We learned two things after doing a four state van trip as a family. 1) you need as much storage space as you can get 2) normal bike racks don’t work well on a van if you plan on going off-road to camp. The fix for both…..Owl Vans.
While vans are big, they quickly fill up with four people and their gear. You also learn that not all your gear is created equal. Some you want inside while other gear you want outside. We wanted to move our 5lb propane tank outside for safety reasons (gas leaks in the middle of the night) and we felt stuff like recovery gear, some tools, and straps didn’t need to take up valuable inside storage space. So we decided to get an Owl Vans Large Expedition Cargo Box. I have since learned that the basic box Owl uses is made by Backwoods Adventure Mods but then Owl puts on their own panel to mount gear on. Backwoods also makes these panels. In fact we have since bought two Backwoods side panels to add to our Owl Vans Expedition Box so that we can mount two Rotopax diesel fuel tanks (see updated post below). The box also comes with an adjustable and removable shelf inside which we have found very useful. So in the end you can go with Owl’s box or Backwood’s box to get the same result. What is different between the two companies is how you mount the box to the van. And for our needs Owl wins out. But let’s first talk about bike racks.
At first we took our Kuat four bike hitch rack that has a swing arm and mounted it to the van. This allowed us to travel with four mountain bikes plus still access the rear doors because the rack was on a swing arm. The Kuat system is fantastic and honestly the best bike rack I have ever owned. If your van is going to stay on paved roads and you don’t plan on going on steep driveways the Kuat system is perfect and far cheaper. The Kuat system can also be moved from car to car which is another huge plus. But there is one problem with all hitch mounted systems for vans like ours…..ground clearance. We have the 170 WB van which means we already have a good amount of the van body overhanging the rear tires, then you have a hitch overhanging a bit more, and then a bike rack overhanging a lot more. All that overhang means your approach angle suffers. In fact many times we would scrap getting out of a gas station or modest driveway. And with four bikes behind a 170 WB van just try to find a parking spot that you can fit in.
The fix to all of this is to get the bikes off the hitch and put them somewhere else. So we decided to get Owl Vans B2 Bike Carrier. This thing mounts to the rear door, matches perfectly (look and size) to our Owl Vans tire and ladder, accommodates two 1 Up bike racks and gives you mounting space for a large cargo box or an Owl Vans Sherpa panel. This solves our ground clearance issue as the bikes are up high (very high) and it gives us a place to mount our Owl Vans Expedition cargo box. The obvious downside here is that it only holds 2 bikes not 4. So what we do is put 2 bikes outside on the B2 and 2 bikes on the inside of the van in the cargo area under the platform bed. Problem solved…..well not totally. Our platform bed was just a couple inches too low to accommodate bikes under the bed panels so we are in the process of putting the panels on a hinge that will allow us to flip the panels up (more on that in another post).
When it is all said and done we ended up with a huge amount of storage outside for gear, mounting panels on the cargo box to store our shovel and two fuel tanks, and two bike racks that no longer reduce our ground clearance. You might say we went to an extreme to solve a logistics problem and you are right, but that is what a van conversion is all about…..solving a giant puzzle.
UPDATE 3/36/21
The cargo box also gives you a base to mount thing to. As you can see in the pictures above I mounted a DMOS Stealth shovel to the exoskeleton panel on the front. I also mounted two exoskeleton panels from Backwoods on the sides. On each of these I attached a Rotopax diesel fuel tank. Each tank is 2 gals so with two of them I have about 60 miles of reserve fuel. Finally I needed a permanent place to mount my WeBoost cell antenna and the frame part of the cargo box was perfect as it ensured the top of the antenna was above my roof rack but it was out of the way.
