- 7 hours ago
Could a Ford Transit AWD camper van handle 10,000 miles on the road, high-altitude travel and real off-grid living? Patrick from New Jersey Outdoor Adventures joins Ready Set Van’s Ben in Trenton for a hands-on tour of the Highline build and its lessons from a cross-country test, including a climb to 12,500 feet.
Explore the van’s off-road upgrades, from lifted Van Compass suspension, all-terrain tires and a Warn winch to its 45-gallon fuel tank. Inside, discover a 900Ah lithium battery system, practical kitchen, shower, generous storage and a comfortable long bed. This custom camper van review is for anyone researching Ford Transit AWD conversions, four-season RVs, overland travel or off-grid van life—and looking for real-world details on how the build performs.
Explore the van’s off-road upgrades, from lifted Van Compass suspension, all-terrain tires and a Warn winch to its 45-gallon fuel tank. Inside, discover a 900Ah lithium battery system, practical kitchen, shower, generous storage and a comfortable long bed. This custom camper van review is for anyone researching Ford Transit AWD conversions, four-season RVs, overland travel or off-grid van life—and looking for real-world details on how the build performs.
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TravelTranscript
00:22Welcome back to the show. This is Patrick with New Jersey's Outdoor Adventures YouTube channel.
00:27Back here in Trenton, New Jersey at Ready, Set, Van. Just met up with Ben, and Ben is going to
00:32give us a tour of a fully loaded Ford Transit All-Drived Highline floor plan.
00:37And this thing is awesome, so join us for the tour.
00:40Hey Patrick, thanks for being back. This van is a van that I'm just incredibly excited to share with you
00:45guys.
00:45I just took this on a 10,000 mile trip all around the country, mostly on the West Coast, taking
00:50it to some shows and stuff.
00:51And we use this van really as like a test platform to try out a lot of things that we've
00:54never done here before.
00:55I'm super excited to kind of walk you through a bunch of things that we do normally, and then some
01:00things that, you know, are kind of new to us.
01:02One thing you're going to notice on all of the exterior components for this van, we decided to put Flatline
01:07van components on.
01:08We were kind of new to that product line. We wanted to try it out, and overall I've been absolutely
01:13thrilled.
01:13So we've got a set of Flatline Vanco running boards down here, and we have their Safari rack up top
01:20here as well.
01:21On the top of this rack, we have a whole bunch of cases made by Roam.
01:27Those Roam cases have been fantastic.
01:30You know, because we were doing a bunch of shows and things like that, we really needed a lot of
01:34extra storage, so we ended up putting four cases up there.
01:37Our Starlink is built into one of those cases, so you actually can't even see it.
01:41Somehow it works through the case. It's kind of amazing.
01:43The one downside, of course, of having all these cases is we had to run a little bit less solar,
01:47but that was a compromise we were willing to make.
01:49Mounted to that, we've got this Fiamma awning here, which you can see is a little banged up because I
01:54kind of beat the heck out of this van while we were on the road, but that was kind of
01:56the point.
01:57But anyway, we've got this Fiamma awning up top, which is, of course, awesome.
02:02The Transit van is an all-wheel drive. The Ford all-wheel drive system is pretty fantastic.
02:09It's one of the things I wanted to test on this. I have a lot of experience with the Sprinter
02:12van and its capabilities, but I've been absolutely thrilled with the Transit.
02:17We put a set of Rika wheels on here. These were pre-production test wheels. You can see they're a
02:22little banged up as well.
02:24They've been fantastic. I think these are by far the best wheels you can get for Transit, in my opinion.
02:29And then we've got a set of Nokia Outpost tires on here. Again, this was something we were trying out
02:34for the first time.
02:34I've been very, very pleased with them. They're very, very quiet on the road, and I never had any grip
02:40issues when we were on the road.
02:41Inside here, we've got a van compass suspension system. So this is their full system with the monotube shock in
02:47the front, upgraded coil springs, springs in the back as well, and a lift as well.
