[5Blaine]

Just an intro: We are a family of four looking to purchase and outfit a Promaster that will seat 4, sleep 4 and be our mobile backcountry ski lodge in the winter. Also looking to travel in something a bit more than our Subaru with a car top camper, but still want to get off the beaten path. One of our goals has been to camp where there are no generators, so dispersed camping it is.


We are just about ready to purchase a van. We've narrowed it down to a 159 High Roof. We like the interior space, reliability and front wheel drive.

We will definitely have questions on which options we should be looking at during the purchase process. There'll be a number of questions during the build. We are fortunate enough to have not one, but two van outfitters/upfitters in the same town we live in.

Looking forward to the adventures ahead.

Cheers.

 

[keeponvaning]

Welcome

 

[bigbill25]

Welcome. You have a pretty similar use case to mine. Family of four, camping skiing, etc. I decided to go with a pop-top to get enough comfortable sleeping space. Interested to see what you come up with!

 

[5Blaine]

Among our list of priorities is to be able to do some urban camping, so we are looking for plain white van. A pop top would be a bit obvious.

It is interesting to see how much this drives the decision. If we didn't want to urban camp occasionally, we would just go with a pickup and popup cab over camper.

We are planning an athwartships (sideways) bunk for the adults, then folding Yukon/Tahoe seats that when folded down will make part of the kids bunk that will extend underneath the adult bunk.

 

[5Blaine]

Looking forward to being part of the community.

Where is the best place to post questions about the various option packages that we are likely to encounter on a 2017 159 High Roof?

We would like opinions of which options (radio, tow package, stability/traction control) are most common and which are worthwhile vs. waste of money.

Thanks.

 

[Winston]

Welcome and have fun. Here are a few thoughts.

Back-up camera - - a must for us as we can back into most anything. A passenger slider side window - - necessary for safety, lane-changing etc. Probably would go with back door windows as well . . . if that doesn't blow your cover. Probably the most useful option we got was - - and not sure what they call it - - the front roof pair of shelves. And, depending on your layout, factory swivel seats. Swivels allow inclusion of the front seating area into 'living space' while stopped - - something you will probably need with a crew of four. This implies avoiding the twin passenger front bench seat unless that's part of your plan - - makes it difficult to get between the front and back. Cruise control. We didn't go with the fancy radio package with GPS/navigation as we carry a handful of handheld Garmins (for hiking and geocaching) and use our smartphone's Google navigation for most of our wheeled navigation. Didn't get the factory floor . . . many who get 'stuck' with that remove it to build the floor they really want.