Blue View – A Nickel Tour of Blanche

Balnche comes with a nice side window

This past week we drove Blanche, our recently purchased Ram Promaster 1500 van conversion, back to Las Vegas and did a more thorough investigation of the upfit job. In general, we are happy with the Promaster. It drives well, the seats are comfortable, and the visibility and mirrors are good. Surprisingly, we got about 20 MPG at 70 MPH (but it does drop rapidly at 80 and over).

We did discover a few surprises; Michael, the previous owner, told us everything on the house electrical system worked. He couldn’t show us because the snow covering the solar panels caused the house batteries to go flat, and he had turned everything off. That turned out to be not entirely accurate. The batteries were not just flat, they were totally dead and needed replacing. In addition, the fridge doesn’t work either, and will also need replacing. (It did come with an exploded can of beer and some aged IPA sloshing around inside, so it wasn’t a complete loss, BTW). Cha-ching… there’s $800-$1000. Everything else seems to work fine.

Then we discovered that while the parts that the previous owner bought were, for the most part, of good quality, the workmanship installing it all wasn’t the greatest. A case in point is the added electrical circuits and electronics. Michael bought all Renogy solar components, a Renogy inverter and a MaxxAir roof fan… all good, name brand items. Apparently, he never heard of crimp connectors or terminal blocks, however, because the wire connections were all made by just twisting the wires together, occasionally taping the connections with electrical tape. The wire runs were all tangled messes, with wires draped everywhere and no effort made to hide or conceal the wiring. Fortunately the circuits were simple, and it only took about two days to redo the connections, re-route the wiring, and make everything shipshape. The positive is that the fan and solar panels do appear to be mounted securely and properly sealed. There’s no sign of leaks – nor do the panels look likely to blow off at 80 MPH.

The ‘Before’ shot of the wiring

The wire connections left a little to be desired

New batteries and a redo of the wiring

A potential issue is the bed. In Blue, the bed faced front to back, with the headboard at the rear, which made for a roomy, comfy bunk. In Blanche, the bed is situated right to left. This takes up less space in the van, but only people shorter than 6’ can stretch out – the side walls are just under 6’ apart. This is fine for Marcie, but I can’t lie flat on my back. We’ll take it on a short camping trip to see how this works… we may have to rotate the bunk.

The full size mattress is squashed a bit to fit

The overall carpentry is pretty rough, and it’s lacking many things we’d like in our camper… a toilet, more cabinets, fridge, and a comfortable place to sit, all of which rate high on our want-list. These are all things we were aware of, however, and plan to add in the near term.

Overall, despite the surprises and all my whinging, we are quite happy with the van. The price was right, which is a rarity in today’s market, the van itself seems sound and the problems we’ve encountered in the upfit are all fixable. Michael also included a few items not mentioned in the ad - a bike rack that attaches to the tow hitch and a complete diesel heater kit, ready to be installed.

We’ll do another show and tell after we get her the way we want her. Now… cough up your nickel!