Wabi-sabi Overland

Among other things, I’m happy to report that I finished the pop-top cloth sewing and installation last week. Sewing the cloth was a good bit of work, but I learned a lot, and I’m happy with how it turned out. Having the cloth finished makes the interior feet a lot larger.  There is 7’3” standing height in the back, and at 6’2” tall, I can stand as far forward as the middle of the habitat.  With the top down, you can comfortably sit and the pop top cloth bunches up nicely with straps along the top of the wall and doesn’t get in the way of sitting.

The Sailrite sewing machine that I used was great, and I like the Top Notch 9 cloth that I selected.  In the end, I decided to use 10mm molded zippers for the window closures and fine no-see-um mesh for the screens.  I cut all of the cloth with a DIY hot knife (I made a blade tip for a normal soldering iron), so the cut edges of the cloth are fused and won’t unravel.

I attached the cloth to the aluminum angles that I previously installed on the camper and roof using marine grade hook and loop.  I then added (with Yvonne’s help on the inside) small stainless steel bolts every ~10 inches as a secondary attachment.

With the weight of the finished roof assembly, the gas struts feel really nice and have a very solid feel when the roof is up, but the force to close the roof is reasonable.

The finished pop top cloth with hook and loop, zippers, and screens only weighs 4.7 lbs. Not too bad.

I’ve been super busy working in the shop on the new interior and getting everything ready for more test trips next month. I’ve made a lot of progress lately; here are some captioned photo collages from the last month or so.

It’s all still in-work, but it’s really satisfying to have the electrical system finished now, and I’m quite happy with the size and layout of the kitchen cabinet. Overall, recent progress has been good, and I still think that the weight is tracking close to my planned limits, but I won’t know for sure on the weight for a bit longer. Keep your fingers crossed.

The kitchen cabinet is compact and includes:

-50L Dometic front load refrigerator
-Sink with hand pump faucet
-Graywater system
-Slide out Trelino separating toilet
-Autoterm diesel heater
-Travel Buddy 12V oven
-Slide out storage bag
-Switch/breaker panel
-Slide out trash can
-Fire extinguisher
-Victron battery monitor
-120VAC and USB sockets

Since our latest test trip, I’ve been looking forward to finishing our pop-top roof. Yvonne and I considered both wedge and vertical tops, and we decided that a simple front-hinge wedge roof would be practical and lightweight for us. 

When looking at available hinges, I didn’t find any hinge options that were quite what I wanted, so I decided to make my own custom hinges that integrated well with our forward wall. I’ve used CAD for 30 years, but I decided that it would be fun to design the hinges with pencil and paper. Although a bit less efficient, drafting by hand just feels more creative to me compared to computer work.

I designed the hinges like clevis/tang aircraft pivot joints. I turned the stainless pins and bronze bushings on my lathe, and I machined the hinges from 1” thick aluminum plate. It took me some time to machine all of the hinge parts, but they turned out well and they only weigh 0.44 lb each.

I decided to use gas struts for the roof lift, and I made a spreadsheet to calculate the optimal strut size, strut force rating, and mount positions using trigonometry.  In addition to roof weight, I also considered wind aerodynamic loading, and the ergonomics of opening and closing the roof.  I know the spreadsheet probably seems like overkill, but it really helped me dial in the strut mounting locations, if the struts were slanted forward or back, and pick the right gas struts.  The roof has 32.5 inches of lift at the back, and that gives 7’3″ of ceiling height. The load to pull the roof closed feels appropriate.

It’s now time for the pop top cloth. 

P.s. As you can see, Dan Grec’s jeep is here visiting while he is getting ready for his next round of upgrades.

We just got back from a nice camping test trip in the jeep camper. The habitat interior is only partially installed, and I still have a lot of habitat systems work to do, but we took a few days for a desert camping trip to meet up with family. It was a good time. Overall, the vehicle ran great and we averaged 19 mpg even with a lot of hills, so I’m pretty happy with that.

It was nice to test out all of my recent additions to the habitat, and the internal layout is getting pretty comfortable. Now that there is better internal habitat storage to keep things organized, it felt a lot less like car camping, so that was a big improvement. I look forward to getting the heater and refrigerator installed soon, but I think the next phase will probably be fabricating and installing the pop-top mechanism and installing the solar panels.

The new insulated carbon fiber roof was a nice upgrade, and with two windows open a little at night, there wasn’t any condensation, but the windows had to be open a little more than I would ideally like for cold weather, so I have a forced ventilation/heater idea that I want to try out.

Overall, things are much improved from our last trip, but I feel like some things still need work/iteration; like the new Hest Dually folding mattress wasn’t as comfortable as we were hoping. We liked the Mattress Insider Gel Foam Mattress + Froli Stars combination that we used in our Unimog habitat, but that combination doesn’t really work with this convertible bed/dinette. We might just need a totally different mattress, but first, I think I’ll try an under-mattress cushion under Hest mattress.

