5 Priorities When Planning a Car Camper Build
Almost any car can be slept in. Removing seats (or folding them flat if your car allows for it), filling in the low spots with blankets and pillows, and stretching out in a sleeping bag may be all you need; in fact, this may be the best thing to do your first time out. Sleeping in your car a few times and figuring out what you would like to change about its current state will help you establish your priorities.
The first time I slept in my 2005 Lexus GX 470 was when I flew to Seattle to buy it. After striking a deal good enough that I was driving home instead of hitchhiking, my next stop was WalMart to buy the cheapest air mattress and sleeping bag they had. Sidebar travel tip: WalMart will let you rent, er, I mean return, just about anything. Except air mattresses. If you’re in the market for a barely-used air mattress, let me know. The thick air mattress on top of the folded rear seats made for a slightly claustrophobic night, but my quick hike along a beautiful river the next morning was worth it.
I continued sleeping in the back without starting a “build” for a several more multi-day trips. One trip was a three-day, 300-ish mile wander-drive on Forest Service gravel roads to revisit a region I’d spent some time in during the 2016 wildland fire season, and to fill in some voids in my mental map of South-Central Idaho. Another was a five-day trip to Moab with a mountain bike stuffed in the back. For these excursions I took the seats out and filled in the low spots with some ammo cans and wood planks. I had plenty of headroom, but now I had to rearrange my cooler, backpack, cooking gear, mountain bike, and other junk every night to make an open space to sleep in.
I’m glad I used the Lexus as-was for a while before I committed to building a conversion. If I had started building before I figured out what I wanted, I may have been building a second design shortly after. You can save a lot of time with a set of plans from Road to Ridge, and chances are you’ll still add your own personal touches with different finishes or accommodations for specific items you want to fit. Starting with the goal of making your car a comfortable, practical place to sleep and store gear, there are 5 major things to be considered as you plan your build. Eventually you have to start cutting and drilling, but planning twice and cutting once will save you money in throw-away lumber.
People Space: I wanted to be able to relax in the sleeping area with room to sit up, prop up on an elbow, etc. I also wanted enough free space to comfortably sleep two. The way to maximize this first item would be to tear the seats out, build something semi-permanent to fill in the second row footwell, and call it good. I’d have plenty of room no matter what mattress I could cram in there. The space was palation, but I decided to compromise some room for activities to achieve priority number two:
Gear Space: Keeping your gear on the same surface you want to sleep on results in lots of shifting around. Adding a travel companion would compound this problem: double the gear, double the required sleep space, etc. I could add a roof basket and/or a rooftop gear-box, but the problem with those is that people usually want to exchange them for money. Also, I only get about 14-15 miles-per-gallon out of the GX, and I’m not looking to lose any of those miles by strapping a brick to the roof. So, drawers it is. Cubbies on the side were also something I considered, but the ample headroom in the GX allows for some compromise in vertical space.
Budget/Skill Level: Some sleeping solutions are as simple and cheap as removing all the seats and sleeping in the void, or folding all seats flat and cutting a thin piece of plywood to provide a stable sleeping surface. These options range from basically free to $50 or less. Some are as in-depth and expensive as having a custom aluminum frame fabricated, and purchasing pre-built slide-out drawers with full kitchens and electrical setups. These setups can cost as much as the vehicle they are mounted in. Somewhere in the middle are the designs that utilize legs made out of PVC or steel pipe, both easily sourced and cut at a big-box store, to create a raised platform under which gear can be stuffed, either free range or in plastic storage totes. What you decide on will be influenced by how much you want to spend, and your desire and/or skill to DIY a solution. Before you try and reinvent the wheel I recommend spending some time checking out what others have done and adjusting to meet your needs.
Permanence/Commitment: If you are a solo dirtbag/vagabonder/homeless person and know for sure that there are no complications in your future, then abandoning passenger space to make room for a mountain bike and skis may make sense for you. If you are like me and plan on taking family and friends along for the ride, then a semi-convertible design that allows seats to fold forward or down without completely removing them may make more sense. If you have decided that you are okay with removing your setup for the rare times that you need additional space, design your system’s shape, weight, and mounting method with that in mind. This leads us to our final consideration.
Anchoring: This is not one to skip. The other considerations for your build may result in inadequate storage, or tight sleeping quarters, and the worst case scenario is that you will end up starting from scratch and building another one. Skip this one, and you might end up without a head. Now, I am definitely not the safety patrol, and I am pretty accepting of calculated risk. Things like flying, skydiving, white-water rafting, and backpacking far from help on my own don’t make me nervous. I don’t worry about these activities because driving is statistically far more dangerous than all of them, and I’m not planning on giving it up. I’m also not trying to make it more dangerous. I always wear a seatbelt, and I make sure that the 200-plus-pound, pointy-cornered platform and drawer setup in my cargo area isn’t going to occupy the same space as me in the event of a high speed rollover.
On my first attempt at designing anchors I got it wrong, and after sliding on snow and bouncing off of a small boulder I discovered that the 90-pound rating on the turnbuckles I had secured my platform with was not adequate. The steel hooks that attached to the sides of my platform box had been straightened completely out and the whole thing was sliding around free. That was a low-consequence way to learn this lesson, and I’ve now came up with a better solution that takes Newton’s Laws into account.
Luckily, the engineers that design cars have already partially solved this problem for you. The bolts that secure the seats and seatbelts in a car, or a truck bed on its frame, and the cargo anchors present in most SUV and crossover cargo areas have been designed to handle significant force. Utilizing these pre-engineered mounts are a great way to make sure you don’t have a bad time. Whether you use ratchet or cam straps like I am now doing, heavy-duty turnbuckles, or bolt directly through your platform and into these threaded holes, do something.
