Taking apart the crawlspace camper

[treesprite]

I've been worried about the weight causing problems on the icy roads we will have in a couple of days, plus I've got my van to build now, so I started taking apart my Kia Soul build. I wanted to do a video, but it's too noisy in the parking garage and too cold outside of the garage.

Anyway, here is the diy cabinetry I had in it. It had to at least roughly fit contours of the car, so the cabs on the left arent as deep as the flip open one on the right. I ended up sawing off bits from the back to get it against the side of the car most of it's length, but don't want to post a million pictures so you won't see them.







The left end tall section is the water cabinet. On the little shelf there was a jug with a spout which was my gravity faucet - the jug was secured tight in place with bungee cords. On the bottom there is a hole which was for a hose that was connected via bulkhead to a hole in the bottom of a bowl, and it was for draining into a jug down below the cabinet.

The middle section of the cabinets, which has an upper and lower door, was the kitchen. The top shelf was high enough for frying pans, plates, foils, etc. The bottom had a kettle, toaster, electric burner, food, and junk. The bottom door flips down, so it made a counter to cook and fix food on.

The right with the short cabinet was actually built first and it was just that on a counter, and at the time was on a pvc base because I was still testing stuff out. The top flips over to the right to make a desk top. The front door is exactly like the lower on on the kitchen - it flips down to male a desk. I kept clothes in the big section and toiletries in the front section.

Once I decided to build the wood base instead of the test run PVC, I then had some cubbies to shove stuff in. Only one has a door on it, and that's where I put blankets and towels.

Next I'll be taking out the bed and the floor. I can't take the floor out until I put the seats back into the car.

Edit to add: I forgot to mention that the cabinetry length is roughly 48" . It did not go over the space behind the front seat, because that's where I could stand up enough to use my porta pot and put on pants. The right end was right up against the inside of the door when door was closed, and the left end upper corner was about 2" from the window (remember, it is vital that these things be bolted in place).

 

[treesprite]

I used screw-in eyes and bungee cords to hold down/store window coverings when not in use. I had a metal mesh file holder attached to the outside of the cabinet to hold random stuff like kitchen utensils.

Oh, here's the link to the video. It was made before I made adjustments to the cabinetry (the flip over desk top wasn't able to flip out all the way, it needed a corner trimmed).

 

[treesprite]

Took out the floor today to get ready to put the seats back, so here it is, along with the reason it was needed.

There was a back piece, but it fell off my 15th floor balcony and broke. 

The floor did not go over the space behind the front seats, since I needed that space for things like using the port-a-potty, standing (mostly) to change pants, and stashing supplies.

The cut-out is for accessing the junk in the well. The cover for the opening couldn't be used without the piece that fell off the balcony. Having the back part of the car remain uncovered, actually made things easier for me, plus the bed was over part of it, so it wasn't a problem to not be able to use them.

The rectangle hole is for the seatbelt buckle. I wanted to be able to use it with the bed converted into seat mode (for safety reasons, this was only used for a few trips to the grocery store 2 miles away, by an adult).

The narrow  5" x 1/4" cut is where there are two screws sticking out of the car. I meant to make two separate holes, but got them a hair out of place and the easiest way to solve the problem was just make one long cut. (The screws I'm talking about, are rumored by folks on the Kia Soul forum to be for the adding of an accessory of some sort.)

 

[treesprite]

Here's the bed removed from the car. The head section is the width of the average camping cot, wide enough for shoulders and hips. The feet end is narrow because of contour, but not too narrow for legs and feet. The fabric is not just bedding, I actually upholstered the bed pieces like household furniture.

 

[treesprite]

What I want to do, is try to cut the pieces of the bed to regular rectangles to use in my van somehow, but I'm afraid I'll ruin the upholstery. The fabric is heavy, but it's got hundreds of staples from the staple gun in it (on the back of the boards) that are going to be really hard to remove, then under the fabric there is cotton batting over memory foam - those also have hundreds of those big staples in them; and then, the foam is adhered to the wood with glue from a hot glue gun, so I'm afraid removing any part of it will damage the foam. Further complicating things, is that I have the foam wrapped over the outer edges of the wood board, to make those edges rounded and soft like a chair, instead of hard, flat, and uncomfortable. If I can manage to make the adaption without ruining anything, the pieces could make a cute little seat.

 

[HappyLife1977]

That's brilliant!