Ryan is a plumber from Sheffield who wanted a campervan but could not justify a second vehicle. His Transit Custom is his work van Monday to Friday, so any conversion had to be removable, light, and not damage the cargo area. He had seen plenty of self-build videos online but after one disastrous weekend with a jigsaw and some moisture-damaged plywood, he decided to get a professional involved.
Basecamp Builds specialise in modular conversions for exactly this kind of brief. The entire interior is built as a series of interlocking units that bolt to existing anchor points in the Transit floor. Ryan can remove the bed platform and kitchen pod in about forty minutes, leaving a completely empty cargo bay for Monday morning. The units stack in his garage when they are not in the van. It is not glamorous engineering, but it is clever and it works.
The budget was tight from the start. Ryan and the Basecamp team spent the first meeting identifying what he genuinely needed versus what Instagram made him think he needed. Out went the solar panels, the diesel heater, and the swivel seats. In came a decent leisure battery with split-charge, a Dometic fridge that runs quietly, and the best mattress they could fit. The single-burner stove lives in a slide-out drawer and there is a pull-out section with a washing-up bowl that drains through the floor.
Ryan uses the van most weekends between April and October. He is a mountain biker and the setup gives him a base at trail centres without the faff of tent camping. He has also done a fortnight in Wales and a week in the Cairngorms. He admits the van is cold without a heater in shoulder season but reckons a good sleeping bag solves most problems. The total spend, including the units, fitting, and a few extras he added later, came to just under fourteen thousand pounds.