Peugeot Expert Tepee Camper Conversion: Part 4

In which Erica is floored

[@Ocean-blue]

I am currently converting a wheelchair teepee and am rewatching your helpful video for the 5th time. My favourite bit is 2.35 when you say ‘I finally realise the floor in this plan’ it makes me giggle every time and it has become a well used phrase in our house !!! You are setting trends !!

[@GayleEBird]

Tee hee - accidental catchphrase! Hope your build is going well, and glad you've found something of use in my series.

[@bigjoe2290]

Thanks for the valuable info, Gayle, which I am using to refit my Peugeot Expert, so mostly similar. Just a suggestion, but soundtrack damaged with unmuffled wind noise might be re-edited with a clean voice overlay ?

[@ArtyVanHoming]

just purchased a wheelchair tepee , looking forward to getting my camper going

[@GayleEBird]

Hope all goes well and you have a fun time in the process, as well as with the resulting camper.

[@ArtyVanHoming]

@@GayleEBird ive got a partner so shorter than the expert ,so a challenge to fit all you want .so you have to go through many design ideas ,to see what will work . again what we would like, and what is the practical solution . i did have the idea to keep the ramp and use it as a deck ,but it just took up to much space .and was too heavy . my problem is, too many ideas that have to be worked out and a very small budget to go with it . but very pleasurable when you find the solution that works .

[@CosgroveNotts]

Goodness, I've been watching this series . Definitely too much work for me. I'm glad I started with flat floor and paid a grand more for my vehicle. Then again I'm not enthusiastic about nackling

[@GayleEBird]

Fortunately we weren't short of time last summer, so it was a perfect time to tackle a project like this. For me personally, the extra headroom was worth the work involved, but I can understand why not everyone would share that view.

[@Sharonslattery]

I would have left the floor and done a drop down table that sits on benches ,keep the leg room for seating

[@izzybrining4597]

Hi Gayle, I've just bought a wheelchair tepee and am starting stripping it. I don't have the lowered channel in the middle, in mine the passenger seats have been removed for the wheelchair to be anchored there by screws that go the whole way through the van. The entire floor is on the same level and is big and metal and i'm debating whether or not to take it out as I have no idea whats down there. Just wondering why you decided to leave your floor in, and did you have any screws that go all the way through, and if so how did you fill the holes?

[@GayleEBird]

Our floor: the two strips of floor along the sides of the vehicle are the original floor (from before the vehicle was converted into the WAV), which had been covered over with two layers of 12mm ply; the lowered section was (as part of the WAV conversion) formed by a section of floor having been cut out and a 'trough' welded in, which was just metal covered in vinyl flooring. We didn't seen any significant value in removing the ply from the original sections of floor, hence we left that bit untouched. We did have seat bolt holes, and wheelchair anchoring point holes, that went the whole way through the floor, although only on the original floor sections (not in the trough). Some of those we reused for various purposes (holding down furniture; venting the battery; running the diesel heater fuel pipe), the rest we just left as holes (can I sell this as ventilation rather than laziness?!). If we had chosen to fill them I would have just bunged a bit of Sikaflex into them. Hope that helps, and good luck with your conversion.

[@andreamenendez3057]

hi, I am thinking about get the same van...how easy is to remove the ramp??

[@GayleEBird]

If you look at Part 8 of the series, you'll be able to watch the 'rampectomy' process. For reasons explained in that video, I didn't completely remove the ramp, but cut it off (with an angle grinder) level with the back bumper. The cutting was a surprisingly quick and easy; more time consuming was the removal of the section of rear bumper that covered the ramp, and of the release mechanism (which we subsequently reused, so that the stump of ramp that is left can be lowered to access a small under-floor storage area).

[@dmax1102]

why did you not just lay a 20mm ply floor down and use the ramp space for storage ? you could have put a spare wheel and other items in that space .

[@GayleEBird]

The appeal to us of the lowered floor was the extra headroom that it provided, more than the potential for storage. We would have had a couple of other issues with keeping the spare wheel under the floor too: 1) the spare wheel we've got is wider than the wheelchair recess is deep, although I suppose it's possible to source a space-saver wheel; and 2) because the front support of the sofa/bed eats into the wheelchair recess, there would have been complications in the design to be able to access something as large as a wheel.

[@dmax1102]

I can see what you mean now looking back at the vid . Great job on the van by the way looks amazing well done.

[@joshfisher8122]

It's not a trough it's a lowered floor wheelchair channel 😂

[@GayleEBird]

Once we'd removed the ramp (not to mention putting a step in the floor and building a sofa across part of its width) I'd argue that the feature that had previously been a lowered floor wheelchair channel ceased to live up to that descriptor and that 'trough' became a reasonable term. I confess I may have started using that term a little prematurely...