On this page (6 sections)
The problem with how your rig gets categorized
Take a Sprinter with a high top, a roof rack, four hundred watts of solar, a lithium bank under the bed, an inverter, a diesel heater, and a water system, and hand it to a commercial van shop. They will repair the body and decline everything behind the wall panel. Hand it to an RV service center and they will service the house side and decline the structural work. Neither is being unreasonable. Each is describing the limits of what they are set up to do.
The trouble is that on a converted vehicle those two domains are not separable. A side impact that pushes a body panel in also moves the framing somebody screwed a cabinet run into, shifts a wire chase, and loads a solar mount from an angle it was never designed to see. Repairing the panel without addressing the build behind it produces a van that looks correct and rattles apart over the next ten thousand miles of dirt road.
So the build gets inspected before anything gets quoted. Panels come off, the framing and the attachment method get examined, and the wire runs get traced. This is not an assessment of your builder taste. It is the only way to know how many hours the repair takes, because a cabinet run bonded and through bolted into the ribs comes apart differently than one anchored with self tappers into sheet metal.
Working on someone else build, including your own
Conversion quality across this space ranges from genuinely excellent to actively dangerous, and most rigs contain examples of both in different corners. That is not a criticism of the industry. It reflects a category where a lot of the work is done by small shops and by owners, both of whom learn as they go, and where nothing forces a common standard. It does mean an inspection is worth more on a converted vehicle than on a factory one, where at least you already know what is behind the panel.
What we find most often: undersized wire for the run length, a lithium bank without an appropriate disconnect or fusing at the battery, solar mounts anchored into the skin rather than into structure, cabinetry attached with fasteners that will not survive vibration, and roof penetrations sealed with a product that has a two year life on a roof that sees full sun. None of that means a build is bad. It means those are the things to check before quoting a repair that will disturb any of it.
What that changes in practice is that you get an honest scope instead of a low number that grows. If your solar mount has to come off to repair a roof rail and the mount was never structurally attached, the repair includes doing that properly or it includes putting it back the way it was, and those are two different quotes. You should be the one choosing between them, with the information in hand.
Electrical, solar, and storage built for a moving vehicle
The most common failure pattern in van electrical is not a component fault, it is a connection that vibrated apart. A residential grade crimp, a terminal without strain relief, a run of cable unsupported across a span, or a bus bar mounted to a panel that flexes: all of them work perfectly in a driveway and fail four hundred miles into a washboard road, sometimes as an open circuit and occasionally as something considerably worse.
So systems here get built to vibration standards: proper lugs and crimps, strain relief and abrasion protection wherever a run passes through structure, cable supported at intervals, fusing sized to conductor and located at the source, and disconnects that are reachable rather than theoretical. Lithium installations get appropriate protection and a temperature aware charging setup, because a bank that charges below freezing in a vehicle that goes to altitude in winter is a bank with a short life.
Solar and inverter work follows the same logic. Panel mounts get anchored into structure rather than skin, penetrations get sealed with a system rated for the roof, and DC runs get sized for actual length rather than nominal. Diagnostics run at $285 per hour with a one hour minimum credited against an authorized repair, which on an intermittent electrical fault in a converted vehicle is usually the most valuable hour anyone spends on the rig.
Body and structural work on the same vehicle happens in the same building, which means a repaired panel and the systems mounted to it get reconciled rather than handed between two shops with different assumptions about who owns the interface. That interface is where most conversion repairs go wrong, because each side reasonably assumes the other dealt with it. Interior remodeling, cabinetry, and finish work happen here too, so a wall opened for structural access gets closed properly rather than left for you to sort out later.
High tops, racks, and what they do to a body repair
A fiberglass high top is a bonded structure grafted onto a steel body, and the joint between them is where movement concentrates. Impact anywhere near it, or years of flex, tends to show as a crack propagating along the bond line rather than as damage where the contact occurred. Repairing the visible crack without addressing the joint is temporary by definition. A lasting result means treating it as a bonded composite repair with a structural joint underneath rather than as a body panel with a crack in it.
Roof racks and awnings complicate this further because they load the roof in ways the factory never contemplated. A rack anchored into the roof ribs distributes load acceptably. A rack anchored into the panel between the ribs concentrates it, and over time that shows up as oil canning, cracked sealant at the fasteners, and eventually water. When a body repair touches a rack mount, the mount itself gets evaluated rather than simply reinstalled.
Expedition rigs on commercial chassis bring a third factor, which is that the habitat and the chassis often move independently by design. Understanding whether a mounting system is intended to flex, and how much, is essential before repairing anything at that interface. Bay clearance here handles a 45-foot coach, so a tall expedition build with a rack and an awning fits without anyone improvising. Guessing at that flex allowance is how a habitat mount gets rebuilt rigid and then cracks the body it was meant to protect.
What you get here
What usually goes wrong elsewhere
- Aftermarket build quality varies wildly and shops will not touch prior work
- House systems and vehicle systems get treated as separate problems
- Roof racks, solar, and high tops complicate any body repair
How we handle it
- Inspect the prior build before quoting, because what is behind the panel drives the hours
- Body work and house systems handled by the same shop
- Solar, lithium, and inverter systems rebuilt to automotive vibration standards
Relevant services
Vehicles you likely run
Frequently Asked Questions
Will you work on a van that a previous shop built?
Yes, and that is most of what comes through this side of the shop. The build gets inspected before quoting, because the attachment method behind the panels determines the hours. You get told plainly what was found, including anything unsafe, and then you decide whether the repair restores what was there or corrects it. Both are legitimate choices.
Can you repair a fiberglass high top?
Yes. High top repair is essentially bonded composite work, and the important part is treating the joint between the top and the steel body rather than only the visible crack. That joint is where movement concentrates, so a crack that reappears in the same place after a previous repair is almost always a joint that was never addressed.
Do you handle solar and lithium system work?
Yes, including panel mounting into structure, DC runs sized for actual length, proper fusing and disconnects, inverter installation, and temperature aware lithium charging setups. The standard applied is automotive vibration rather than residential, since the most common failure in a converted van is a connection that came apart on a rough road rather than a component that failed.
My electrical problem is intermittent. Can you find it?
That is what the diagnostic hour is for. Diagnostics run $285 per hour with a one hour minimum, credited against an authorized repair. Intermittent faults in converted vehicles are usually mechanical in origin: a connection under vibration, a chafed run passing through structure, or a ground that is adequate cold and marginal warm. Finding it is a process rather than a guess.
Is my conversion covered on a standard van policy?
Often not fully, and it is worth confirming before a loss. A build that cost more than the vehicle will not appear in standard valuation data, so a total loss offer drawn from it will be low. Ask your agent about agreed value and about whether the conversion is scheduled, and keep build invoices and photographs where you can produce them quickly.