- 2 days ago
The Skyrise Mercedes Sprinter 170 AWD build feels more like a spaceship than a camper van, with a Super Pacific Cloud Cap pop-top, off-road suspension, KO3 tires, and a layout designed to sleep and seat four or more. Chris from Sequoia Camper Vans walks through the exterior upgrades, the custom safari rack, rear storage, awning, and service-friendly details that make this one of the most complex Sprinter van conversions they’ve built.
Inside, the tour focuses on smart space planning for full-time travel and family camper van life. The van includes a whitewashed bamboo ceiling, Starboard walls, a full galley with solid-surface counters, deep sink, Isotherm fridge/freezer, induction cooktop, and a Cruise N Comfort undermount A/C system. There’s also a lounge that converts into a bed, an elevator bed up top, a bathroom with a Nautilus shower door and dry flush toilet, plus a Victron-powered electrical system with lithium batteries, inverter, solar, and hydronic heat.
Built for off-grid camping, overland travel, custom van builds, and Mercedes Sprinter van conversion searches, this walkthrough highlights high-tech camper van design, family RV alternatives, and serviceable layout ideas. It’s a strong fit for viewers interested in DIY camper vans, luxury vanlife, 4x4 camper vans, and practical full-time travel setups.
Inside, the tour focuses on smart space planning for full-time travel and family camper van life. The van includes a whitewashed bamboo ceiling, Starboard walls, a full galley with solid-surface counters, deep sink, Isotherm fridge/freezer, induction cooktop, and a Cruise N Comfort undermount A/C system. There’s also a lounge that converts into a bed, an elevator bed up top, a bathroom with a Nautilus shower door and dry flush toilet, plus a Victron-powered electrical system with lithium batteries, inverter, solar, and hydronic heat.
Built for off-grid camping, overland travel, custom van builds, and Mercedes Sprinter van conversion searches, this walkthrough highlights high-tech camper van design, family RV alternatives, and serviceable layout ideas. It’s a strong fit for viewers interested in DIY camper vans, luxury vanlife, 4x4 camper vans, and practical full-time travel setups.
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TravelTranscript
00:00the technology in this van is a spaceship van it's this is a very challenging van to build
00:05there's a lot of stuff going on inside of it welcome back to the show this is patrick with
00:11new jersey's outdoor adventures youtube channel back here in manisquad new jersey and i just met
00:16up with chris with sequoia and salt he's going to give us a full tour inside and out of the
00:21skyrise
00:22this is a sprinter based van conversion that sleeps four people seats four people and it literally
00:28has everything so join us for the tour what's going on patrick my name is chris with sequoia
00:35and salt camper vans come check out our newest van build so this is called the skyrise this is built
00:39on a mercedes 170 all-wheel drive so let's start with the outside the exterior the beefiness of this
00:48van so we added some bf goodrich ko3 tires so these are two 65 75 r16s we put them on
00:56the stock steelies
00:57i think they look really cool in the stock steelies behind that you'll see our agile off-road 6.3
01:03off-road suspension as you pull back you cannot miss what's happening up top so this is a cloud cap
01:12from super pacific we are one of their distributors so if anyone's looking to have one of these installed
01:18on your sprinter van come reach out to us underneath the cloud cap you'll see we have a it's a
01:24curved light
01:25bar and a custom roof rack from paragon off-road so we had to have this fabricated specifically for
01:32this unit there's not a lot of units to actually offer a roof rack safari style for this cloud cap
01:39our running boards on the sides are from rome built we added some windows with integrated screens
01:46and blackout shades that are sliders again same with the back same thing tires rims you see this is still
01:54you can see the suspension upgrade the 6.3 kit is absolutely badass
02:02shore power on the rear of the van we have a rome built rear tire carrier and ladder combo customer
02:10decided they did not want to go with rear windows in the van so we went ahead and we got
02:14uh we we packed
02:16them out with the van essentials uh rear door storage carriers and the inside here you'll see we have
02:25the go code trims i say this in every single video and how do i still mess it up same
02:33thing on this side
02:34great i mentioned this in all the videos and i'll say it again this is a great spot to put
02:39some of your
02:39camera gear maybe your drone the flooring this is i believe it's called madera flooring from lawn seal
02:47this is the back area of the van maybe we'll touch on this before we get in the inside so
02:51in the back
