Recent content by CoyoteThistle

Few updates and upgrades to report on... The last trip reminded me of the need to do a better seal between the slide-up and main camper. The existing setup with bulb seals (the bulb meets the black lip below when the slide-up is all the way up) I had several spots where the seal was not at all...

EDIT: Photos not showing up for me. Boy do I love Photobucket :cautious: Been a while since I updated anything, but there has been some work on the camper and, actually, some camping! Let's see, got back from our desert trip and were soon immersed, like most of us, into a world ruled by COVID...

Continued great work! Looks amazing. Hope you get it out on its maiden voyage soon!

Thanks man, glad you enjoyed it! I'd seen the Land Rover one, but not the first one. I like what he did for the lifting mechanism - anything that avoids electric actuators is smart. Good luck with you build, hope you start a thread on it and share the fun!

One inch on all the walls and cabinets and roof. Plenty strong but not much insulation. Bed platform is about 1.75" thick. I think the 1" would have worked for the bed too, but I didn't want a flexy bed so I ordered one thicker panel for that.

Very similar, got it from a place called Carbon Core. The faces are thin plywood and I did a layer of glass over the exposed outside panels.

Here's our double pop-up. Table even folds! Panels slide out to make queen size bed. Honeycomb core composite construction, 25 gal water, 200Ah DIY Lithium, fridge/freezer, potty, shower, heater, hot water, etc. Dry weight is about 850lbs. I eventually added actuators to lift the slide...

Been testing my new mounting anchor points for the rear. On the old truck, I had turnbuckles going to anchor points on the bumper. I never liked this much since the Frontier bumper, while steel, really isn't that stout. So, here's what I came up with: As usual, I'm using aluminum. It's 1/4"...

Hadn't seen this guy, I'll have to check him out!

IIRC, I never could find exactly what the "Lithium setting" on the REDARC meant exactly in terms of charging profile. But, if you are seeing the charge rate drop to zero when the battery gets to 14.x volts, that's a good sign. The next good sign would be to watch the battery voltage after it...

For those of us with real small campers, 1500BTU sounds about right. There are lots of BTU vs. room size calculators out there (and I'm no expert!) but in playing around, it seems likely you could get at least a 20 degree F temp drop from this unit in a small area, especially if it's nighttime...

I'm not personally aware of real long-term Lithium use in the camper or boat world, but this guy is getting 432Ah from his 400Ah rated pack after 772 full battery cycles (scroll to the bottom of the page). I think the best lessons of Lithium longevity comes from the electric car world. Those...

That is nice that the drop-ins have the temp protection built in. I'm with Java though, those temps seem a bit low (cell manufacturers I've seen all say 32F and 0F for stop charge and discharge respectively). Probably a reason though. Powering the heaters with the Lithium battery themselves...

That seems like a tough call. Dealing with green bottles sucks, but worrying all winter about your $$ battery being ruined might be rough. Maybe it depends on your usage. If you aren't using the camper in the cold months, you could design it so you just pull the batteries, put them in a closet...

Yeah, I'm with you. Truly a special place. Inspired by that trip, I just read Craig Childs "House of Rain", which tracks the history of Chaco civilization and the Anasazi more broadly. Good read.