After much debate, I made a new carbon-fiber/foam composite sandwich roof for our camper. The original honeycomb cored fiberglass roof with aluminum outer frame that I made in the spring was fine, and it worked well, but I wanted to see if I could reduce the roof weight and simultaneously increase thermal insulation. The roof is a large percentage of the camper surface area, so increasing the roof thermal R-value is a good way to increase the overall camper cold weather comfort.

I just finished the roof, and it turned out 28.2% lighter than the original roof and the R-value is now around R4.5. It was a lot of fabrication time, but I think it will be worth it when traveling and camping in colder locations/seasons.

I made the new roof using two types of epoxy resin, three types of carbon fiber, and Divinycell foam core. For those that are interested, the following are photos that I labeled for each of the major fabrication steps.

I’ve been regrouping a bit lately and getting ready to start our camper interior build. I decided to give myself some extra time at this phase of the project to research new products and not just repeat everything that I previously did on our Unimog built 5-6 years ago. There are a lot of nice new products that have come out in the last few years.

I’m still debating what cooking setup that we want in our tiny camper kitchen: induction, alcohol stove, propane/butane, microwave, Travel Buddy or Road Chef 12V oven…? We used an alcohol stove in our Unimog and liked it, but they are being phased out.

Yvonne and I have taken our camper on a few short trips, and it has helped me a lot with planning the interior build. I had a crude/temporary bed platform installed for this summer, so I just removed that, and the habitat is now totally empty again.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the water system, estimating the habit interior weight, sizing the power system, and comparing interior material options (likely carbon fiber per my original plan). I have just started ordering appliances and power system parts. I got a Dometic 55L front-load refrigerator, a Victron charge controller, Renogy solar panels, and a Renogy battery monitor.

I’ve also been considering making a new habitat roof. The current honeycomb core fiberglass roof is totally functional and nice, but I could save some weight, have a lower center of mass, and increase roof insulation with a carbon fiber roof with foam core. Maybe more on that later.

We are back from @overlandexpo PNW, and it was a really nice trip. It was great to meet many of you, and the event seemed a lot more chill/calmer than the Flagstaff Expo. Yvonne and I put 2,125 miles on our jeep (camper #1) and we caravanned up to the event with @theroadchoseme (camper #2), so in total, the two campers totaled something like 4,000 miles on the trip without any significant problems. It was a good first big test. 

Now that we are back home, it’s time to start thinking about laying out the interior of Yvonne and my habit. It should be a fun summer/fall project.  It was nice to sleep in the camper all last week with nearly nothing in the habit. It helped us get a feel for the volume and make some decisions about the layout and systems that we want. I think we will try to keep it simple and light weight.

Also, after spring 7 days a week in the shop over the last 10 months setting up the shop and building the two campers, it was really great to be outside and get some fresh air and sunshine.  Traveling and getting outside is what this is all about after all, so it was motivating to hit the road for a while.

Despite the fact that the camper is a box and not exactly aerodynamic, we were actually fairly pleased with our mileage. We averaged 18.2 mpg over the entire trip and we got more like 20.4 mpg on tanks were we predominantly drove 55 mph. So, the vehicle obviously likes driving slower (no surprise there). Even at +65 mph with a headwind, 18.2 mpg as an average seemed acceptable.

Well, the two jeep campers have been road tested and packed. We will be hitting the road soon with @theroadchoseme. See you at @overlandexpo PNW! If you are there, come find us and say hi.

This is a fun artsy long exposure photo that Yvonne (@quiltingjetgirl), Dan (@theroadchoseme), and I had a good time collaborating on creating Sunday night. Both habitats are empty on the inside, but overall, they look really great right now.

Initial road testing has gone well, and Yvonne and my vehicle is ready to hit road. The integration of my second camper onto Dan’s jeep went great, and his vehicle is also now ready to head out. We plan to have both vehicles at @overlandexpo PNW next week. If you are there, come find us and say hi. Dan’s vehicle (camper number-2) will likely be on display in his booth, and our vehicle (camper number-1) will likely be in one of the camping areas.

During my whole design and build process, I really meant to post more details along the way, but I got busy. While Dan has been here, he/we shot a lot of videos of us installing the camper on his vehicle. Dan plans to release several videos on his YouTube channel using those videos and photographs that I took during the build, so go check those out over the coming weeks. He already posted one video of us removing the back half of his jeep when it arrived here.

I hope to see you at Expo!

My second camper habitat is now fit checked on Dan Grec’s @theroadchoseme diesel Rubicon. The campers are identical, but Dan’s jeep and Yvonne and my jeep are different trim packages and engine/fuel types, so the two vehicles will look a bit different when finished.

We will be starting the habitat mount process later today.

We also have Dan’s jeep leveled on jack stands right now, and we temporarily mounted my old small wheels/tires on his jeep to lower it a little during the camper assembly, so the stance of Dan’s vehicle looks a little odd right now.

It will be interesting to get the habitat mounted, take the vehicle off of jack stands, and roll the gantry crane out of the way, so we can get a good first look at both vehicles together.