02:51area of the van the customer decided they wanted to have a nice large space so that they could put
02:57they're traveling full time with their child and their kid is very young so they want to have enough
03:02space to put the stroller and all the stuff in the back of the van and still have a good
03:05time and not
03:06have to be climbing over it so what we did is we took we made a removable panel it's magnetic
03:11so if
03:13they want to you know if they don't have anything here and they want to have the openness so you
03:16can
03:18throw this back if they want to have a little bit more security so stuff is not falling inside
03:22of the cabin you'll see in the back here we have our let's see diverter valve exterior shower water pump
03:31this side is our fuse panel and then we have our outlet right under it for any of that come
03:42on chris
03:43you got this i need that fun stuff maybe you're gonna blow up a standard paddleboard maybe you're
03:47not but you have the space for it we have a um tow hitch receiver package with a rear step
03:56okay so let's walk on the side here water fill
04:03okay and then on this side we have the awning clips for the fiamma this is a 13.1 which
04:10is a
04:11f45s but 13.1 so this is our biggest model it's huge and it comes out i believe like 10
04:16feet
04:16underneath the van you'll probably notice this this is our exhaust for our diesel heater system or
04:22hydronic system inside of the van slider window another slider window with the integrated screen
04:28blackout shade a little cubby here for your sandals on the road
04:36running board number dose drop down table
04:42so what we did in this van a little bit different than the other vans is we did a bamboo
04:46we used bamboo
04:47but we whitewashed it it kind of gives it a nice like i don't know just it looks really nice
04:53i know
04:54patrick really likes it he mentioned it before as we go in
05:00we have our swivel seats in the front this is an interesting table this lagoon table can go
05:05on its side and then you can kind of stow it right behind the seat which is nice
05:10all right and then this is a bench seat so the customer is going to be mainly using this
05:17just as a bench seat for the kids to drive for them to drive their child in the back
05:21but it also what's nice about it is
05:29i got this patrick don't you patrick i got it patrick i got it
05:39there you go so now it can be nice open space so when they're using the cloud cap and they
05:44want
05:44to enter in and out of the cloud cap it's not going to be an obstruction and it's going to
05:48give them a
05:49nice flow if they want to use their galley because when they have it in the forward facing it's a
05:52little
05:52bit tight over here so we're trying to maximize the amount of space so if you look below we mounted
05:58the seat on some l-track so if the customer wants to take the seat out they totally can
06:02another feature of the seat is it becomes a bed we're not using it in that in that use
06:07for this customer just because they have the pop top they just uh we're just using it's just a
06:12comfortable seat and the customer wanted this seat so we chose the seat all right um they have a
06:18headliner shelf we made a nice little custom face to it and a um drape blind curtain
06:32i'm failing ah this is a good time to talk about something okay i'm going to give you my two
06:39this
06:40is i'm just want to talk about something when i i knew i was going to do this video today
06:43and i
06:44probably should have done my homework a little bit better but one thing that i did today is i woke
06:49up
06:49this morning i said to my wife are these shoes too squeaky
06:55and at this moment right now it's not that i didn't do my homework i'm just so concerned that
07:00you guys are going to hear the sounds of these shoes and you're not going to watch this video so
07:04let's keep on going so if you want to enter into that pop top yeah dude just pull this out
07:13i'm going
07:13to climb up i love this pop top it's actually not it's not blowing up right now so when it's
07:19stored
07:20in in its uh down position you have to deflate the mattress but like i'm five foot eight my license
07:31says i'm five foot ten but you get it it's pretty darn big you know you probably could fit you
07:38know
07:38three people in here two two people realistically um it has screens integrated screens on on both sides
07:44of it i don't know where the screens are here but integrated screens on both sides a nice little
07:48storage section and then a vent fan on the top uh you see that the the um the face on
07:54the vent fan
07:55is actually not on the trim because we actually have to take the vent fan out when we get into
07:59our
07:59shop because this van with its suspension is so tall some information you probably didn't need to know
08:06i'm gonna tell you
08:11okay coming down coming down patrick catch me
08:19okay here we go pop this up
08:24it's a really easy system to use
