2007 Renault Master Self-Build Conversion Campervan — Video Tour (Part 2 of 2)

Hi, thanks for checking out the video on my rented camper van which I'm selling, with great sadness I should say. I thought I'd do the video because it'll give you a better idea of the sort of thing you're looking for before you drive down on spec to have a look at it because I'm down in St Hampton and you may be some other place far away. So I've got some notes and I'll try not to waffle and stumble on my words too much. Ok, so it's 2007 and I've built it myself from a panel van, had an amazing time with it, done lots of camping trips, I've done the obligatory NC500 in Scotland which was fantastic, a lot of music festivals I do because I'm a bit too old for tents, that sort of thing.

It's been an amazing bit of kit, best toy I've had for years and years and I will cry like a baby when I sell it. So why am I selling it? I think the truth of the matter is when I built it sort of 13 years ago it was a real great satisfaction, pride thing. I've got a yearning to do another one.

I can't have two vans on the premises at one time and so sadly it's got to go. So anyway, so a bit about the van first, the base van, then we'll have a good look around the inside. I've got to take the camera around. 5 DCI.

It's got the G9U engine, for Renault buffs you'll know what that means, it's the legendary engine that you see people on YouTube videoing their clock turning over to 700,000 miles, 800,000 miles of one guy who took it over to a million and it messed up his ECU or something so he had to get it fixed. Mine's done 113,500 miles, so plenty of life in it yet. It's very economical, when I've done that Scotland trip I averaged 34 miles per gallon, that's not by using the tacho but by filling it up to top it off and then keep topping it off and keeping record of how much I used. I should say, steady 60 up to Scotland, it was in the 40s or something, of course in those hills in Scotland they plummeted and it bottomed out at 34 miles per gallon by the time I got back to Southampton, which I think is not bad for that sort of van.

What else, it's MOTs right the way through to November. There is an advisory on there, the guys detected slight play in the steering rack, but what he said was the sort of mileage I do and he could generally do a lot of mileage caravans, he'll probably be giving that advisory for the next three or four years so it's I can't feel it but he noticed it, he knows his onions, so it's important you know that. And we will of course go on a test run if you come if you think you want to come have a look at it. Full service history, I've always had it fully done, cam belts, all that sort of stuff and including the gearbox I always get the oil swapped out in the gearbox, every service don't rely on the viscosity test.

The guys laugh at me because they say it comes out so clean they could put it into a new engine, which of course they don't, and the reason I do that is because Renault Masters know those gearboxes are a little bit temperamental if you don't look after them, so I look after them. Slow gear changes, always well servicing and it's sweet. Yes it's a commercial box, you can feel it, but I can change gears with two fingers. I would say it's much better than my 2021 Puget Boxer that I've just bought to build out into a camper van and you'll get to see that when we go on the test run, you'll see me changing gears with two fingers.

Okay cutting in on the edit here, as far as the test run is concerned I've got a route planned out where we've got some small roads with junctions, mini roundabouts, so you can see that gearbox being worked nice and smoothly. There'll be a motorway run, she purrs all day at 70, I think it's got a top end in 90, I don't go anywhere near that. I tend to keep about 65, she loves that sort of speed, but yeah she'll be fine on motorways and there's also, I'm looking to go, there's a long gentle hill sort of thing that slows these heavy vans down. While this thing isn't heavy, it's 2970 kilograms including driver, and get the revs right and she'll tank up there, so I can want to demonstrate that as well.

I should say whilst in Scotland on the NC500, no problem with those hills up there. Okay so yeah we've got a test run planned out. So is there anything wrong with it? Yes, there's two things that are wrong with it that I know of.

