Hey There!
Though I started out by posting elsewhere on the forum, I figure I should still introduce myself!
My name is Ian and my girlfriend and I recently purchased, converted, and moved into our 08" Dodge 170wb with 129k on the odo when we bought it. After a lengthy process of dealing with rust, our conversion took about 3 months and took place in WI during this past winter, we have since racked up another 9k miles. We're in the process of making our way to CO, then AK, and plan to live in the van for the next year. I'm 25 and after hiking the AT in 2014 in 90 days I decided to save up for and take on this adventure. We plan to visit many of US and Canadian national parks, backpacking, cycling, and photographing as we go.
Our conversion is pretty simple, but perfect for our needs. We have 300w of solar panels on the roof and a 200ah battery, which powers our lighting, dometic fridge, outlets, CO/LP detector, and our ceiling fan. We have a full size bed 9" thick, which is on a platform high enough to allow us to store 2 road bikes underneath and sit upright with a couple inches of room above(I'm 5' 11"). Everything was built from scratch and with little more than a 12v circular saw and drill. Our we have a counter spanning from our drivers seat back to the bed to facilitate cooking and a bench that houses our fridge as well as other misc gear.
So far I have replaced a leaking injector seal, flushed the PS system, replaced some seals around the turbo, and replaced the entire fuel return line. Other than a brake wear sensor wire being abraded through, those have all been corrected and are no longer causing us problems.
We have a website where we(mostly my girlfriend) have been writing up our build process and will add blog posts related to our travels once caught up.
www.thevanimals.com
Instagram: the.vanimals
Anyway, here are some photos of us and Violet B.(our nickname for the rig).
Nice to meet you all and thanks for all your help so far!