08:29that's it and it has a little lock okay so
08:35countertop extension this countertop is a solid surface countertop
08:41we cut it on the cnc machine so it's perfect so the the top fits perfectly on top of the
08:49sink
08:51nice deep sink this is like uh i forget the color it's like a it's like a dark gray this
08:57is a
08:59yeah it's like pewter to me pewter pewter i don't even know that color i'd call that like some people
09:05call this gun metal oh you're right maybe that's gun metal i like it yeah it's nice it's nice this
09:13is
09:14what the customer wanted and this is what the customer gets under here nice storage perfect you can
09:21who the heck knows we could put you on out of there okay isotherm 130 with a freezer up top
09:30moving back
09:33customer wanted to have a portable induction stove top i don't blame them
09:41they say they're going to cook on this probably most of the time so it can slide out if they
09:46need to have it slide out where it can live inside of the cabinet i'm imagining they're
09:51going to slide it out probably get pretty hot and then another another drawer
09:59above on this side overhead cabinets and then this one's kind of special this is
10:09so this system we went with a under mount ac unit from the company cruise and comfort
10:15so this is the module that goes inside of the van and then underneath the van is like
10:21the guts of the ac unit on this side right here you can see this is our adapter for the
10:2712 volt to have
10:30oh gosh to put the starlink on a 12 volt switch okay nice little backsplash over here you see all
10:39of
10:40our power system our control panel here the cruising comfort gauge here this is temperature this is for
10:48hydronic system to know the temperatures you have a few of these throughout the cabin
10:53our victron energy 3000 watt inverter system this has 920 amp hours of lithium battery power this has
11:02you know tells your water system our gray water system you know this is a very detailed system they
11:10have a lot of water on board here and then underneath you have our dimmer lights our aqua hot system
11:16and then all automatic gray dump starlink bed lights upper cutoff exterior light so exterior light right
11:25when you're going inside the door upper cutoffs if you want to cut these upper lights and keep the
11:30bottom ones on it's really nice cool
11:36the top we went with a we went with the bamboo we did this was kind of a kind of
11:42a big job we did is we
11:43took a quarter inch bamboo we whitewashed it i'm gonna take my shoes off you know i'm just i'm
11:49self-conscious with these okay i'm taking them off today that kind of day all right so we have um
11:58the what do i say a bamboo quarter inch bamboo we whitewashed it then we did half inch bamboo cut
12:05in
12:05strips routed the corners and whitewashed it and then we installed everything on the ceiling so it's a
12:11really nice look um yeah i love it you can see on the tops of all of our cabinets we've
12:17been adding
12:17this light now so it kind of breaks up the space even more two upper cabinets the integrated screen
12:25and blackout shade from the from that window that i showed you outside moving back
12:38space rack i mean food rack
12:45soft clothes locking
12:52and they wanted to have a big space in here this was going to be you know we put a
12:55little
12:56um like rod in there just so that they can hang all their clothes when they're on the road
13:00or dresses and then behind that you'll see the bathroom so in the bathroom
13:09this is the shower door patrick what's the name of the shower door no no thank you gosh he's so
13:16good
13:17and then we have our laminates we have a hard shell this is like a marine laminates a bit different
13:22than the laminates you see on the side of our cabinets so this is for the interior of the bathroom
13:27and we we've been actually really liking adding boat padding i don't even know what you call it it's
13:34like cnc boat padding we added to non-stick areas and then you have your shower wand i'm not going
13:43to
13:43break and if you want this to go outside you can just take it off it doesn't have to store
13:48we kind of
13:49like this because if it lives there all the time that thing is when you're driving around this thing
13:52be slapping against the wall this is metal so it's nice to not drive around with those so that's why
13:59i would do this but it's a nice nice nice system nice nice this is a liveo dry flush toilet
14:05i'm sure
14:06there's a million videos online about this thing it's a great system it seats like a regular toilet it
14:12has a cartridge inside of it cartridge spits around kind of like a diaper genie and then after 17 uses
14:17you
14:17just go ahead and you take that cartridge you throw it out customer most likely they can get wet
14:23we spoke with the company they can get wet customer will most likely take that thing out and put it
14:28in