One is the air conditioning and it kind of sort of faded away, I don't know what's going on there, and to be frank I never bothered to get it fixed because I never really used the air conditioning even in the hot summers because you've got that big fan behind you, it's not like a small car, you just don't feel it and I like having the windows open and there's a fan that clips onto the visor, so it just wasn't an issue with me, but yeah you need to know that something is not right with the air conditioning, it kind of faded out. And the other thing is, and I've had this ever since I bought the van, there's a slight knock you can hear sometimes and I thought, well I hoped it was going to be something cheap and cheerful like a CV joint or a suspension strut bearing something along those lines, I'm not a mechanic but that's what I'd hoped it was going to be. I took it to two garages and they both said no, sorry Greg, it's something rattling around inside the dashboard and both their advice as well is that could be expensive, they want me to rip the dashboard apart and have a look. Okay now you probably won't hear that on the test run, so it's important I tell you because I want you to know because when you would hear it it's on things like when you're on rough ground, going very slow on a campsite for example and the van's going from side to side, you can hear sometimes something rattling around in there and I've had it ever since I've had the van.

Right, cutting in on the edit because that reminds me, in the last, within 20,000 miles I guess and you'll see it in the service history, we've got four service history, I've had a lot of should we call it the semi-consumables done, so things like I've done CV joints, the ball joints, some brake work, what else, that sort of stuff, pads and as I said I've got a new drive battery in there as well, so hopefully you won't have to worry about that sort of stuff for a good while. Okay cutting in on the edit because I just remembered in addition to that I put a new starter motor in there and also when I first got the van I uprated the alternator, so that's within the last 20,000 miles as well. So what else, we've got a test run of course, the van's got two trackers in it and I'll give you details of those trackers if you were to buy it, but I should say I've got a YouTube channel where I do van hacks and I've got 4,000 subscribers so if it does get nicked you've got a lot of people looking out for it and a lot of that, some of those are in America and Australia of course. Dead reliable, it's never been relayed back home or anything like that, in fact the only time in those certain years I called out the breakdown service was when the battery went flat because I went off shopping and I left the electrical items on in the vehicle and the radio and I didn't realise and the fan and I was out for about four or five hours and it wasn't, it was enough to sort of take the edge off the battery, it wouldn't start, but now it's got a new battery in it.

That's the only time I had to call out the breakdown wagon, so yeah new battery in there now. It is registered with the, as a motor caravan on the V5D VLA, so what I was going to tell you before we get on to the interesting stuff, on the bodywork, bodywork no structure rust at all that I'm aware of, Renault fans will know of course that the Renault was the first company to use the galvanised bodies, since 2004 I think, you'll find no structural rust on that fan at all. A few little dinks and knocks here and there, the two barn doors at the back, clearly when it was a builder's van they opened it up and they both hit some sort of loading bar, so I think it's a dent at the top there. A few little scratches, nothing major, it's never kind of bothered me but you know it's important you know and what we'll do is when we go on the test run we'll stop off at a car park so you can have a good look around the van because in my drive you can only see it on one side sensibly.

Okay, I think that's all the technical stuff of the base van, let's now get into the interesting stuff and I'll take the camera and whiz around the actual campervan stuff which is of course what you're really interested in. Now this next part I've kind of stitched together with a few videos that I've come pulled off of my YouTube channel, I've got this YouTube channel about van hacks and so you're going to see me in various states of time, history, haircut, aging, all that sort of nonsense, but it saves me going around doing it all again. Anyway, let's have a look. Okay, so that combined use case basically pushed the habitation and leisure area at the front and utility area, kitchen, loo at the back.

So looking at the front there you can see I've got my sofa bed on the right and captain's chair which is the passenger chair on the van and so I can get three, four people on the sofa, one on the captain's chair and actually I can get a couple of deck chairs in there. Now that sofa bed is the third design I've done and the beauty of this design is it mitigates some of the aspects about not having a fixed bed in terms of when you're absolutely knackered at night and I can pull that out and I can go from sofa bed to sleep in well under 60 seconds including bedding. Now it's a bit of an antisocial each as you can see there I've got a little coffee table and you can probably just see it go straight into the floor and just towards the rear you'll see another point where I can get a second leg in. I store those in the bedding box and I do actually swap that over for bigger tables for eating or bigger heads and it means that I've got a sort of small coffee table when I'm not eating but a bigger table if I do need to eat.

