A new hope ... (build journal and component reviews)

[mquetel]

More teasers:

There is a lot of space in the box, but we had the choice of tank or silencer, and we chose the silencer, so that we don't have to attach anything before starting the heater. The tank will sit outside on the box (a one gallon Rotopax).

Did you see Dan Grec’s video covering tapping his diesel tank for a heater? I wish that had been available when I was making heating choices. It would have been even nicer if Jeep provided an auxiliary tap, but Dan’s approach was doable and so clean.

Sponsored

 

[cug]

I saw that. Maybe in the future. For now it’s just fine with a separate tank. In all likelihood a gallon will get us about four to six days of use. The heater is very frugal and if we use it two hours per day, that would be a lot.

 

[cug]

Mosquito tent done:

Big enough for two people to sit comfortably at a table and eat or just relax. Set up is about 3 or 4 minutes for one person.

 

[cug]

So, small upate, we are still working on the "heater area", closed off the front of the furniture today and mounted a BlueSea switch panel which we'll use for oven, heater, and water pump. The UV water filter will get permanent power from the Redarc system.

Also, as a side project I've been working on a data conversion tool from iOverlander CSV data into OsmAnd favorites XML while at the same time learning GoLang. OsmAnd can import the GPX data from iOverlander, but that doesn't have all the fields I want and I can't import into separate categories properly. Plus the data is so bad that OsmAnd has been crashing on me regularly after importing the raw iOverlander GPX.

With my own conversion I can hopefully avoid this, clean up the data while converting, import into proper categories with correct symbols and so on. OsmAnd really is a great offline mapping and routing software, but it's very finicky with regards to data and it still crashes from time to time. I've done my full Europe trip routing with it and it worked well enough that we want to use for Alaska in August.

Sure, I could just buy a Garmin Tread, but I have an iPad already and it does way more than the Tread at half the weight and thickness. With the RamMount cradle it sits stable as well. Therefore, I'd like to use it for routing and save the money for the Tread for something more useful. Like hotels along the way.

Fun:

 

[cug]

Also, as a side project I've been working on a data conversion tool from iOverlander CSV data into OsmAnd

And for those interested, this is what the current state looks like:

Implemented and working:

• Basic conversion from CSV to GPX
• Lat/Lon boxing so I can reduce the number of points imported to the ones that actually interest me
  • iOverlander data search works by country, and I'm just not interested in all the entries east or south of some point
• Creating a description with all the information on services available at given points
• Creating custom categories
  • This is setting up a manual list in the code though, need to make this dynamic based on categories/types in the CSV file
• Filtering based on date verified (although iOverlander can do this during export)

So far so good.

Unfortunately, none of the exports contains user comments on the place. It's just a description and verification date, plus a whole bunch of entries regarding services available at the given entry. The website has at least some comments available in the HTML, but I'm not going to get into HTML parsing this crap and even possibly paging and reloading ...

The screenshot above has a single category imported (Established Campgrounds) with a single color and a single symbol. That's because that stuff is currently hardwired in the code. I will make a reasonable mapping for colors and symbols based on entry type (e.g. tent symbols in different colors for established, inofficial, or wild camping or a blue water symbol for water fill-up points, etc.

Disclaimer:

I understand that this isn't part of a Jeep build, but it's part of our preparation for the upcoming trip and I know that most navigation apps plain suck.

• Garmin is expensive and limited to single use, no backup device unless I buy two of them. OsmAnd I can run on my iPad Mini, my phone, and the wife's phone ... and ... it's effing Garmin with all their idiotic user interface crap, shitty search, crappy map detail, etc.
• iOverlander 2 - untested, but will likely pay for the $99/year subscription since I support their cause and use their data
• iOverlander 1 - no offline data
• Google Maps - offline data useless for long trips, downloads are small(ish) areas, most other information is online only
• Apple Maps - see Google Maps
• Gaia - utterly useless for actual travel navigation, only good on trails, no import of large data chunks (more than 1000 POIs). I could make part of this work, but not well enough to be worth my money. They also recently raised the price significantly and given how useless the navigation is, they can go and pound sand ...
• OnX - only used on a single trip so far, found it completely useless for anything other than local trail exploration (local meaning pre-determined area of smallish size)
• Maps.me - map display is awesome, very good looking, functionality less so. I have a subscription, but can't use it for long trips since I can't seem to import favorites in a good way.