14:28in the aisle when they're taking a shower if they want to have more space if not they're fine to
14:33take
14:33a shower on it just like that okay moving on back you see anything else patrick
14:40yeah tile backsplash pretty yeah and so you notice that we added some screws in our backsplash
14:50you notice the screws all around this van we are just like super super super duper on top of
14:57service we do a lot of service at our shop we've we basically are building our vans around service
15:03ability right now we do a lot of service mainstream companies di wires we do everything and we've
15:09noticed that like how important it is to have a lot of service areas throughout a van this entire
15:15section if there's anything that goes wrong this entire section comes out so that we can do service
15:20on it like this is this is no joke this is what you're paying for when you're working with us
15:24like
15:24we have to see it this way because one we build these things like boats and we build them serviceable
15:29so it's important to me all right so moving on back where do you want me to start you want
15:34me
15:34to start up top or below start below all right start below so below we have a nice comfy lounge
15:40okay
15:41customer wanted a huge table so it's going to be three of them but you know there's going to be
15:46a lot
15:46of stuff going on if they're full time in here they're going to need the space so they want to
15:49have
15:49a nice big table this big table will drop down and become the bed area over here where these cushions
15:57will come off and fill in the middle okay behind here you can notice we have the blackout shades
16:05already in our bamboo trim rings and then our dimble reading lights so if i want to put the top
16:14down
16:14right now because we've got the elevator above all i got to do oh yeah well i'm going to do
16:20this really
16:25quick patrick do i just pull it off there we go all right cool just twist these off
16:43so we actually rarely use tables like this in our vans the lagoon table has been
16:50almost every single van we build we use lagoon tables they don't do well with a lot of weight
16:56lagoon tables tend to sag with a lot of weight and they put a lot of stress on the handles
17:01and then when
17:02the customer goes in there they over crank them and now it's just like a mess and you have to
17:06replace
17:06pretty much the entire system so if a customer wants a big table as much as these are great these
17:14actually work really well this is what what we like to use they go in here they click in they
17:18tighten
17:19off is it the the best thing in the world it works all right so let me pull these off
17:33i never talked about our walls our walls if you see all of our vans our walls are we make
17:42these in
17:42house so this is a a product called starboard and it is a high def high density polyethylene it's um
17:50it's a very durable material and you can't scratch it it's really easy to clean and it's like this is
17:57what
17:57they use in maggie yachts so that's why we use them here because we build our vans and with little
18:03kids it's going to be easy to clean oh my gosh little kids they're crazy you have a few i
18:11have two
18:11kids and i have a third one coming in like two weeks so i know all about kids they are
18:17little
18:17monsters that make things destroyed all the time and my five-year-old everything's broken everything
18:24will stay broken until he's 18 years old okay so let's look at the power system here so we have
18:29920 amp hours of lithium battery so what we did is i had my guys build out a like sort
18:35of like a
18:35floating deck for the um the inverter system to sit on top of the battery so if they ever need
18:42to be
18:42changed we're not burying them it's easy you just take out four screws and you just pull this entire
18:47section up and now you can get to your batteries nice and accessible nice and clean um appreciate
18:52how tight our wiring system is if you look at a lot of campers out there things are hidden so
18:58you
18:58don't get to see the quality of the work we love what we do and it's really important that the
19:05quality
19:05stays top notch just so it's very easy to understand if anyone needs to do service
19:11all of our cabinets are hard shell laminate underneath you can see it's finished plywood
19:16in this section here i like that because it won't you know you won't see all the fingerprints when
19:21people have to access this yeah it's easy to wipe off it's super easy to wipe off we added a
19:2712 volt charger
19:29in this section here and what's nice is we set it up in a way that like when you click
19:34on your inverter
19:36it immediately kicks on a fan that sucks all the heat out of your system so can you see that
19:43over
19:43there it's like right over come on there you go stretch that on there we go there we go patrick
19:48yep you see that fan all right so that fan it's going to suck all the heat outside of this
19:53box so