02:55The Transit comes from the factory pretty low, so a lift is pretty essential if you want to do anything
03:00beyond a dirt road in terms of off-road type stuff.
03:03You can see here, we bedlined a good bit of the van, basically everything from here down and then on
03:09the sides as well.
03:10So when you see our flares, you'll see they're bedlined as well. This has been great. It's a lot of
03:13scratch protection.
03:14A lot of this stuff is plastics underneath, and they just tend to get scratched, faded over time, so just
03:20going to keep it looking nice.
03:21We replaced the grille with this Raptor-style grille here, which is just so much nicer than the standard factory
03:27grille, which has a chrome, and the factory grille has a big blue forward button thing that I think is
03:32hideous, but that's with me.
03:35Anyway, really like this grille, and then of course, we've got the flatline front bumper. We've got a 10,000
03:40-pound worn winch.
03:41This saved my bacon one time in a very bad situation. It's the first time I've ever used a winch.
03:45I was very glad to have it.
03:47And then we have a couple LP6 lights up here, so these are Baja lights. These are amazing.
03:52They create, being down low like this, they create so much contrast over the terrain that it's very easy to
03:58see, you know, at night, very easy to see where all the rocks and everything are.
04:01So that's been pretty awesome. And then up top here, we've got a set of KC lights, this big KC
04:06light bar array.
04:08Those lights are particularly useful if you're going to be traveling at speed, like I was going through Wyoming on
04:14this back road,
04:15and there were deer and antelope everywhere, and it was kind of terrifying.
04:20And I just turned those on because I was the only person on the road, and it just lit up
04:23everything. It was pretty fantastic.
04:25Of course, we've got the running boards down here as well.
04:27Something you can't see underneath here is out west, when I was in Portland, I had Pad Overland put a
04:3545-gallon fuel tank in here,
04:37which was a huge upgrade. I can't say enough how much that improved my life on the road, having that
04:44huge tank.
04:45It's basically twice the size of the standard tank, so that was a huge upgrade.
04:49Also, we put a sway bar on here, like a really beefy sway bar, and that improved the overall driving
04:55characteristics as well quite a lot.
04:57Of course, we've got our Arctic Turn window here. You'll see that on the inside.
05:02And this is the bedlining I was talking about, where we bedlined the whole side here.
05:06And, you know, you can see I really—I took a lot of—this took a lot of trees, and it looks
05:12quite a bit better than it would have otherwise.
05:14In fact, you can see some of the damage here from some of the trees and a couple of cliff
05:18outcroppings that I got jammed up into.
05:21We've got some scene lights on the side here, scene lights on the back as well, and scene lights on
05:25the other side.
05:26Those are all controlled by a Switch Pro control unit that's up in the driving area.
05:30And, of course, we've got a shore power connection right here.
05:33Never really had to use that on the trip because we have plenty of alternator power, but that's the outlet
05:38of our Wabasto heater.
05:39So, of course, it's got heat on the side.
05:41This is a new—this ladder here is actually new from Flatline.
05:44This was a test unit that they put on when I was out in Portland because they wanted to check
05:49the fit and everything.
05:49But they completely redesigned how it mounts down here, and it tucks up in it as much—much lower profile.
05:57So, yeah, that's—that's been pretty nice.
05:59We have this—this tire-ladder combo on the—on the back.
06:01I've never used this ladder because I have the side ladder, but—but it's nice.
06:05And I'm really glad that the tire is on the back and not underneath.
06:09That time that I got stuck with the winch, there's no way I would have been able to get my
06:13tire out from underneath the van.
06:16And let's see, on the back here, we've got Roleth shades encasing the whole thing, which is just wonderful.
06:23You know, out west there aren't that many bugs, but on the east coast, you know, bugs are everywhere.
06:28Being able to seal off the whole back is—is just really, really nice.
