Converting a Sprinter to travel the Pan-American Highway!

Hello everyone – we are Ines & Jan from beautiful Hamburg, Germany! A couple of weeks ago, we purchased a 2012 Mercedes Benz Sprinter 4x4 and just started the conversion into our future tiny home on wheels. The goal is to finish the vanbuild in early 2019 to ship the van to Canada and then travel and discover the Pan-American Highway from the top of Alaska to the tip of Tierra del Fuego.
As we are completely new to building a van and living in a van, we are super excited and looking forward to connecting with you all!

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Such an exciting time! Best of luck in the build and all future adventures!

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Yay! My partner and I want to do the Pan-American Highway on our motorcycle one day! Best of luck to you!

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Wow, I could not imagine a journey like this with just a motorcycle but we heard of people traveling by bike! That’s impressive! Thank you so much

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It’s a first time for everyone!

Goodluck with the build and feel free to document your build on separate post in ‘The Build’ category. Im sure we all can learn a bunch from it!

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Hey! So nice! Question: wouldn t it be cheaper to buy one in canada instead of shipping it?

Congrats on the van… you’ll LOVE the Panam!

Does that mean you were able to get one of the new gasoline engines rather than deisel??

At least for the vans that get imported here to North America the diesel sprinters won’t wont off anything other than ultra low sulphur diesel… which you won’t be able to find in many countries south of the US.
I doubt you’ll be able to ship/import if yours doesn’t meet the standards and you won’t make it down the Panam with one that does meet the standards. :confused:

The lack of ULSD pretty much precludes the Panam in a 2007-present US-spec diesel Sprinters… so worth looking into that portion of your specs before you get too far into the build!

You may also want to check out forums more specific to the Panam and overlanding like ExpeditionPortal

Hi Overlandys!

Sounds great! I’m quiet in the same situation: a German, buying / building a van and ship it to the US to drive down till Mexico. So I will follow you and hopefully can get some heldful advices (e.g. as from @theDangerz)

Good luck and enjoy that journey!
Fatima