Project Choose Your Own Adventure

[ScottyB]

devoted a full 18-20 hrs to construction this weekend.  i think i still have metal filings in my teeth.



sharpie traced and jigsaw cut


this is where it got wild.  i am running a bead of Loctite PL Marine sealant adhesive under the perimeter of every panel to assist in placement and water tightness, and as things are assembled, the edge trim is what essentially holds all the panels on.  so what that means is you can't assemble it one panel at a time, you have to hit the whole camper at once in a rush (before the Loctite dries) and then cinch down the edge trim and roof trim since its all shared.  that was a pretty intense hour of heaving sheetmetal, sweating, stressing alignments and i have no idea how it would be possible just doing it myself.  thanks wife!


as of last night we have the doors on as well as the roof vent, solar panel, and panel "gland" entry on the roof. the edge trim is easily bendable by hand, thankfully.


hatch got put together too!  i still need to drill and mount the latches but i can't do that until we can overhead press this 80 pound thing into its hinge.  its incredibly awkward and requires 2 people so i'm waiting on a buddy to assist since its more than my wife can help with.  the plate lights are built into the mounts, they're pretty trick and i think originally intended for motorcycles.

[Steve85]

Yes! I've been waiting for the orange! Looks great man, love it.

[JPolen01]

The orange looks fantastic

[.RJ]

SCOTTY KEEP GOING

[D_Eclipse9916]

Best build the club has seen!

[Sully]

Best build the club has seen!

Will probably provide the most (relaxed) enjoyment also

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[ScottyB]

thanks guys.

Best build the club has seen!

you crazy.  

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got the hatch finished, brake light mounted and up it got heaved onto the camper today with help from a buddy.  immediately one of the speaker boxes broke off in hilarious fashion because that inside hatch wall covering material is garbage....wish i never used it but oh well.  brief moment of panic when the hatch then wouldn't close.  found out my hinge screws were interfering with a little bit of the cedar bulkhead at the top, hogged it out with a dremel bit and its better now.  need to massage the trim a bit to seal more evenly but i think i can just pop it with a deadblow in a few places and manage.  i hate the hatch engineering, that has taken at least 3 years off my life.

mounted the entry conduit for all the wiring on the front.  after adding the 12VAC powerstrip for my wife's APAP machine i found out the powerstrip cord is massive.  wouldn't fit in my 3/4" conduit with all the other wires that run to the electrical box so i had to get creative and build "outward" from the surface to make room and give me a place to mount a second 90 degree elbow just for the AC cord.  fiddling around in Home Despot i found a sweet little junction box that worked a treat.

caulked a bunch of trim.  i may be an artist by trade but caulk is not my medium.  total shit job but its a 10 footer.

caught off guard with a pretty important step i neglected - insurance.  thought we were good to go with Progressive weeks ago, before i pulled the trigger on a policy online today i called just to confirm with a human and sure enough "yeah our online system can't account for "home-built", in GA we can't do that, sorry".  so i've buried a couple hours today calling all over for someone that will insure it for an agreed value.  we'll most likely have to move both our cars to a new policy for them to cover the camper under a rider.  home built stuff just doesn't sound like a winning play to them which i can't blame.  might work out better that way...allstate's been kind of shitty with our premiums these days.

i'm covered in cuts, bruises, bites, my skin is tainted white with marine sealant and i have metal shavings in all my shoes.  there are drill bits all over the floor and i've dragged about 8 feet of masking tape into my house on my clothes by accident.  my shoulders are knotted and my hands are sore.  lets do it again tomorrow!

Tuesday:

• mount hatch latches
  mount fenders
  mount tongue box
  mount "porch" lights on side
  finish undercoating the bottom of the chassis
  check over gaps/caulking/trim for watertightness
  

Dave sent me this.  can't wait to put it on the hatch.  i love the Swansonisms and its exactly what this mess has been about.  thanks man.

