I’m trying out this blogging thing. Mostly to get out my thoughts because they bounce around my head too much and it’s difficult to get to the next idea.

The cube life is not for me. I’ve bounced around at a few companies trying to find a passion and a little bit more enjoyment in the 40+ hours I have to spend there each week. My actually get excited about working for myself. In 2023 I bought a van and built it out. The typical campervan built out from a work van (Ram ProMaster 2500). That was a fun project and it made me a few bucks last summer. About $20k in revenue for the year. My total investment was about $40k and ~500 hours. I really didn’t track the hours, but that would be a close estimate. It was a good feeling seeing all of the demand come in, partly to get some money back and have it become a real business and partly because I’m proud of my work and a lot of other people thought the same (not just thought, but put their dollars behind their decision).

Renters took these and they are way better than the photos I took for the listing, thank you!

Van #2 has been a headache. We should have walked away when we hear and saw the engine run. It was much more of a limp and we trusted a stranger when they said it was only one $250 part that needed replaced. I drove my car down from Lakewood to Colorado Springs to meet the tow truck driver and pay the owner to get the title. I gave her $15K which was fully from my parents. After the tow truck loaded the van and started driving, I had to get gas so I found a gas station about a mile from their house. When I was pumping gas I pulled up the Facebook listing to download or screen shot the pictures in case I wanted to re-use them when we listed the van for rent. They had already deleted the post and all of the pictures. Not a good sign and I immediately knew it. Surprisingly she responded to a couple messages about emissions because I asked when it last passed emissions. However, she said that where they live didn’t require emissions. I didn’t give this any more thought because I’ve lived in areas where emissions tests are not required. TL:DR the van is still not fixed and I’m dealing with the emissions issues almost a year later.

Pretty sweet rig! If it actually ran…

The first mechanic that looked at it informed us that the entire exhaust system had been replaced and someone had ‘straight piped’ it. So we have no catalytic converter or parts of the exhaust system that help clean the exhaust. Apparently most diesels have additional filters to clean the exhaust that gas vehicles don’t have. In our case, we would absolutely not pass Lakewood’s emission test so we had to find an alternative. God bless America and the free market and the great state of Montana! You can register an LLC in Montana without living there and have a vehicle belong to the LLC. Also, you can register a vehicle without having to show up to the DMV in person ANDDD they don’t require emissions testing! We used a company called Dirt Legal and they saved us! People with expensive cars and RV’s do this a lot because it’s a one time flat fee to register a vehicle (for the life of the vehicle) and in Colorado you have to pay a percent of the vehicle’s value every year.

So we have the vehicle legally registered and are nearing the end of getting this thing ready to rent. I’m finishing the interior ‘renovation’ and my brother is finishing some of the lingering mechanical issues. We take pictures of it and post it on Outdoorsy. It got some interest and I got 15-20 nights booked on it from 5-6 different people. This was about $2,500 in take home revenue, so I was super excited about that because it was getting booked every couple of days and has bookings further out than my Ram (the Mercedes Sprinter name is appealing to people). But… we still had the damn check-engine light on the dash and I didn’t want to rent it with this on. We ended up sending the van’s computer (ECM) to a company in Canada to erase the code that was causing the check engine light to come on (because the US/Colorado will not allow companies to tune a car with all of the emission filters we have removed). During the time the ECM is getting shipped, my brother is fixing a small oil leak. We get the ECM back and the van runs worse than before. We are not sure if we put something together wrong or if the ECM tune is causing it. I ended up having to cancel all of the bookings and it cost me $100 or $200 because I cancelled so many and you only get to cancel on customers X number of times for free.

To this day the damn van is still not running right. We took it to a second mechanic (who I have 1,000% more confidence in, plus they had a ~2 week wait-list so that means they are good?) They swapped parts, broke a few during a test drive and found that other parts weren’t even for our vehicle but somehow got installed. They told us (and I believe) that the vehicle is mechanically sound and the cause of it running bad is due to the tune. So, I’m working with a new tuning company in Canada that seems to be the industry leader in custom software for ECMs. The hope is that they can put their software on our ECM and the vehicle will run correctly (we don’t know the history of the vehicle or what custom software was put on it).

If this thing runs right, then I’m leaning towards selling it in the spring. My morals and ethics won’t let me sell a lemon. But, if the software fixes it and I’m able to do some real test drives in the mountains with it, then I need to get some money back by selling or renting. I don’t think I’ll have enough time this summer to rent 2 vans and work full time at a job that’s 100% in office and help plan a wedding. And continue to renovate my house (more on that in it’s own post).

Anyways, this feels like a long enough rant for a first post. The vans are part of my way out of the cube!