Turning my car in to a camper

Ford Focus Active Wagon 1.5 Ecoboost

The need for a camper car

I’m going for a road trip to Finnish Lapland and I was thinking that I could spend some of the nights in my car. That feels like a good option to have so I don’t have to hike to somewhere for every night. It gives me some flexibility on my trip as I don’t want to plan it too much. But I don’t want to just recline my seat and close my eyes. I want to make it a little bit more comfortable.

Step 1: installing bug screens

Fresh air is quite essential when sleeping, anywhere. And a car is no exception. Well thankfully cars have opening windows. So that was a quick fix. But now my car is full of mosquitoes!

Bug screens to the rescue!

I found these Sonniboy sunshades that they make for many car makes and models. They are made from woven fabric so they let air through, but leave the mosquitoes out. They seemed like a nice and clean solution and I liked the idea of extra privacy that they give, because my window tints are not that dark. So I ordered a full set which covers all of my rear windows.

The installation was easy. There was two different types of clips in the packaging. One type for rear door opening windows and other type for back windows.

The sunshades came with simple instructions and a bag of installation clips

There was 4 this kind of clips for each rear door window

The rear door sunshades fit nicely

There won’t be any mosquitoes coming through that

Back window shades are held on place with these kind of little clips. They just go behind the interior trim. Simple and effective.

Rear window shade

Back window shade

Step 2: installing wind deflectors

Now that I had my bug screens in place, I needed to make sure, that even in a case of rain, I can keep my windows cracked open. I’ve had wind deflectors in some of my previous cars and knew that they were the perfect solution for that. So I ordered a set of wind deflectors.

The installation was once again easy. Little bit of twisting and turning to get them to their right places. Hardest part was to get my windows closed after that. The extra friction from the deflectors made the windows think that there were someones fingers in between so they kept coming down. That should become better over time. Hope so!

ClimAir wind deflectors

There was 4 wind deflectors, installation tool and instructions in the packages. The front deflectors are shaped in a way that they can’t come off and don’t need to be taped in place. The rear ones have little pieces of double sided tape on each end, so they won’t drop off. They are so tight fit that I think that wouldn’t be a problem anyway.

Now I can leave my windows cracked open even if it rains

Step 3: making the bed

To sleep comfortably, I need to be able to sleep with my legs straight. With backseats folded down, there was a little gap between the backseat and front seat that I needed to fill to achieve that.

I cut a piece of plywood that was as wide as the bigger portion of the folding backseats on my car. That way I can still use the smaller portion as a normal seat. Don’t know if there’s going to be any use for it, but at least it’s an option. I wrapped the plywood with some fabric to make it more comfortable to handle.

I covered the whole back section with patio rug to make it easy to clean and look nicer.

I wanted to have some sort of curtain behind the front seats to give me more privacy in the back. I found a cheap back seat cover that was just perfect size and had rubber bands for hanging it from the head rests. It turned out to be a perfect solution.

This was the starting point

With that piece of plywood, I have enough length for my “bed”

The whole area covered with patio rug

I bought this cheap back seat cover to use as a curtain behind the front seats

The back seat cover curtain thingy in place. I think it works great

Ready for sleeping. It feels like a comfortable place to lay down. I added a foam pad under my Exped Synmat Ultralight to smooth out the little bump that the end of the plywood makes

Next step?

I’m quite happy with the way this little project turned out. I still got a few weeks time before my road trip so maybe I’ll come up with something more.

But I think that the next step is going to be a test night!

I want to be sure that this sleeping setup really is working so I can depend on it on my road trip.

I will be blogging about my test night and if I come up with something new for the car. And of course from the road trip, when that time comes!

Stay tuned!