Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Roadtrek 190 For Sale

Winchester State Park, Idaho
Now that we have ended our little road trip, I find that I am missing that easy subject material for blog posts.  As I wrack my brain for other interesting things to write about, I guess I can fall back on some "retrospective" posts to fill the time.
I was originally going to write a post about the different places we camped on our trip, but even I found that a bit dull and it was my idea.  Instead I'll turn this into a marketing post.  As soon as I get the ambition to finish removing all our personal belongings from the van we will be putting it up for sale.  With that in mind, I'll do a quick description of the van with a bunch of "you could be here" photos to see if any of our blog readers might be interested in buying it.  I normally wouldn't try to sell a vehicle to friends, but this one worked out so well for us with almost no issues that I feel OK about passing it along.
City of Rocks, Idaho
The van is a 1994 Dodge one ton stretch 19 foot van, also known as the B350 van.
It has the Dodge 5.2 liter Magnum engine (318 for you old school folks) and a four speed automatic transmission.
It has a big fuel tank, I think it's 35 gallon, with a brand new fuel pump.  On our trip we averaged over 14 MPG so the theoretical range is almost 500 miles.
Because the van was originally from Canada, the speedometer and odometer are in kilometers, so mileage has to be converted but comes out to about 150,000 miles on the van currently.
Nine Mile Canyon, Utah
It was converted to a camper by the Canadian company Home and Park under the brand name Roadtrek, who are well known in the camper world as doing very high quality conversions.  This one is the 190 Popular model.
The van has seating with seat belts for three, two captains chairs up front and a third seat behind the passenger.  This worked out well for us to have a belted seat for the car seat for Madeline.
Black Dragon Canyon, Utah
Camper accommodations include a two burner stove with overhead exhaust hood, a convection toaster oven, a three-way 120V/12V/propane fridge, cold water only pressure water to a single sink, electric flush toilet, propane furnace, air conditioner, a table that seats four adults and converts into a 6 foot square bed (almost king size), and lots of cabinets for storage.  There is also a smaller "cocktail" table that mounts up forward, used with the three forward seats when the two captains chairs are swiveled around to face aft.  The third seat can be converted into another single bed, but Madeline is small enough to sleep with us so we never tried it out.  There is 6 foot standing headroom in the center section of the van.
Indian Creek, Utah
There is a fresh water tank that feeds both the sink and toilet, with separate waste water tanks for each.
It has good ventilation, an overhead vent with an exhaust fan, as well as seven opening windows, all with screens to keep the bugs out.  All the windows, including the windshield, have curtains for total privacy while parked.
There is a separate battery to run the water pump and lights in the camper, and I converted most of the lights over to LED for our trip.
City of Rocks, New Mexico
There is an attached power cord to plug the van in to household power, with a standard campground 30amp plug and a 15amp conversion to use a standard house outlet.  The air conditioner and toaster oven require the van to be plugged in, everything else runs off the camper battery.  The battery is recharged by its own charger if the van is plugged in, or by an oversized alternator when the engine is running.
The tires still have good tread, but the sidewalls are dried out and weather-checked from sitting, so the tires should be replaced.  Otherwise I wouldn't hesitate to drive the van across the country again.  It starts right up in any weather and runs and drives fine.
If you are interested or know someone that is, let me know and don't hesitate to ask questions.