Discovering Our Winnebago Revel's Replacement - A Van America Custom Build

In April 2022, we made the choice to sell our 2019 Winnebago Revel and commit to a custom van build. However, getting to that point starts in June 2021.

After our 2020/21 ski season, we wanted to experiment with month-long AirBnb accommodations to see if it would make sense for us in the summer months. The previous summer was uncomfortably hot in the afternoons, even employing tactics to keep the van as cool as possible. When you’re working or unwell, a hot living space is difficult to tolerate. We also had an aging dog that would beg for air conditioning by throwing out high fives. Our Revel included AC but you have to be on shore power to run it in the 2019 version. The unit was also annoyingly loud, making it difficult to participate in work meetings over Zoom.

So, we committed to a month-long stay at an AirBnb in Canby, Oregon from late May to late June. It was a great way to spread out after being crammed in a van all winter and immerse ourselves in the property’s five-acre garden with views of Mount Hood. Bruce had access to cozy grass for daily napping and bouncing, and we had air conditioning and a shaded outdoor sitting area for those extra hot days.

Since we were so close to Mount Hood, we took our Revel to Rixen’s in Sandy, Oregon to have our Espar diesel heater serviced in preparation for the next ski season. Down the road from Rixen’s is Johnson RV. If you’re driving on Highway 26 between Portland and Mount Hood, you can’t miss seeing them along the highway. They have one of the broadest selections of Class Bs that we’ve seen in the West, so we like to stop and browse their inventory. On this particular visit, a salesman mentioned that they would be at the Adventure Van Expo in Hood River that upcoming weekend. We had never been to a van event and saw it as an opportunity to shop for Revel enhancements.

At the expo, you not only discover products for elevating your van life, but builders are showcasing examples of their most outstanding van projects with gorgeous finishings and loaded with features. This is where we found the future interior foundation for our van – Adventure Wagon’s conversion kit.

If your eye only gravitates to the most expensive-looking vans, you would miss Adventure Wagon entirely. Their booth is deceivingly underwhelming unless you take the time to understand what it is they do. The vans Adventure Wagon had at Hood River were practically bare inside, aside from finished walls and flooring. One might’ve had a bed. Upon looking closely at one of their vans though, L-track was running everywhere between multiple wall and ceiling panels. The track was installed lengthwise along the floor and ceiling, and there was somewhat of a grid pattern on both the driver and passenger-side walls.

Adventure Wagon isn’t trying to sell a finished van build. They’re selling a modular kit that allows Mercedes Sprinter and Ford Transit owners to start with an interior foundation and build on it as their budget allows or redesign it as needs change. With the L-track and wall and ceiling panels, their kit allows flexibility to install, remove, or relocate components within the van easily. You might never recognize an Adventure Wagon van because anyone that starts with their kit is free to make it their own.

The other beautiful thing about Adventure Wagon’s kit is that you can install it yourself within a few weekends with basic tools, or you can hire a certified installer. (Back in June 2021, Adventure Wagon didn’t yet offer factory installations, but they do now, and it only takes five days.)

Our big takeaway was that an Adventure Wagon kit would lessen the skills required and time needed to build a van from scratch, and we could decide on the exact features we wanted at a more affordable price point. We already owned a Winnebago Revel and we weren’t in a hurry to get rid of it. However, the more we embraced van life and full-time travel, the more we wanted to design a van that was better suited to our day-to-day life.

We were back in Mount Hood in February 2022, so we scheduled time to visit Adventure Wagon at their factory in Portland, Oregon. We had an intriguing conversation with a rep about all of the design possibilities, and we were feeling ready to make the leap into another van. We could sell our Revel for a huge profit, but the challenge was acquiring a new van. During the pandemic, vans were quickly gobbled up as people looked for safe ways to travel and get outdoors. We unfortunately decided a new van home was out of reach, but we’d keep Adventure Wagon in the back of our mind.

In our perfect world, we really wanted an RV manufacturer like Winnebago, Airstream, or Storyteller Overland to build the van of our dreams. It’s so much easier to drive a finished van build straight off the lot and insurance becomes less complicated. With van life exploding, we thought an announcement of our ideal van would come soon. But no, nothing. I don’t think Kyle and I represent the general target market, so I’ve given up hope. We spend half the year in snow and freezing temperatures, we don’t have kids, we travel full time but we’re not retired or flush with cash, and we don’t want a shower in our van.

The Winnebago Solis Pocket was an extremely close solution. However, the Ram ProMaster it sits on is not 4WD or AWD, and the house also uses propane for heat instead of diesel or gas. Unfortunately, we won’t negotiate on those two features as both are critical to us for winter living. We also looked closely at the Winnebago Ekko because it sits on the AWD Ford Transit and has ample interior storage for our outdoor gear, but it uses propane for heating. Propane creates an excessive amount of condensation and we blow through it too fast when it’s cold. We already did propane in our Travato and we won’t do it again.

In April 2022, we finished up our ski season at Eagle Point in southern Utah. It was time for our Revel’s regular maintenance, or more specifically, the 2018 Mercedes Sprinter chassis it sat on. We made an appointment with Mercedes-Benz of St. George in Utah only a couple of hours away. There is a dog-friendly My Place Hotel nearby that typically only costs $100 per night and a recreational walking and biking path between the hotel and Mercedes so we don’t have to rent a car.

While we were at Mercedes, they had two custom van builds for sale on their lot. We decided to check out both to kill time and also for some inspiration. The quality on one of the vans was exceptional – an All Advantures van (now Van America). The materials didn’t feel cheap and the Mercedes salesman insisted we bang the wall with an open-faced hand to feel how solid it really was. Everything installed on the interior felt firmly in place. We’ve been in other RVs where we open cabinet doors and it feels like they’re going to fall right off.

Mercedes suggested we pay All Advantures a visit, so we could see several vans they had in different stages of their build process. Their shop was only a ten-minute drive from Mercedes, so we figured, why not?

Well, we really connected with the father and son team, Kent and Zach. We loved their passion for building quality vans and appreciated their extensive experience traveling in their own. We got to see some of their van projects in progress, including one commissioned by Mercedes for an event down in Baja. Just like the custom build we saw on the Mercedes lot, everything we saw at the shop had the quality we desired in a future build. All Advantures also used the Adventure Wagon kit as the base for some of their custom van builds.

We assumed our visit to All Advantures would just be a way for us to get to know Kent and Zach. Just like Adventure Wagon, we’d keep them in the back of our mind when we were ready to make the leap into a new van home. Vans were still really hard to acquire, and most skilled and highly-rated van builders were booked out a year or more. We even stopped by the Ford dealership in St. George and the salesman there had no idea when AWD Transit vans would come back into their inventory.

But then, Kent and Zach offered an opportunity. They had two Mercedes Sprinter vans that they had intended to build out for themselves, but business was so busy and it was becoming less of a priority. They offered to sell us one of their vans! A 2021 Mercedes Sprinter with a 144-inch wheelbase that already had some of the Adventure Wagon components installed. They could start our custom build within the month and shoot for a late summer completion.

Before committing, we went back to the Mercedes dealership to test drive one of All Advantures’ vans. We kind of figured how the Sprinter itself would drive, even though it was newer than our 2018. We were more interested in listening to the van. Upon touching and feeling everything in the house, it all felt solid, but would it rattle as we drove down the road? It was the true quality test, and it passed. It was so quiet, I didn’t need the radio to drown out undesirable noises.

We went back to All Advantures, signed a contract, and wired them our deposit. While they were busy building our new van, we’d work on selling our Revel.