A little bit antisocial because you're sitting next to each other not looking opposite each other staring lovely into each other's eyes. Okay lockers then so over the counter lockers I keep my clothes and I've got these plastic bins that you can get from hardware stores. I've tailored them to the shape of the roof. Those bins are great you can just take them indoors, pack all your clothes up and bring them straight back in.

Use one of them for dirty clothes in your trip and you can take the whole bin back straight into the dirty laundry when you get back. And this one here upside down you expect the lockers to do that, the aircraft lockers, no I do it like that with a gas strut so that means I've got a platform here to put my stuff in while I'm trying to sort stuff out. I've only done it a year or so ago, should have done it right from the beginning. So under the seat I've got a diesel heater and I've got this slide out tray here which actually is my bedside table when I've got the bed pulled out to here.

So in the cab I've got one of these Android head units, great bit of kit, basically Android powered, radio, stereo, that sort of thing. You can hook to your phone for hands-free on Bluetooth but of course you've got navigation as well so you can hook onto your sat-nav and a big screen for the real estate is ideal. But also you can put your camera, rear reversing camera into here, put a remote switch on my dashboard so anytime I can call on it and use it as my reversing camera and that's the bumper camera looking down so if I'm reversing I'm not going to hit anything or any small kids. That's my sort of normal vision rear view mirror if you like and I've got a wider angle there for when I'm reversing to park up, great bit of kit.

Okay so that's really the front end, let's whisk it around and look at the back. Take a walk into the bathroom, nice and bright so I've got plenty of light to put my lippy on, those LEDs all the way around or though I have got a night light that comes on automatically as I walk in at night, there's a sensor up there, look here I'm going out again. Okay this is the shower with the doors closed, a little design feature I'm quite pleased with here, it looks as if I've mounted that door on the wrong side because of that I have to have a hinged by door to get through. However it does mean I can from the inside lock it off and now I've got the the kitchen area as a private sectioned off dressing area so have a shower, get out and dress in a bit more space.

So there you go is a clover of the kitchen, usual stuff there's the hob and sink unit, cupboards below, oven, little work surface, a mezzanine work surface where I keep kettles and things on, a cutlery rack and of course there we've got more and more cupboards. So I've got loads of storage space here and in fact down in that cupboard I've got the water heater but it goes right the way back and I can get 37 cans, I've counted them, 37 cans in there so beer or soup or beans, plenty of storage. There you go that's the inside of my wardrobe with the usual stuff, hooks, cargo nets, that sort of thing. Okay so that's the inside, let's go outside and have a look at the outside, well not really outside, we're looking back in again but open the back doors up and have a look what I've done in there.

Okay this is outside looking into the back of my van with both doors open, hope you can hear okay because I'm on a noisy road. Right quick whiz through then, so that's my fresh water locker behind there and the grey water is in an underslung tank, that's my gas locker, decided to go for two small bottles so I've always got one, yeah it's not the most cost-effective way of doing it but I've always got gas. The dropout had to go through the water locker to get to reach the outside, move along just storage rubbish here, fresh water filling point there, moving along I've got my hook up here, the door seal on the Renomaster is so soft I can easily get a cable underneath without damaging or kinking it which means no one can pull it out and if I take this away I've got a composting loo now but there was how I got the cassette out when I had the chemical cassette loo. So basically this design, one benefit of this design having a kitchen at the back because all the services are at the back, they give me access through the back doors, I didn't have to cut loads of holes in the van, no hole for the hook up, no hole for the cassette, no hole for the water, no hole for the gas.

The only vent I had to cut into the side was for the water heater and that's on the side of the van. I actually have put an extractor probably out of view here, an extractor, a hob extractor because I cook lots of smelly food and which means I did have to put a vent on outside, I don't know if you can see it there, I got a little plug in there for my plug in water cleaner to clean my bike and my boots out there, it's just an extractor fan from the bathroom to blow out all the smellies if I need to and that's basically it. So one more thing then, close the doors, keep my ramps on the back because I need them, the first thing I need is my ramps, I haven't got storage, I don't want top boxes, that sort of thing, but actually these lugs are what I call my Thunderbird hack, Thunderbird 2 hack, I can use that for other things, I use it for a bike rack and a cassette that carries tables and chairs and of course very importantly I have a thing on there for my flagpole when I'm at music festivals. Okay so let me just whizz through some technical stuff notes to hand, all right first of all you saw in the video about the toilet in there, I had a diverting composting toilet in there, seven years prior to fitting that I had the regular electric flush toilet which I've still got and you can swap them in and out easily at your leisure.

