The Find

Finding a Sportsmobile on the East coast is almost an impossible feat. Months of searching classified ads and online forums had turned up little to no hope of ever locating an obtainable van in our area. The vans we did find were either basket cases that were demanding the price of a well maintained van or well maintained van halfway across the country with questionable history/documentation. Then one October day, I came across a shared post on Instagram of this beautiful 2000 E250 Sportsmobile for sale. It was love at first sight, but it had to be too good to be true. Going for broke, I decided to DM the owner and see if it was still available. Much to our delight it was. Almost a month later, the seller and I had finally reached an agreement that was fair for both parties and our new to us Sportsmobile was loaded on a transport and sent across country to meet us in Virginia.

Equipment

  • 5.4L 2v V8

  • Agile Offroad TTB 4x4 conversion with 4:56 gears & FOX shocks

  • Dana 60 Rear with ARB locker, 4:56 gears and upgraded leaf springs

  • Aluminess Front and Rear bumpers

  • Aluminess Side steps

  • RB31 Sportsmobile Interior with Goucho-couch and Penthouse Top

  • Swivel bases for both front seats

  • 2500watt Trace inverter with dual house batteries and alternator charging

  • 2800watt Onan gasoline generator

  • Microwave

  • 12v Rv Tv with DVD player

  • Starcool Rear A/C

  • 11 gallon Fresh water tank

  • 15 gallon Grey water tank

  • 2 gallon Electric hot water heater

  • 11 gallon Propane tank

  • 2 burner gas stove

  • Propane heater

  • Norcold Ac / Dc Fridge

  • 35 x 12.50 R16 BFG KO2 All Terrain Tires on powder coated OEM wheels

As you can see from the list above, the van was pretty dialed in when we received it. We just needed to add some storage boxes to the rear swing out and transfer our Blue Ridge Overland Gear over and it was time to get out and use this thing. It’s perfect the way it is, or so we thought…..

modifications

This now being our third serious Overland Rig, we knew better than to just let the wrenches fly and change everything about it. After all, we bought this vehicle because it had everything already done and it was a proven platform. However, proven doesn’t mean without weak its weak points and we intended to find those and correct them. The first couple of trips went off without a hitch, our only headaches were to figure out how we wanted to store things and how to best live in the space. One major thing we discovered quite quickly during the Virginia winters in the Appalachian mountains was how inadequate the propane RV heater was at keeping the space warm with the penthouse top up. The good news was, we already had a solution for this. So we ripped out the propane Rv heater and installed our Espar D4L diesel heater in its place.

Another thing that we figured out quickly was the cabinet above the couch had to go. This cabinet originally would’ve housed the RV tube style TV with a built in VHS player. Somewhere along the way one of the previous owners covered the opening and placed a flatscreen RV TV with DVD player in its place. I’m sure this was a nice upgrade at the time, but the cabinet being over the couch essentially turned a four seater bench in to a three seater bench. We were always ducking under it or hitting our heads on it. Oh yeah, and that microwave above the fridge that we only used for storing breads and chips in, it had to go too.

From there we continued using the van with very little issues and we started to working on little things here and there. We changed all of the interior lights out to LED bulbs to help save on power. Installed a HAM radio, WeBoost, some USB-combination power ports and cleaned a bunch of the wiring up to simplifying it in case of an issue. A MaxxAir Fan was installed on the roof and a drop down bamboo table was installed on the back of the cabinets for use outside with the side doors open. Up front the Aluminess bumper received the same Warn M12000 winch with Master Pull Synthetic line that was in the front of our previous Power Wagon. The ARB single air pump and locker solenoid was tucked in next to the winch making everything nice and tidy. As time went on we finally made the switch from the two RV deep cycle lead acid batteries that came with the van to two 100ah lithium batteries from Redodo. This now provided us with 200ah total reserve onboard power and has been a game changer. To charge the batteries while driving we installed a RedArc BCDC 1225D charge controller. This same controller also allows for the use of a foldable 100watt solar panel to be plugged into a port that we installed on the side of the van. When we’re at camp and the engine isn’t running, we have a 455watt Canadian solar panel on the roof paired with a Victron MPPt charge controller. With both panels in use, we can bring in just above 400watts of power in direct sunlight. Which is quite helpful when we’re running Starlink, even after doing the 12v DC conversion.

Overall, the Sportsmobile has been an amazing Adventure rig. We still have some things that we would like to do to it, but right now we’re just enjoying it how it is. We’ve really been surprised by the Agile Offroad 4x4 conversion. It allows this heavy van to ride like a dream on and off-road. So far it has done everything that our Power Wagon was capable of, with the exception of rock crawling. We’ll be sure to update this article as we make changes.