Finally, the one I'm using at the moment: OsmAnd:

• Subscription model if you need to download more than seven areas (I do).
• Pretty bad user interface, information display around the map is worse than Garmin, and that's saying something ...
• Completely offline, it does not have an online component to base functionality, so it can't re-route around traffic etc.
• Insane amount of features and customization options, making it difficult to use at first.
• Sllghtly buggy, crashes sometimes for no apparent reason, I suspect memory issues.
• Finicky with imported data, but at least can import large amounts reasonably well.
• Sometimes weird routing, have to use your brain while following instructions and maybe cross-check with other sources, e.g. a map or another offline app.
• many more, but too many to list here

So, my setup for the two months Canada/Alaska trip will be:

1. OsmAnd for general navigation as soon as we don't have cell reception, this will get a full import of iOverlander data for all the categories we care about.
2. Maps.me as a backup with offline data.
3. iOverlander 2 with offline data for testing and more information/features regarding points of interest (I just don't trust it yet and I want to see the points on my main mapping app, therefore the imperter into OsmAnd)
4. Apple or Google Maps for times when we do have cell coverage.

 

[cug]

So, prototyping on the heater components is finished. This was missing:

Vent and fuel pickup through a custom aluminium insert in the Rotopax cap. That means no drilling into the fuel can. The vent has an o-ring in the cap to close properly, but lets in some air when not tightened down.

All the parts will get powder-coated, then I'll hook up everything and test the heater.

Oh, and some UV protection for the fuel line and connectors:

It's velcro on/off and I used it on my tankbag before. So far so good.

 

[cug]

Finishing the last little bits on the mosquito tent:

 

[cug]

Vent and fuel pickup through a custom aluminium insert in the Rotopax cap. That means no drilling into the fuel can. The vent has an o-ring in the cap to close properly, but lets in some air when not tightened down.

And to repeat this here as well:

I'm getting a whole bunch of these "mounting discs" for the fuel pickup and vent in the Rotopax cap. Ordered enough to get to the minimum order value on Send Cut Send and now have many to spare. They're cheap, so, if you want one or two, let me know.

 

[cug]

When we installed the Webasto heater in our camper, we mounted it purely through the skin of the Canopy Camper. Since this is relatively thin aluminium, we didn't want this to have to support the full weight of the Webasto on bad roads, offroad, and on corrugated unpaved roads.

Therefore we designed a bracket that supports the weight of the unit and is mounted to the side extrusions:

This is a five piece system:

• The bracket the heater unit sits on top of
• Two side brackets, one for the 90 degree mounting on the door side and one with an 87 degree bend on the window side
• Two mounting shims under the brackets to adjust for the height difference left and right of the extrusion channel

I had first three parts laser cut and bent and then fabricated the shims from some spare aluminium pieces I had here.

I I ad to do this again, I'd design a bracket that sits in the side extrusion with two bolts each side and has a plate to the rear of the camper where the thin aluminium sheet is, then mount the heater through the bracket and the camper skin and be done with it. It would have been a cleaner solution, but I had this idea only after I had already ordered the parts above. And since we had already drilled the holes in the camper, it would have been another design nightmare, trying to match up mounting holes perfectly. Should have done this beforehand and only then drilled the holes in the camper when I had the bracket here. Could have marked the camper through the bracket.

On the other hand, our solution should work just fine.

Tomorrow we'll bring a whole bunch of parts (16 in total) to a local shop for powdercoating.

 

[cug]

Custom designed parts, prepped for powdercoating:

 

[cug]

And done, just one day, super happy!

We'll install most of them over the weekend, then the door and the heater will be DONE. ;-)

And a massive shout-out to our local powdercoater JIP Finishing!

They turned this around in 24h with amazing quality at a very reasonable price. If you are in the SF Bay Area and need something powdercoated, give them a call:

https://jipfinishing.com

I have no relation to them other than being a very happy customer!

 

[cug]

 

[fourfa]

Was it a batch or per-piece charge? How much are we talking about?

 

[cug]

Single batch. Rest => PM.

 

[chorky]

Curious if you are using a specific vendor for some of this stuff. I have tried calling around several local places to me and nobody will do any custom fab work - it's actually pretty cozy to me considering how many people end up doing their own.

Sponsored