[ScottyB]

almost there.  mounting fenders this afternoon and then running a check on all the sealant caulk.  plan is to sleep in it tonight for the first time out in the driveway.

poured time into the hatch latches and finishing all the wiring last night to the tongue box.  my fingers are killing me.  pulling wires through conduit is like wrestling an anaconda.  1:30AM, held my breath when i connected the fuse panel and started flipping switches.  everything lit up.  i shed real tearz.

full air brake mode


conduit/junction box setup for the 2 runs of cables i had to split up.  had to whip out my big caulk for this 


galley starting to get stocked up


about to carve up the foam mattress a bit to fit the headboard curve and then the interior's done.  had to get a little IKEA safety board to keep my son from rolling out and kneecapping us in our sleep if he lands on us



last piece of the lights puzzle.  these beast mode LED "porch lights" throw some good light.

 
can't stop won't stop.  maiden voyage tomorrow, witness me brothers

[Senor_Taylor]

I wish you all the best and I hope things hold together well. Keep us posted! Don't roll away!

[JPolen01]

It looks so good!! You are the man for such good updates.

[ScottyB]

thanks boys.  finished at the stroke of midnight last night.  had a beer and stared at it a bit from the driveway on a perfectly still fall night.  worth it just for the excitement from the kiddo this morning.

anyway, these things are never "finished", there will be lots of things i upgrade over time like racks and awnings, but i'm ready to take a break and just pull it around the mountains for a while.





2 excited campers


better pics after the trip and i'm sure lots of tales of stuff happening, hopefully mostly good!

[.RJ]

looks amazing scotty - hope you're rewarded for your perserverence here - now go peep some leafs from a trout stream!

[JPolen01]

The raw aluminum looks great with the orange.

[Apoc]

Said this on the 'gram, but I love that orange. National park stamps, in the same orange, would look awesome on the aluminum rear hatch. I bet you could whittle them out of soft wood and then you also have a hand-me-down for your kid. I have faith in you.

What's the kitchen look like from a few step away? What kind of fuel and fuel storage are you running?

[Jake]

Oh god I love this and I'm so excited to hear how it does on your first outing!

Nice work with your caulk, btw. I usually have to go to other websites for that sort of thing.

[ScottyB]

thanks again guys.  the support made and still makes an honest difference.

made it back in one piece.  pulled it about 350 total miles.  had a great time, amazing weather except for some rain packing up, and it was pretty much everything we hoped.  i did a lot of peeking in the rearview the whole time making sure i was really seeing what i was seeing.  after so long i thought maybe i didn't have it in me to bring it all together.  this was a stupidly ambitious project but in the end i wouldn't trade the late nights, anxiety, or frustrations.  i feel like i proved a lot of things to myself that i wasn't sure i was cut out to do.

when Jen and i decided on making this fall break a camping trip deadline we were too far behind the ball on reservations to actually find any openings at our favorite campgrounds.  october is the busiest month in the entire calendar year for that kind of thing so we should have known better and learned our lesson.  got to our 1st choice campground in the N. GA mountains at about 5pm and it was packed solid.  had to go straight to plan B, heck i figured maybe plan C.  thankfully i had a really good knowledge of the area from driving up there for fun back when i lived in ATL so we made a 45 min detour NW to the Cooper Creek WMA (wildlife management area) to try to find a spot in that campground.  had to drive some absolutely relentless curvy roads but the 'runner took it in stride.  pulled into the campground near dark and grabbed the last spot!  they had just rebuilt our site and laid down some really course gravel.  if we had tried to tent camp it like normal, we never could have made it work.  instead we could just park and start cooking dinner...perfect.

leaving Thursday afternoon, first time out of the driveway in like 3 years.  go figure we finished building a big orange camper right before Halloween.  i've never towed anything long distance before.  pretty nervous and it took a while to get used to the bumps and noises from the extra weight.


making our way to campground plan B.  couple bouncy miles on forest service roads to get to our spot.  i've never seen a utility trailer ride nice, so i expected it to bounce around a bit but nothing inside shifted or broke despite the unplanned shaker test.  i'm sure the car tires helped the ride too.