19:54like i said 3000 watt inverter system by victron uh 920 amperes of lithium power from uh epoch and
20:03they have heated cores inside of them so they're smart batteries and then we went with a mppt from
20:09victron this is the whole system victron i'm just going to stop saying victron we have a dc dc
20:15charger serbo gx the serbo is what connects to our digital monitor display and then all of the safety
20:23you know breakers built into the system just in case anything happens we have it so dialed in if
20:28even if you were in a in a lightning storm um that there we have protocols uh breakers that it
20:35will pop
20:35before anything happens inside your van it's very important especially you know your safety is on us
20:46and move this over
20:51we went with the cushions we went with an outdoor indoor this is a sunbrella fabric this actually
21:01might be some of the outdoor indoor fabrics feel a little bit more indoor than outdoor this one feels
21:07a little bit more outdoor than indoor which i actually like um inside of your van if you've if you
21:14are if you go hard inside your van it just everything gets dirty so it's really important to make sure
21:22that the products you put inside of it can get dirty so this is instead of doing like hinges we've
21:32been
21:32going with our magnets it's the inset magnet makes it a lot easier you can just pull this thing out
21:38you
21:38know in other vans we've done and in vans that we've seen putting the piano hinge in the back of
21:43this unless you throw big enough rip in the back of your cabinet this thing is always going to be
21:48falling down on you when you're doing work on it so we decided to go with magnets it makes it
21:52a lot
21:53easier to work with so this is our hydronic system by aqua hot the 125d so you can see the
22:00complexity
22:01that's going on inside of this system here this van is like i mean when we talk spaceship vans the
22:06technology in this van is a spaceship van it's this is a very challenging van to build there's a lot
22:13of stuff going on inside of it there's multiple water tanks um you know this is one of the modules
22:19for the cruising comfort like it's not as easy as just putting an ac on the roof we have this
22:23piece
22:23here we have that piece up in the cabinet we have a piece underneath the vehicle all those have to
22:28work
22:28right and they have to be routed throughout the wall so that we can get the lines up there so
22:36just trust me it's crazy all right so this is one of our water tanks here
22:42we've been adding these hatches these are super important to us if you want to clean out your tank
22:47it makes it really easy just take a wet vac and suck it all out we have our um winterizing
22:55blow off
22:56valve here so you can blow all the air through your system you know so this thing is it's pretty
23:01awesome this is one of our kicks this is where we put our glycol so glycol runs through our our
23:07lines
23:08here and that's what heats up and gives us hot water and heat if you do not understand how a
23:13hydronic
23:14system works visit our website we actually i created a diagram on trying to explain hydronic systems and
23:21uh infinity showers that's a new popular item you can go on our site and you can review how that
23:26stuff
23:26works and if you're if you can't find it on our site just reach out to me all right so
23:34we have our bamboo you can see the bamboo trims on the floor we added bamboo for the the tape
23:41or for
23:42the bed when the bed sits down here and uh we added we routed an led strip light underneath it
23:49so it
23:49throws really nice light on the floor so so beginning of the video i said it sleeps four people so
23:55this
23:55could technically sleep six it could definitely save six people well let's think about it so
24:02are we talking like regular people no like like like i like i'm like are we talking about like how
24:08many
24:08people can we stuff in this thing because i know we can fit more than six people if you think
24:12about
24:13if you're well this is the size for like a kid right i'm five foot eight so i i mean
24:19if i was at
24:20a festival and i've had a thousand beers yeah you know what i definitely can sleep like this no problem
24:25the best sleep i'd ever have but that's not the case this is for a kid so you can sleep
24:29three kids here
24:30you can sleep two adults and a kid on this bed you can sleep in the front with the luna
24:39mattress you
24:40can sleep an extra and then up top you definitely can sleep three kids so i do them at eight
24:47people
24:48and then one person standing up in the shower dude astronaut style flipped upside down like dracula
24:56all right so that table just slides on these rails and then these pieces yeah and this becomes a bed
25:01okay yeah you've seen it a million times over i'm not going to do it because i know that you
25:07know what
25:07it is and then above is our elevator bed so like realistically if i was going to sleep in this
