The box van did not start out subtle. It started out as a bright yellow work truck, the kind of yellow you can spot three parking lots away. That is great when you are a delivery fleet. It is the opposite of what you want when the truck is your camper.
So we resprayed it. Full matte graphite, front to back. Here is why we did it, what changed, and what we learned along the way.
Why stealth matters in the first place
A camper that looks like a camper attracts attention, and attention is the last thing you want in three common situations.
First, city overnights. When you park on a street for the night, the goal is to look like a work truck somebody left until morning. A bright yellow box with camper giveaways gets noticed. A matte graphite box does not.
Second, trailhead lots. We leave the van at trailheads for hours at a time, sometimes overnight for a snowboarding morning at Mt. Hood. A rig that blends in with the contractor trucks is a rig people walk past.
Third, and this is the big one, the gear inside. This build has a full kitchen, a wall-mounted TV, and a control panel running the systems. Nobody walking by needs to know that. A plain dark box tells the world nothing, and nothing is exactly the message we want to send.
What actually changed on the outside
The color is the headline, but stealth is a bunch of small decisions stacked together.
We deleted the badges. Chrome lettering and logos catch light and catch eyes, so they came off before paint. Clean panels read as anonymous.
We murdered out the trim. Anything that was bright or chrome went dark to match the body. When every surface sits in the same low-sheen graphite, the whole truck reads as one quiet shape instead of a collection of shiny parts.
We added four round LED pods across the cab-over face. That sounds like it works against stealth, and lit up at a campsite it does. But off, four black round pods on a dark cab-over just look like equipment. On, they throw real light for backing into a dark site or setting up under the Iron Man 4x4 awning after sunset.
The one thing we kept loud is the sasquatch-on-a-bike decal. Every stealth rig gets one personality pass. That is ours.
What a respray involves, practically
If you are considering one, here is the honest shape of the job.
Prep is most of the work. Every badge, handle, light, and piece of trim either comes off or gets masked. On a box van that is a lot of square footage and a lot of edges, and the masking around the box seams takes longer than you think.
The old finish has to be scuffed and cleaned so the new paint has something to grip. Skip this and the coating peels at the first pressure wash.
Matte behaves differently than gloss. It hides small panel imperfections well, which is a gift on a working box body. But it shows anything oily, so you wash it with the right soap and you never wax it. Wax is how you accidentally buy a semi-gloss truck.
And a box van is big. Whatever time you budget for a regular van, add more. The flat sides go fast but there are a lot of them.
Did it work?
Someone on Instagram commented "Looks so Stealth!!" on the finished truck. That was the entire goal, stated back to us in three words. The van that used to announce itself from down the block now disappears into a row of work trucks, and everything we built inside stays our business.
Want to see the before and after shots? Follow along at @simmvandesign.
The builds go up on Instagram first.
Follow along for shop progress, trip logs, and the occasional sasquatch sighting.
Follow @simmvandesign