06:32And then on the inside of the doors here, you know, we've got some window shades here and the van
06:37essential, like, door card storage units, which are really, really nice to have.
06:43Of course, in our garage, we've got a lot of storage here.
06:45We've got a 3,000-watt Victron inverter.
06:48We've got 900 amp-hours of battery on board, all the other Victron components.
06:52Our alternator charging is off of a pair of DC-DC chargers, so we've got 100 amp-hours of DC
06:57-DC charging, which is great.
06:59So when I was on the road, I never had to use the shore power charging at all.
07:02I just, you know, just ran everything off the engine, recharged everything off the engine.
07:06And that was great.
07:07We've got 25 gallons of fresh water on this side and a 4-gallon hot water heater tank.
07:12Of course, we've got a servo screen inside, so that provides all the information of, like, our water levels and
07:19also, of course, all our other system information.
07:22And then on the side over here, we have our outdoor shower.
07:25So this is, you know, hooked up.
07:26You've got hot and cold water out here, just like you do on the indoor shower.
07:29Nice, simple fill system here and a really easy system for winterizing.
07:34You just flip one switch and it all just kind of does it by itself.
07:37Yeah, I want to bring it on the side over here.
07:40So this box in the back, this is another Flatline product.
07:43I absolutely love this thing.
07:45I think this is the best rear box I've used so far.
07:48I just think it's just really nice.
07:49This table is fantastic.
07:51I did tons of cooking on this tiny little grill that I picked up.
07:54I love this thing.
07:54I just put it on the table.
07:56Like, even in, like, a, you know, a parking lot in the middle of nowhere, I just pop that thing
08:00out and cook it right on here.
08:03It's a nice system.
08:04I really like it.
08:07And then up top, there's also this, like, firebox storage unit here.
08:12And I'd probably replace this with just a forward-facing storage thing if I were to take another trip.
08:18But coming around the side here, we've got the entrance inside.
08:22So this is our kitchen unit on the outside of our Highline here.
08:25And we have this beautiful fold-down table.
08:29It's an acrylic wood composite table.
08:32We've got a light right up in here.
08:34And this just makes the nicest place to just, you know, put things, prep food, whatever it is you're going
08:39to do.
08:40This is a magnet knife block up here, so you can kind of store your cutlery up there.
08:44And this whole thing just folds away and stays up with magnets.
08:47There's just a tiny little cubby down here.
08:49I tend to throw, like, my headlamp or little things like that that I want to keep handy.
08:52And, of course, there's some USB charging here and a 110 outlet over there.
08:55So coming inside here, we have an all-vinyl floor.
08:59So this is one big sheet of vinyl down the whole floor.
09:02Underneath, we've got an inch of poly-ISO insulation.
09:07And then, of course, we have insulation, you know, throughout the van, anywhere from, like, an R5 to, like, an
09:12R15.
09:13And that's all behind our wall system here.
09:15So our wall system is different than really anything that anyone else does.
09:20We do it kind of the hard way.
09:22It's a lot of sanding, a lot of work.
09:24But it creates a beautiful home-like interior that is really unlike anything else.
09:29It's most like your home.
09:30And that's sort of our goal.
09:32You know, coming in here, you'll see these chairs.
09:35These have been a huge hit when we've been at the shows.
09:40Not a normal type of chair that people have been putting in as an upgrade.
09:43People very commonly put a set of Schiomans in.
09:46And these have been fantastic.
09:48These are made by a company called JMG.
09:50It's a small family-run operation in Southern California.
09:53And they are incredibly comfortable.
09:55I had two days of driving on my road trip where I had to do, like, two 18-hour days,
10:00which was kind of rough.
10:02I was a little delirious by the end of it.
10:03But I was entirely comfortable the whole time.
10:05So I absolutely love these chairs.
10:08They're, you know, they're thicker for sure.
10:09They take a little more space.
10:11But they are darn comfortable.