25:17with
25:17like kids underneath it i wouldn't go lower than this you know but for them for them um
25:25the child's going to be sleeping up top so they can go as low as they want to go we
25:28have it set
25:29you know even lower if we wanted to but this is kind of a perfect perfect situation there's yeah i
25:38was
25:38about to say i really i love patrick he's a great guy but he always he always comes and films
25:47me right
25:47when we're in like quality control times like this van is leaving shortly and you know
25:54he's uh there's i always notice some stuff when when patrick's here so we don't have the screens
26:00the screens were delayed they're supposed to come next week so the customer's coming back we're gonna
26:04put the screens on but that's all see i work 70 hours a week and i only have a limited
26:11time to film
26:11these yep we got weather coming any minute big storm and this thing's leaving in a couple days and i'm
26:18gonna be busy so i'm glad we got the opportunity to film this i love this this this is a
26:23very complex
26:24van when you think about everything that's going on here you got the sky sky loft no that's the name
26:33that sky high is the name of the van that's called the the cloud cap cloud cap from super pacific
26:38that even has solar panels on it yeah that has 400 watts of solar yep that's 400 watts of solar
26:42has
26:42grooves on the side if you want to add uh like a roof rack on top of it and a
26:47vent fan and do they
26:48make like an insulation kit for that if you wanted to do cold weather is it just to be honest
26:53i'm not
26:53really sure i think i don't think they do i think that's what you get yeah so this is uh
26:57you know nice
26:59weather type top you definitely can use it i mean it does have double panel walls in it the one
27:04thing
27:05that like is challenging is you have to take the air out of the bed every time you're going to
27:11travel
27:11with this bed so like when you're saying insulated walls i don't think you'd have even space for the
27:15insulated unless you have to put them in every time and take them out so i like how big it
27:19is yeah
27:19when you get up there you can actually sit up in bed and you know you don't feel like you're
27:24sleeping
27:24in a little capsule exactly most importantly like the customer feels safe they feel safe that their
27:29kid's up there if they need their kid i mean having kids i know that if my kid cries up
27:35there i'm
27:35like right here i can jump out of bed and climb up there i don't have to go outside the
27:39vehicle
27:39you know i know what's going on yeah this is great and then you know some people might ask like
27:44why
27:44in a cruising comfort why do you have to go with that with a pop top like that you're using
27:49up almost
27:49all the real estate on the roof no okay so no actually the reason why we went with a cruising
27:55comfort is the cloud cap really if i were to eyeball the cloud cap probably comes to like here okay
28:02and then all the back of the van is all roof deck so they wanted to keep the roof deck
28:08up there that
28:08will climb from behind with that ladder but on a 170 you can put a rooftop ac unit but
28:16this customer wanted that like on my 144 i cannot have an ac unit up on the roof i'd have
28:21to only go
28:22with some kind of undermount system okay so save space because it's split into three different
28:27components totally so you're not one big bulky thing you can kind of put it in totally different spots
28:32yeah the bulk of it's underneath the van the bulk of it's underneath the van correct yeah well that's
28:36great i don't think i have any more questions for you i'll put a link in the description so our
28:41viewers could click over to your website you could build one on your website you could get examples of
28:45previous ones pricing yeah here you go i've changed our website a thousand times now go on our website
28:53you can see all of our van builds on there i wanted people to be able to actually visually see
28:58what we do
28:58here and the complexity and the creativity and all the time that we put in our love behind building custom
29:05campers if you visit our website you definitely can see everything there and i've had you on the
29:09channel now almost 12 years ago your first time i think you got a playlist that's growing and growing
29:15and growing so if you guys want to check out some more of his builds on my youtube channel just
29:20look
29:20for the sequoia plus salt playlist on new jersey outdoor adventures after you visit his website to check
29:27out the builds and i'll see you on the next one i'll see you on the next one i always
29:33like think about
29:34the the my wife loves surprise party sue on uh snl and she's like always like she wants to tell
29:41you the
29:41surprise this van's really cool it's a mercedes 170 all-wheel drive it's called the skyrise the skyrise the skyrise