Type of car
We bought a GMC safari van. It's a good midway between space to live and fuel efficiency (it's a V6 engine). Anything larger than this (V8 engine) eats up your money as you drive, so unless you're taking a long time to do a short distance, this is a good way to go.
In Canada you can drive cars until they break, so we had our van inspected before buying. It's from 1993 and has 330000kms on the body (and 140 000 on the engine) so an inspection was needed.
Of course we did want a shortbus (old school busses are surprisingly cheap: 2000-3500$ only, but problems with range, crazy expensive on gas), a westfalia van (only 1980s and older for under 5000$, which means air cooled engines - good luck getting through the desert) or a delica (5000$ minimum), but those were just not viable.
We bought our van for 2500$ after it passed inspection with flying colors. We sold the back seat, got a free mantras to put in the back, made a bed frame and shelf out of wood and screws someone gave us, made seat covers and curtains out of a bed sheet and old pair of jeans and got a duvet and pillows for 5$ at a garage sale. We bought some bed sheets at ikea and we were ready to go. You can find anything you need on craigslist, often for free if you have some time to wait it out.
The interior of the van
Curtains
We had tinted windows but curtains were still needed. It's really nice to know for sure that wherever you're parked, no one can see inside the van. Rather than installing a complicated railing system we attached them to the car with Velcro, which is easy to remove if anyone ever wants to use the van for other purposes.
Keeping the mattress low
There's actually quite a lot of space in the back if you put the mattress close to the ground. A lot of people who convert their car raise the mattress and store their stuff underneath. The back can then only be used to sleep. We wanted to be able to sit and play music, read and hang out in the back as well, so we just moved our trek backpacks and guitars to the front seats every evening. It was about 10s of work and made it much easier to quickly get things out of our bags, since they weren't jammed under a wooden structure.
Seat bags
These seat bags were very useful. There are a bunch of things you want to have within reach (shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste, hairbrush, water bottle, headlamp, books etc), but there's no good place to put them where they won't move around or turn into a large pile of random stuff. These seat bags kept things (somewhat) organised.
A table
We didn't get around to building one, but we should have. A collapsible table is a very handy thing to have. The photo shows the back of our awesome German friend Chris' car, who was more organised than us and did make a table.
Tips and tricks
- Find free internet and electricity: at libraries, Starbucks, Mcdonalds, The old spaghetti factory, Jack in the box,... On airplane mode devices recharge about twice as fast.
- You can refil water bottles for free at most fast food places' fountain soda machines, just ask.
- If your car battery is dead and you can't find anyone with jumpsstart cables, call a taxi, they have cables.
- For showers we went to hot springs and swimming pools. These are generally much cheaper than campsites with showers or truck stop showers (the one we checked was 15$ per person), and they're much more fun too.
- Travel with another person or do ride shares (craigslist, carpooling.com, lyft,...) to split gas costs. For three-five people take a tent, keep one back seat in place + build an elevated fold away bed in the back.
- Keep anything liquid in a plastic box in case of leaks.
- For tire and oil problems go to a Walmart with a car center. We had a leaking tire fixed + all our tires checked and pumped to ideal pressure in 30min and for 11$.
- Get your car battery checked and recharged for free before leaving at Canadian tire.
- Get battery powered lighting for the evenings to save the car battery. If you like to listen to the radio in the evenings get a battery powered one.
- Always have a few gallons of water in the car in case it breaks down (at least two per person when driving through the desert).
Where to park
Park in places that no one is responsible for. Never park overnight in a mall or sports center parking lot or near schools, these places have security (you don't want to be woken up by a tow truck). Find places that allow free overnight parking (eg. Walmart, see below). Find nice, quiet residential areas and don't park right in front of a house (and try to find areas with no neighborhood watch program), next to a park or church or graveyard is better since no one really cares if you're there. Be very careful in large American cities, since good neighborhoods can be right next to dangerous ones. We went couchsurfing in large cities because we didn't want to risk it. In national parks either pay for camping, share a camping spot with others or park on private property (after agreeing with the owner obviously. This can be someone's parking spot or driveway. Because it's private property park staff can't stop you from doing that, even tough you "have to camp at a campsite").
The freedom of living in a van
It's great! You can leave on a trip without planning anything: you can choose the route as you go an hear about interesting places, there's no need to book anything ahead of time. You can go anywhere you want to go. You don't spend any time unpacking and packing. It's a very stress free way of traveling.
It really cuts your costs.
No accommodation costs. You can park overnight for free at many highway rest areas and Walmart parking lots. (See www.allstays.com for participating Walmarts). You can also park in most residential areas without a problem. The only place where we needed to pay to stay was inside national parks, where camping outside of campgrounds is forbidden (and checked rigorously). In large cities where we weren't sure if it was safe to sleep in the car we went couchsurfing (and in doing so met some great people).
It also cuts food costs since you can take a bunch of food with you so you don't rely on buying what's available. We had a shelf with food and supplies in the back of our van, and a cooler in the front. We did have to replace the ice in the cooler every two or so days, but since this is so common ice is available everywhere (any gas station or supermarket) and is cheap (about 2$ usually).
Fuel in the USA is cheap (3.7$/gallon roughly, a gallon being almost 4L). It's a bit pricier in Oregon where drivers aren't trusted to pump their own fuel, so you're paying a bit extra for someone to do it for you (3.8-3.9$/gallon). The fuel in Canada is also relatively cheap compared to Europe but it's worth filling up before crossing the border.
Here are some more photos of our trip
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