much to show you. It's a tiny little van, but now we're going to get to use it. You've got to appreciate this. It's so cool. It really is. We're in the middle of the woods right now. All done.