Sprinter, "The Dollhouse"

I have wanted a Sprinter van for a long time. They are cargo vans, but just happen to make great road trip, camping, bike transport mobiles. They aren't too pricey, used or new, but with the added customizations they can be very expensive in both time, and money. Finding used, upfitted ones that are nicely finished is hard, as they are expensive, and rare, and finding one that meets your needs is even harder. Most people build their own. I have been trying to convince my wife for years that we should get / build one. She was somewhat amenable to the idea, but she wanted a Eurovan Camper with the pop top. Those are nice, but for four people (two adults, two teenagers) and two dogs, and four bikes, plus gear, the Eurovan is just too small. Also, with the newest year available in the USA being 2003, and with their known mechanical flaws and very high resale value, I did not want to spend money on one. Next we moved onto the idea of a pop-top camper sprinter. I looked at several. A friend of a friend named KC gave me a tour of his:

KC's pop-top Sportsmobile Sprinter

But I didn't like not being able to stand up in a low-roof Sprinter, which is the only version for which you can get a pop top (Sportsmobile calls it a "Penthouse".)  and I didn't like some of the other downsides to the pop-top; cost, water leakage, wind noise, gotchas with the mechanism, exposure to the elements whether you like it or not, etc. We really reached an impasse here, with Lauren conceding that the Eurovan Camper wasn't right for us, but holding firm on a short-wheelbase, low-roof Sprinter with the pop-top. I just didn't think it would be right for us.

Recently an ad came up on our local craigslist for a short-wheelbase (144") 2007 high-roof Dodge Sprinter upfitted by Outside Van (really by Van Specialties, when the work was done in 2010 that was how it worked) at a price we could afford. It was white, with 59,000 miles on it. We went to look at it and Lauren was smitten. I thought that the conversion was nice, but a bit too minimal for the price being asked, not quite what we'd want - we'd probably end up undoing quite a bit of it to re-do it in the way we'd want - and maybe not long enough. I also had been considering getting the new Ford Transit commercial van (not Transit Connect) because I thought it might provide better / less expensive long-term service, and wasn't sure I wanted the headaches, cost and occasional immobility of a Mercedes Sprinter van in the great expanses of the western USA.

The funny thing is we went from me trying to convince Lauren that we needed a Sprinter, to her trying to convince me that we should get this van, specifically. We did.  The purchase experience was somewhat maddening. The seller and I worked out a price we could both live with, that wasn't so bad. I was approved for an auto loan amount by my credit union that was greater than the cost of this vehicle. I knew that the bluebook value for the van would be far below its asking price, because of the upfitting job. I called the credit union, and also the branch office where I planned to do the transaction, making sure that the transaction would go smoothly. I was assured on the phone that there was no problem, and made sure I had all the paperwork in hand, including an inspection report done at the local DMV office the morning of the transaction, because this van was registered in Oregon and not California. When we arrived at the branch office, we withstood a three-hour odyssey where we were told "Bad news", "problem", "no" and "it isn't going to happen" by someone who was obviously not capable of processing this transaction. The basic problem was that the bluebook value wasn't near the price I negotiated with the seller, and somehow all the previous communications I'd had were immaterial. We spent hours going back and forth on it, until I was able to produce an email reply from someone at Outside Van that mentioned the cost of doing upfitting work. The amount quoted was actually for work we were interested in doing, not for the amount that was done. (Seller did not have the receipt for the work done.) But producing that email saved the day, as they then had a number from a vendor that they could use to bump the value up to meet the price. The seller had run out of time and left by the time we had checks, but we returned to his home later that evening, handed him a check and drove the van home.

Lauren driving the new Sprinter

It was originally a crew van, but the second-row two-person bench and associated hardware were removed. The previous owner bought it from the original owner, an architect that worked at Nike in Oregon, then had Van Specialties / OV convert it. His wife called it "The Dollhouse", because it's a little house that you can fill with little house-like furnishings. It was a fairly minimal conversion that I could afford. My wife and I plan to make it more suitable for us, as budget allows. We are four people, four bikes, two golden retrievers. We go to bike rides and bike races and go camping and on road trips in the western US. There's a chance a paddle board or two would go in/on the van.

Sprinter in our driveway, oil stain from the old tripmobile

Pictures are here

What it has:

• Interweave interior panels, and I believe insulation underneath, rubber floor.
• Mercedes Benz re-badging (was Dodge)
• Outside Van soft goods; rear door pouches, fancy windshield sun protection (not pictured). Also the owner created a cool, hanging storage thing out of fabric, with lots of pockets, which mounts on the mac track. Also included are some simple window sun shades made of Reflectix which velcro into place.
• LED lights in ceiling. They are on the same circuit as the dome lights.
• A single cabinet on the inside left behind driver, above rollover sofa
• mac track on the floors (parallel to centerline, two) and on the walls (two each, vertical on the rear insides
• D-rings in the roof, walls and floor
• rollover sofa on the driver side behind driver seat, not sure dimensions
• CR Laurence (?) tip-out windows middle side left and right
• two hanging bunks made of tubular steel (?) and plywood, which attach to wall mac track and suspend from D-rings in the roof
• blacked aluminum wheels, taller BFG AT tires
• nudge bar (no receiver hitch) with Hella lamps
• fancy Kenwood stereo / nav / backup camera, camera itself in rear plastic above license plate
• two fork-mounts for bicycles on aluminum plate with mac track connectors
• heated, leather, Mercedes front seats
• 12V outlets in the rear of the van
• factory towing package

Here is what we want to change, in rough order:

• Remove sofa.
• Install factory three-person bench seat.
• Add three-panel bed that clears bikes and rear factory bench, without headrests. (Roughly 40" of inside height is needed to clear bikes and bench, with raised floor.)
• Reconfigure floor mac track, add bike mounts for four bikes parallel to centerline, under panel bed in rear, with bike seats dropped if needed.
• roof-top fan, maybe also roof-top vent, maybe cold-air vent on floor
• awning
• solar
• house batteries
• fridge
• microwave
• inverter
• front 2" receiver added to nudge bar
• minimal galley
• rear heater