Project began March 15,2021
Rebuild of Promaster 136 to add off-grid capabilities
We design and build custom Class B vans that can serve both your needs as a professional tradesman or as an explorer; a work van on workdays and a play van on weekends. Many of our customers actually live in their vans. Are you at jobsite that requires extended overnights stays? With Provankits, you have a place to relax and avoid the high nightly rates of a hotel. As a workvan, you can store your tools and power all your equipment from a 3600 Watt battery generator. Rooftop solar panels and your van's alternator recharge your battery generator. As a recreational vehicle you have a hot and cold running water, refrigeration, bathroom, shower facilities and a comfortable queen size bed. We design our vans to be easily switchable between the two uses.
We don't understand the concept of the $140,000 + custom class B RV. With vehicles in the $40,000 to $60,000 range the cost of outfitting a van should be no more expensive than adding a bathroom to your home. The major cost of a van build is not the cost of material , but the labor to design and build it. We source the most expensive items in a van build direct from the manufacturers, and more importantly reduce the labor cost per vehicle. Our van's are hand assembled but not hand crafted; we leave the labor expensive part of a build to our CNC machines driven by sophicated computer aided designs and manufacturing.
Almost all of our van builds start with "lightly" used vehicles, with a majority being Dodge Promasters; We find they are the best vehicle for the price in terms of size, interior space, and service. On average they run under 10,000 miles. More than 20,000 miles on the odometer it's probably not worth the conversion cost. The price difference between a one year old van with 5,000 miles and an identical new vehicle often ranges from $10,000 to $15,000. We source a large number of vans from the #1 lessor of class B work vans, so they typically have over 100 used vans available.
We have invested thousands of dollars in resources in automatiing the design and fabrication of custom vans. Every design begins with a 3D computer of the proposed van. Almost every part that goes into your van starts with an accurate 3D CAD file; we how have over 3,0000 individual parts in our CAD library. From these 3D CAD files we generate the thousands of dimensions that goes into a typical van build. Those dimensions are then fed into automated CNC machines that generate the required components. What would take a person hours to make by hand can be acomplished in minutes with automated manufacturing. Time translates directly into labor expenses, so the faster we build a van the less it costs you.
Does your van sit idle on weekends? If you live in San Diego or Florida you could easily rent it for in excess of $200 per night most of the year. If you live in New England then it would be from May to November. As a live-in van it provides both transportaion and accomodation. Vactioners need both a rental car and hotel room in excess of $300/day to replicate it.
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All our vans are designed on the same CAD system used by automotive manufacturers. Almost every single component in your van is first modeled in 3D and the entire van is "virtually assembled" before we even start a physical build. Any change to an existing design can typically be evaluated in just minutes or hours. We presently have over 3,000 CAD files from individual screws to water pumps, sinks, cabinets, and the list goes on.
The most expensive part of a custom van is the labor cost is fabricating custom parts. Since we first build on vans virtually, we need only to transfer our CAD data to our precision CNC routers. A job that could take hours to make by hand takes minutes by a CNC machine.
We design our vans to be powered from self-contained battery generators. You can remove the generators or add additional battery storage in just minutes. We at one time installed custom battery systems, but the dozen of components, batteries, fuses, and switches each required labor intensive custom wiring. It's just too expensive. What used to take us a week to assemble we now can do in less than 8 hours.
Determine how much of your van build you want to delegate to us.
Select van layout and order components, hardware, lumber, and appliances.
We carry no inventory so all vans are produced after ordered.
Vans are complete in 4-6 weeks after start date.
Call or email us to discuss your project. We have years of experience so can provide you guidance for your ideal van build.