I prefer the composting toilet but sometimes in the winter if you just want to do day trips and no number twos are involved then yeah the old flush toilet may be better because you can keep it in there longer but the choice is yours, it's an easy fix, 30 minutes you swap them out and we continue with the choice. Okay so you saw the fast sleep bed design, brilliant design, I say it myself, but that's quite a cosy double. Okay now if you're going away for a longer period of time you may want to have a bit more space and I've got cushions for a much bigger double bed in there, it's not the fast sleep design, you have to keep the bedding in the bedding box, nothing to stop you getting sheets made up to replicate that fast sleep design but I haven't, certainly my wife she likes a bit more space when we go away for a long period of time, she tends to put a mattress topper down as well but again it's choice, you've got the fast sleep for maybe one or two days away or if you're a single person that's fine or you've got the other cushions for the bigger sized bed. Okay gas, you saw in the video I had a refillable, sorry a CaliGas system with two bottles, got rid of that now, they were getting so expensive to fill, the Cali refills or the FloGas refills, I've now got a Gazlo refillable system which I should have done from day one, it's so much cheaper, you just don't spend any money on gas now, well I don't for the amount of time I go away, so that's in there now instead and what I will do is there'll be a video on how to fill that up if you've never used a refillable system again but it's dead easy once you know what you're doing.

Okay what else, looking at my notes, so I've got the water heater is a Truma 4E combi heater which means you can use it either on the gas or electric hookup and actually you can use, I don't think I ever have, but you can use it both for faster heat. Six litres, the shower in there's got a very fine spray and I can actually shower, doing a navy shower, in three litres because it's such a great fine spray on it, so you wet yourself up, turn it off, soap up, turn it on, flow down again, maybe a little bit more if I'm washing my hair but I haven't got much of that to wash so that's why it's very economic and by the time you've dried and got yourself dressed it's heated up enough for the next person to get in, it's a great little heater that. What else, media player on there, so looking at the picture there you've got a little amplifier which hooks up to your phone, again there'll be instructions for this. On there you've got a 12 volt socket for when we used to have a little television up there, I stopped using it after about a year because when I'm going away actually I don't want to watch television but you can plug in a 12 volt tv there and phone charging point as well.

Okay diesel heater, great bit of kit, I have it on the lowest setting and it's too hot sometimes, it's amazing, had it in there for about eight years I think, I've got a separate tank which is under slung under the under the van as opposed to tapping into the main diesel tank and I put kerosene in it, that was originally going to be a temporary measure but actually it burns so clean I've never had to change a glow plug, never cleaned it out, it just works and so I just kept it and I think it's up to you, you can get it tapped in if you want to get rid of the unslung tank but it's your choice and there's a separate battery to drive that which also sits under the passenger seat so you're not any chance of draining your main drive battery. Okay and I say all this kit I'm going to do some video instructions, I'll put it on my channel, I don't pay for my YouTube, so okay there's adverts but people got scroll buttons so it's no skin off my nose just to keep them up there so because let's face it us blokes we don't read books do we, don't read manuals. Okay there's a hob extractor because I like cooking smelly food so there's an extractor hob and it it's vicious, it can kick out a lot of air if you need to. What else I've got, I've also got an extractor sort of fan fitted to the skylight which was a retrofit, it's actually a car fan but it works brilliantly, you can adjust the speed, you can suck air in or suck it out.

