Recent content by MHead

And the usual travel log Jeep goes home...

Kitchen Lighting Improvement For nighttime operation the kitchen has always been a little dark. I used simple lanterns but these gave shadowed light and consumed batteries. The time has come for improvement. There now exist simple inexpensive 12V LED strings. They are cheap and available...

Travel Log Here are a couple of pictures in the way of a travel log. These from Canyonlands area of Southeast Utah. Sunset on Beef Basin Colorado river from Potash road

Shower Enclosure I've added a shower enclosure using the same fabric and fiberglass pole technique. A lot of what makes a shower pleasant is preventing the gentle air motions always present outdoors from evaporating the shower water. Other benefits are that the enclosure provides a changing...

Navigation Here are navigation features just to give some ideas... Long distance navigation depends on the usual GPS navigation. I have a Garmin Streetpilot 7200 which I really love. https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=6389#sp7200 It's been discontinued but I really like the large...

Hmmm.. guess I haven't put up any info about the actual kitchen cargo area. Seems like I did at one point, but earlier pictures in this thread simply disappeared one night off the Expedition Portal site. Anyway I'll take a couple more and do a sketch. This will take a week or so.... Mike

I've used two sewing machines. The tent was actually done on a friends ordinary small sewing machine. I don't know the type but it was mostly plastic and folded metal. I'm guessing it was about $300. The tent material is the heaviest of the materials used. The little sewing machine did OK...

Yes, I understand about set up. The trick with camping is to have as few things touch the ground as possible. For 2 people there's very little comes off the Jeep. Yes there's a little setup required to get the canopy on top up and to get the sombrero up and to zip in the casita walls in bad...

Somewhere above I mentioned that I'd talk about the bug netting. The roof top tent is basically open to bugs without special efforts. They can always fly in at the bottom of the tent even if both ends are closed. I purchased a bug net designed to be suspended above a cot. I do not remember...

"You wouldn't need the tailgate..." You know I've thought a lot about how to get from the back to the top. Presently you have to take the casita walls off and roll the sombrero. It's not a major pain in dry weather. As you've observed, the tailgate is the problem. I hadn't thought about...

Travel log Might as well keep up the travel log nature of this post a little. Here's the jeep up high in the San Juans of Colorado. Ouray is a paradise of roads to drive. Top of the hill! Plenty of high country. And here's tossing an alternator in the parking lot of a NAPA in Gunnison...

Somewhere above I mentioned the zip-in sides for the 'Sombrero' at the back of the jeep. When zipped we call the result 'Casita'. Had occasion to use Casita on a recent trip to Ouray. We had afternoon thundershowers and evening mosquitoes. The picture below shows the Casita set up. Casita...

Canvas supplier says it is for outdoor use such as boat covers. My experience is limited since I only set up the tent when I'm using it. It doesn't get the day on day exposure a boat cover would. So no complaints so far, but no really long time in the sun either. Mike

I think I built the tent for under $200. There's a bill of materials several pages back. You can follow the links to prices. Of course I didn't include the roof rack in the $200 since I purchased the jeep with it on top. It's expensive if you have to buy the rack. And if you have to buy...

I purchased 'heavy duty' leafs a number of years ago and the jeep stopped hitting the rear bumb stops. I'm happy with my lack of lift. Maybe someday I'll get the bug for big tires. But lift isn't all good and I've not yet been shut out of somewhere I wanted to go because of tire size. But...