RVTravel Review: A Closer Look at the Pleasure-Way REKON

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following review was written by Tony Barthel for the Aug. 26 edition of the RVTravel newsletter. It is reprinted by permission. See the review at RVTravel.com.

Today’s RV review is of the Pleasure-Way REKON 4X4 Class B motorhome. For whatever reason, I like all of these van build videos and have watched more than my share. Perhaps it’s because I still hold a desire to do a cargo trailer—or perhaps I just like seeing people’s creativity. Who knows?

But one of the things that absolutely stands out is how differently commercially built vans feel from those created by individuals. The ones that seem to come out of most companies have that attempt to be little teeny homes with sticker board that looks like nice wood and features that executives choose but no overlander would even consider. So it was very, very refreshing to look at the REKON by Pleasure-Way. This is a very, very realistic van that comes from a company and seems to balance what the home-built vans feature with a much more professional degree of build quality.

What is the Pleasure-Way REKON

The Pleasure-Way REKON is a four-wheel-drive Class B motorhome (van) based on the 4X4 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter platform. Pleasure-Way has done almost no structural modifications to the exterior of this van, leaving the engineering of Mercedes-Benz intact.

Where this really comes through is underneath, where there are no water tanks, propane tanks nor anything else that wasn’t there when the van left the Mercedes factory. Yet, surprisingly, there is a full 40-gallon fresh water tank aboard this van. That’s significantly more than many other Class B RVs have. How did they do it?

No freezing here

Almost everything in the Pleasure-Way REKON is built into the body envelope of the van. The 40-gallon fresh water tank is actually the floor of the rear cargo area of the van. Being inside the vehicle means that freezing isn’t really an issue — if you’re warm, so’s the water.

This vehicle also has no gray tank, essentially. Instead there are two five-gallon Jerry cans in the back. When you are going to create gray water, you simply take one out and hook it to a drain on the outside of the van.

This is not unlike the Four Wheel Campers Hawk pop-up camper that I borrowed for 10 days. I thought this system really worked well. Essentially, when you fill a container, if you’re in a place where you can just dump it onto the ground, yippee. If you’re near a place where you can empty the gray tank down a drain, you’re set.

If not, there are two of these jugs in the van so you can fill one and then replace it with the empty one. While I’m sure all the diesel pusher owners reading this are aghast at this idea, as someone who appreciates all sorts of rigs, I really like this solution.

The last type of water you’ll be generating is the kind of water that comes after the burrito express dinner kicks in the next morning. The Pleasure-Way REKON features a cartridge toilet, which I also thought to be really convenient when I used one in the camper. In fact, I bought one and shared my feelings about it.

Office space in the Pleasure-Way REKON

The way this van is configured, the entire rear of the van is a bed, but not one that’s always a bed.

There are two mattresses that fold down from the either side of the van to form a single 70” X 72” bed. Or you can just use one side, if that’s all you need.

Since there is a fold-down platform on either side, you can use the one on the road side as a desk or dining table. This really is an elegant solution because the bed platform is also the dining table or a work surface.

On the subject of work surfaces, there’s also a flip-down desk behind the driver’s seat. You can simply swivel the seat around and now you have an office.

Oh, yeah. Don’t do this while you’re driving, of course.

A Lagun table also can be fitted between the driver and passenger seats when they’re flipped around. So there really are a lot of flexible sitting and working and eating options.

Let’s eat

Speaking of eating, the provisions for meal prep are there, of course. You’ll honestly find prep space quite lacking unless you bring along some sort of folding table. But if you do, you can use the portable induction cooktop as your stove. You can also use that bed table thingamabob.

To keep the food cold, there’s a Truma 12-volt cooler.

Honestly, storage of food isn’t the strong suit of this rig — but there is storage.

Storage in the Pleasure-Way REKON

The entire rear of this van is a garage, essentially. When the bed platforms are flipped up against the wall, you’ll find “L” track racks all over the place. You could very easily use these to secure bikes, surf boards or whatever.

Even with the beds folded to be, well, beds, there’s still a pretty decent amount of cargo space underneath this platform. I also like that Pleasure-Way uses horizontal bracing for the bed — it’s really solid.

If you do want hanging clothing space, essentially, the only hanging clothes space in the Pleasure-Way REKON is in the wet bath. But the advantage of this is that, if you have wet suits or ski clothes or even just regular old-fashioned wet clothing, you can hang that in the shower and it can just drip dry.

There are also shelves you can put in here, so you could put muddy shoes or whatever on those shelves. So the shower is really a double-duty thing.

Oh, and the toilet’s in here, so it’s also a wet bath. So, triple duty.

Department of power and water

I mentioned the large fresh water tank in the Pleasure-Way REKON. There’s actually hot water on this rig which is provided by a Truma AquaGo tankless water heater. The furnace that keeps the interior toasty is also from Truma in the form of a VarioHeat furnace.

As for power, there’s plenty of that. The REKON is equipped with a 400 amp-hour lithium battery system. There are 400 watts of solar on the roof, and power comes from a 2,000-watt pure sine wave inverter.

In summary

There’s a lot I really like about this vehicle. It just feels like a well-done homemade van build in a good way. I also like that the refrigerator and induction cooktop are just items you can replace easily if need be, and even take out of the van to use elsewhere.

Cargo carrying flexibility is another strong suit of this vehicle. There’s actually enough capacity to haul stuff with 1,650 pounds of cargo carrying capacity.

Overall this is a really well-done design that’s very, very flexible and offers the features and specs that someone who truly will use this in an overlanding situation would likely appreciate.

Source: https://rvbusiness.com/rvtravel-review-a-closer-look-at-the-pleasure-way-rekon/