next morning, slept great.  4 souls fit inside pretty handily - me+wife on the queen size foam mattress, boy up on the loft and pupper slept next to my leg (he wanted his nose next to the screen bc sniffs and such).  i really should have grabbed some pics but just forgot.  sounds like a disaster, i know,  but it was fine for us and we slept hard.  with the fan on low speed it still moved a lot of air and the first night i had a pretty cold arm from the 50 degree air coming through the screen right on it.  otherwise the insulation did its job and we stayed warm with nothing more than a comforter.  looking to install a resistor later on the fan motor to slow it down a bit.


solar panel worked great, and it actually turned out to be another unplanned test.  this campground had NO electrical hookup which is rare and i didn't see anything mentioned about it beforehand.  we ran power 100% off the sun and thankfully everything worked great.  we were able to charge about 1 to 1.5 amps throughout the day with heavy tree cover.  usually starting the morning at 12 to 12.5A and ending the day at 13.5.  our LED lights were super efficient and the fan barely made a dent.  we typically ran the stereo and reading lights inside too.  without the panel i'm not sure we would have made it 3 nights, might have been a seriously close call.  i'm not sure how much power my wife's APAP machine will pull, we didn't try it yet due to her allergies on the trip making breathing with a mask a no-go.

play "find the pumpkin"


dog fort to red lobster, site secure from bad bois and tree rats


crap everywhere, signs of a good time though.  steak slab gettin that flame broil action


galley setup kinda in action.  propane 2 burner for breakfast/sides.  stows in the lower left cabinet.  the top of the Yeti actually makes a great additional work surface.  plan is to eventually add side tables to the exterior of the camper for prep and wash stations.  water jugs travel next to the cabinet down low but we keep them on the picnic tables for actual use.  i'm glad i added a drain in that compartment - one jug had a leaky spigot that soaked the floor but most drained out.


saturday we headed up a forest service road (Sea Creek) in search of remote high altitude wild trout.  2 stream crossings, wish i had pics but we were too anxious to stop and get a shot.  deepest was about up to the hubs (go to 14:10 to see from another person's video from the same trail).  the pic looks super tame but we did hit a few sections that were pretty ragged and required 4WD Low + ATRAC and it was just effortless.  didn't bother engaging the locking diff.  can't wait to actually make it work hard one of these days.


worth it.  he went back to fight another day.


heading back home in the rain.  no major leaks.  i need to address some sealant in a few places on the hatch but thankfully those were a couple drops being a nuisance and not full on seal failure.  you can see the license plate lights don't work with the lights on.  probably some stupid wire i crossed, i'll fix it over the winter.



what its all about.  gear drying out, sun shining, sound of the river in the background and a poppin fire to cook dinner on.


2020 upgrades:

• roof rack
  
• ARB awning on at least one side (that would have helped SO MUCH in the rain)
  
• fab/install side tables next to galley
  
• slow down the roof fan
  
• pretty-up the sides of the hatch frame
  
• fix the plate lights
  
• do some final detail work on the galley counter 
  

that's about it.  it'll get a wash and then backed into the corner of the garage for a while so i can park all my cars in there again and enjoy not breathing sawdust for a while.

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What's the kitchen look like from a few step away? What kind of fuel and fuel storage are you running?

hope that pic above helps. fuel is just the ubiquitous green coleman propane canister and one lasts a long time. we carry 2 anyway and they store in the bottom cabinet with the stove. the rest of our stuff is cooked over fire and we bring a fire grate setup for that which stays out during our stay but then travels in the back of the 4runner.

[Senor_Taylor]

Amazing stuff! Really happy to see this

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[JPolen01]

Glad the maiden voyage went well! Your son looks ecstatic - that's awesome.

[Deceus]

Oh wow this really came together. Super happy for you man, nothing beats seeing your own hardwork and sweat come together to make something awesome.

[Jake]

This is so cool. Glad the first trip went well! Any idea how much the whole teardrop weighs? I'm sure the Xterra would have pulled it fine, but there is probably some nice peace of mind pulling it behind a brand-new, slightly more capable tow vehicle. And glad to hear the 4Runner went where you needed to go, not like that would be a huge concern 99% of the time. What a great setup!