10:14Next to me here, we've got our Arctic turn window, which awnings out.
10:18Of course, it has a bug screen that's built in and a blackout shade as well.
10:22We've got a LED light up here that's on a dimmer.
10:27Sorry.
10:29LED light up here that's on a dimmer.
10:30And then above that, we've got our overheads here.
10:33This is just, like, a nice little place to stuff some things.
10:35I would keep my coffee supplies and some other things up in here.
10:38And then behind me here, of course, we have a microwave tucked away back in there, which is super handy.
10:45Right here, we have our walnut butcher block table.
10:48I love this table.
10:49It's super nice.
10:50Normally, I'll show you what we have for the kitchen in a second.
10:52Normally, we do our kitchen out of this as well.
10:55But today, we did something different.
10:56But this is just a lovely piece of wood.
10:58It's just nice, you know, nice to have your hands on that.
11:00Of course, we have USB charging and outlets down below as well.
11:03So there's plenty of utility there.
11:06Above us here, we've got a headliner for some storage here.
11:10We also have some mounts here.
11:11These are for some Sonos speakers that aren't currently installed.
11:14But this is, you know, this storage, this headliner storage is just the most useful thing in the world.
11:21So the kitchen, this was a new thing that we tried this year.
11:24So instead of doing the butcher block countertop, decided to try out this solid surface.
11:30And I'd be curious in, you know, in the comments on this video, if you could let us know what
11:35you think about it.
11:37There are pros and cons to it.
11:39But it's, you know, I find that people either love it or they don't love it.
11:43I really, really like it quite a lot.
11:45This is a special kind of solid surface that has this sort of pattern in it that mimics the look
11:49of, you know, of like a granite or something like that with a seam in it.
11:53We're still able to grain match everything.
11:56So it just, you know, the pattern still passes through here and you still got your sink below like that.
12:01So we've got our faucet here with a water filter tap on it.
12:06And then coming down the side here, we've got all our controls for our heat, all of the servo stuff,
12:12all of our lighting controls.
12:15Outlet, this is a control for our electromagnetic drawer locks that we have.
12:20And, you know, all those other things there.
12:23Below, we've got a trash can here and then a fridge right there.
12:30This is a CRX-80 fridge.
12:32It's an awesome fridge.
12:33And then, you know, a bunch of drawers here.
12:36So, a bunch of knickknacks in there.
12:40And one drawer down at the bottom here is a special drawer.
12:44This is a step drawer.
12:46So this is rated for several hundred pounds.
12:48You can step on that and then jump into bed from there.
12:51So that's super handy.
12:52You still have storage down there below.
12:55Up above, we've got a full set of overheads on both sides.
12:59And this makes for, you know, lots of really nice storage all the way down.
13:04It's just, you know, I tend to keep clothes up in here, or food up in here, clothes down in
13:08there.
13:09And you can see also everything's grain-matched all the way through.
13:12So it just, you know, again, this is, you know, any good home builder would do this for you at
13:16home.
13:17So that's why we do it in your van as well.
13:20Above us, we've got our max van.
13:22So also above me here is our 9,500 BTU AC unit made by Hofton.
13:26This thing produces a ton of cold.
13:28It'll cool down the van very, very quickly.
13:30And then we've got our full-size bed area.
13:32And so this is more or less a full-size mattress.
13:34It's not quite.
13:35It's just a tiny bit narrower, but it's actually quite a bit longer.
13:38So it's 6'6", end-to-end in here.
13:40And these, you know, headboard areas, we spent a lot of time on this to make it really nice.
13:45These are custom 3D printed parts that we print in-house.
13:48And we try to make every surface in here nice and round.
13:52Everything is padded.
13:53So it's just a really nice thing.
13:54And it being 6'6 in here is just wonderful.
13:57It's nice to be able to stretch out.
13:59And because the Transit is such a tall van,
14:01Transit's one of the only vans that you could really live in comfortably if you're over 6'0.