Solar panel on top 295 watts, I've got an MPPPT controller, a DC to DC controller so you know when you're driving the van you can charge it but I should say I rarely have that switched on because the solar does such a good job. When I built this thing I had everything very low energy, I spent a bit more money to have low energy kit so it doesn't use much juice and I can top up the battery topped up with the solar. But if you're going away a lot in the winter, yeah which I don't, I just have kind of day trips and that sort of thing, occasional couple of nights away, then you might want to use that DC to DC charger to drive it, to charge it when you're driving. Great little fridge, Victor Ego, it's got the famous Dan Floss compressor in there which I didn't realise was the compressor they had, in fact in America apparently they call these fridges Dan Flosses, oh get the milk out the Dan Floss, it's referring to the original, I think it's a Danish bit of kit.

It's a Victor Ego, lovely picket, uses so little juice because it's a compressor fridge as opposed to the three-way fridges I used to have. So give you an example, a few years back we had some work done in the kitchen in the house so we had stuff stored in the van and the solar in, I think it was October, was enough to keep that fridge running. Okay I wasn't in there doing cooking stuff and that sort of thing but it shows you how very little juice it uses if solar can keep that going in the winter. What else in there?

Oh yeah and I've got the actual battery itself, it's a 200 ampere AGM battery. Now full transparency, I've had that battery six or seven, six years possibly, the MPPT controller has got a conditioning cycle on and every 28 days it does take the battery to keep it in top nick. It does a good job but I cannot believe there's much life left in that battery. At some point I think it's going to start complaining big time and I want to be absolutely transparent about that.

I thought about swapping the battery out before I sold it because I just yeah I want to send this kit off as best I can. However you may want to think about lithium, I'm certainly doing lithium in my new van because costs are coming down and the MPPT controller, the DC to DC controller and also the AC to DC controller charger when you're plugged in, they are all lithium compatible. So if you want to swap over to lithium, all the kits there to do, you just change the settings. So I think that's all the technical stuff.

Right so in the leisure side then, what is not working? The only thing I can think of is the full alarm for the wastewater tank. So the wastewater system what happens is it comes out the back and it goes into a bucket or I've got like a collapsible contained thing that you fill up and you take it to the disposal point if you're on a campsite or some farmers fields I go into they say let it go into the ground because it's of course there's nothing nasty there particularly if you're using vegetable based cleaning products such as Ecova. However I'm not a fan of seeing wastewater scattered over car parks.

I think it sets a bad impression, I don't want to preach here, it sets a bad impression. So I've also got an underslung tank that the water goes through first and if I shut the valve off then that tank will fill up instead. And I put an alarm in there so when it gets sort of to 90% full and LED flashes, well I've just noticed that LED is not working and I don't know why. I tried to get underneath it but I'm selling this as if it wasn't, it's not working because I don't know, it may be the sender's broken and I don't think I'm going to get a chance to drop that tank.

I should say why didn't I work out it wasn't working because I'd never ever get to the point where that tank's full up. I'm usually in a situation where I'm using the flow through but I wanted to be transparent about that. I cannot think of anything else that's not working in there. A couple things are not so great, again for transparency.

So the shower tap, when you finish using it you need to park it so it's in the hot position not the cold position, it's a mixer, because if you park it in the cold position it kind of drips a little bit. Okay and also in the olden suite the bathroom is sort of the basin tap, it feels a little bit loose, I might be able to tighten that up before I set it but I may not, so for transparency. So as far as I know there's nothing else I can think of that's not working or not that great and I'm racking my brain here, you might have an edit cut in later on down the road but as far as I can see that's the picture. As I said before I'll make individual little instruction videos how to drive the diesel heater, how to drive the water heater, how to drive the media centre, all that sort of nonsense.

I'll do separate videos so you haven't got to scroll through, put it on my channel, give a link to whoever buys it, there's a private link so only you can see it and I'll just leave it up there, it's no skin off my nose, as I say I don't pay Google for a premium account on my YouTube, it does mean you'll have your advert now again to scroll through. Okay I think that's it, I'm sure I must have forgotten something so please do not hesitate to give me a direct message if there's anything you need clarifying and I'll get back to you as soon as I possibly can. Please don't offer to send me money to hold the van, I don't do that things that way, I'm not taking money off anyone until they've come down and seen the van and I just really hope whoever ends up getting it has as much fun with it as I've had over the last few years and as I said previously I know I'm going to cry like a baby when it's gone.