14:06And it's nice that we're able to also make the bed just as long as the ceiling is high, basically.
14:11So that's just a pretty wonderful thing.
14:13We've got some, you know, bedside lights here with some built-in USB charging
14:18and some more USB charging right next to the head of the bed there.
14:21And then two Sonos speakers in the back here.
14:25Those just pop out.
14:26They're charging all the time.
14:27And it's super handy.
14:30Oh, and down below me here, we have access to the garage.
14:33So this is a sliding pocket door.
14:35It locks in and out with a magnet.
14:37And that just makes a really nice access to the garage.
14:41And then right here, and then right here, we have our shower.
14:45So this is, this is our standard acrylic line shower.
14:50It's really nice.
14:51It has a sort of glass-like look to it.
14:54Of course, this is hooked up to that 4-gallon water heater that I was talking about.
14:57And below here, actually, this is the Compo, Compo Closet S1 toilet.
15:01This is a brand new toilet.
15:02It's like the hot new toilet on the market, if that's a thing.
15:06And that toilet is a urine-separating, self-sealing toilet.
15:10And below the toilet, we have our custom-fabricated stainless steel shower pan
15:13with this beautiful teak floor on top of it.
15:17And, of course, this is a retractable shower door that just retracts
15:20and, you know, goes out of the way when you don't need it, which is really nice.
15:24So all in all, this van has been, like, such a dream.
15:27I, you know, like I said, I spent, put 10,000 miles on this driving all over the country.
15:31I got it up to 12,500 feet and did all kinds of things I never thought I'd do in
15:37a van.
15:38It was pretty great.
15:39It was pretty cool.
15:40It's very rare that you see a van builder take one and take it through the paces.
15:46And you learn a lot from that, right?
15:47There's lots of new innovations that you might come up with.
15:51And designs that may have worked on paper when you get it out in real life might not work.
15:55I praise you for doing that trip.
15:58It must have been a lot of fun, too.
15:59Oh, my God, it was so much fun.
16:01And, yeah, my objective was to try and break some things, and I definitely broke some things.
16:05But it was to, yeah, try a lot of new things and see what I could learn along the way.
16:10And with 10,000 plus miles in that driver's seat, they have to be way more comfortable than those transit
16:16seats.
16:17Yeah, that is the one thing about the transit.
16:18Is it the, you know, I feel like the Mercedes, the stock seats are fine.
16:23Even the Promaster, if you get the, like, the not fabric ones, they're fine.
16:27The Ford stock seats, they're not fine.
16:31They kind of have to be replaced.
16:33You know, maybe use them for a bit and then wait to replace them.
16:36But most people say that they need to be replaced.
16:39You're doing a lot of highway.
16:40See, these vans, these off-road vans, it's like 95% highway, 5% off-road.
16:46If you're lucky.
16:47Like that, it's a good investment.
16:48Yeah.
16:49Well, I'll make sure I put links in the description so our viewers can click over to your website
16:53and check out pricing on a highline just like this.
16:57And then there's a lot of extra options on this, right?
17:00So you can start with a basic one.
17:02Inside's all the same, but, like, basic.
17:04And then you can move up to, like, a fully loaded decked out one like this.
17:08Yeah, absolutely.
17:08There's tons of options.
17:09This one has most of the options installed because we wanted to try out the most number of things.
17:13The other thing is that this exact van is actually going to be up for sale.
17:19So we're going to be selling this in the next few months.
17:20So if you go to our website, we'll have a vans for sale tab, and you can look up this
17:26van.
17:26I don't know exactly how much it's going to sell for, but the information will be there.
17:30I'm sure it's going to be a great deal, whatever it winds up being.
17:32And you guys will clean it up, and it'll look beautiful.
17:34This is Patrick with New Jersey's Outdoor Adventures YouTube channel.
17:37Thanks for joining us.
17:38We'll see you in the next one.