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

[cug]

So, faucet is mounted. And I don't recall if I ever showed a photo of the sink. It's in the high galley module on the passenger side, the faucet is usable (although uncomfortable) even with the roof closed, but we have another water outlet anyways. Still, nice for quick wash of hands or brushing teeth before heading to bed ...

Sponsored

 

[cug]

but we have another water outlet anyways

Forgot to post of picture of it:

It's on the side of the galley module, just under the sink, so all the plumbing is happening right there.

It's an outlet for this type of showerhead:

https://www.tigerexped.de/camper-dusche-brause-schlauch-duschhalter

We knew this from Europe, hadn't found a similarly nice one here, so had a friend ship us one from Germany. The outlet has a valve, so it's closed when nothing is connected, but we also have an inline valve on the tubing going to it. It'll give us access to cleanly filtered water right at the backdoor, where most of the cooking will happen.

Now only waiting for a different water pump (don't trust the cheapo thing we have here).

Then we have to take the tank out to insulate behind it, put a shutoff valve in there as well, then hook everything up and test for leaks. Once we're happy with it, it's ready to go back into the camper, but before that we need to do the "thread locker work". Put thread locker blue on ALL important 8020 connections and all connections to the camper ... I'm really dreading this one ...

 

[cug]

Working on the last furniture part while we are waiting for some water system parts to arrive (which we missed before):

This will become a backrest for the bench and leaves a storage compartment towards the side window which perfectly fits our two Frontrunner camp chairs.

Since this was an early idea, when we didn't have much experience building these things, the attachments are a bit whacky, but they'll be stable enough to hold the backrest and chairs easily. Just a ******* pain in the rear to build. Part of that is due to the camper having structural brackets inside the channel above the windows, so we can't attach the studs anywhere we like, but instead have to work around some of these braces.

 

[cug]

Just a ******* pain in the rear to build.

I swear, I will never ever build something like this with 8020 again. It makes everything about three times harder than it should be. Granted, we have made some mistakes along the way, but man, I hate the added complexity of dealing with the two different extrusion systems (8020 and AluCab) and the wood stuff, plus whatever else fabrication we do ... I should have built the whole interior with just Baltic Birch. We'd long be done ...

Today we figured out all the lower attachment points (not final hardware yet, that'll be nylocks nuts) and marked all the attachment points at the camper channel above the window. That'll get done tomorrow, plus the backrest panels (unfortunately, we'll have to use two panels, since we got our Baltic Birch in 50cm x 150cm and we need 60cm x 115cm. But okay, details ...

Again, showing the concept and testing the fit:

 

[chorky]

I should have built the whole interior with just Baltic Birch.

I was thinking that, but didnt want to say anything. But I will say it sure looks clean! Its going to be super nice when it is all done and your off to adventures! Especially knowing it will hold up to all types of road conditions.

 

[cug]

I was thinking that, but didnt want to say anything. But I will say it sure looks clean! Its going to be super nice when it is all done and your off to adventures! Especially knowing it will hold up to all types of road conditions.

It's a rant that needed to get out. There are so many upsides and downsides to using 8020. If I had been as proficient in woodworking a year ago as I am today, I would have started right away with wood only. But the problem with that is that it's hard to prototype, you basically have to know what and how to build right away. Which we didn't. We would have started over multiple times.

We recovered from mistakes, made stuff better along the way, made more mistakes, etc. Not very surprising.

I also should really qualify my rant:

• We used a very complicated way of building with 8020, with exposed extrusion, lots of complex stuff in aluminum instead of wood, etc.
• We wanted it to be flexible and fixable if we made mistakes - that we achieved.
• We do like the look.
• A lot of the design decisions we made along the way are getting in the way later on. Again, better planning would have helped, but it's our first DIY camper build.

If I were to build out a Sprinter - I might actually use 8020 again since there is lot of space to do basic framing and then use wood for the rest, but not for something as small and tight as the Gladiator with AluCab. It just gets in the way more than I want it to, and it makes our life often harder than it needs to be.

At to be fair: we might be done already if we had used wood only, but I bet it wouldn't be as straight, nice, and solid as what we have today. On the other hand, it would also have cost less than 10% in building materials even with the cost of baltic birch factored in.

 

[cug]

One of the reasons, why all this takes so much longer than expected: while I always plan that something will take longer, I still often overlook something that will take another big chunk of time, although it should have been dead simple.

One of the downsides of the 8020 right angle brackets is that they are short (25mm / 1 inch) and if you want to use them for mounting panels for example, this is very suboptimal. You basically can't mount a panel with a countersunk bolt through one of these and still tighten the mounting bolt to the extrusion.

In some cases this is unavoidable, but for some stupid reason I was also planning on using some of them also for mounting the backrest panel to the vertical supports. Wood to wood. Decided that this wasn't good since we have to adjust these back and forth just a tiny bit while tightening things.

So, another time sink, we made our own from angled aluminum profile (again):

Took way too long to cut, clean, and drill them. But now they are done and we can mount the backrest tomorrow.

 

[cug]

And the raw box is done. Tie down points for the chairs and Osmo treatment, then some simple covers on the sides, and it’s done.

Oh, and final hardware going in the proper direction of course.

 

[cug]

So, it's this time ...

The rest will come out tomorrow, then it's improvement and threadlocker time ...

I hate that we have to do this, but what can you do? We already found two 8020 bolts dangerously loose, so it's definitey time for loctite. And we made some really stupid mistakes in that phase of our build and are going to rectify these.

 

[cug]

Next time I'll buy an RV and be done with it ...

Next step: removing the tank.

 

[cug]

And this is why you don’t want to build out a camper at home without the appropriate space:

 

[cug]

And shit you find when you let professionals install stuff:

I'm beyond pissed. It's coming to a point where everything we touch that is normally out of sight, we find some shit either from AluCab or TinyRig. This seems to have been someone who's utterly incompetent working in a shop - probably using power tools on everything from 316 stainless to soft plastics ... on the same power setting ...

 

[chorky]

And shit you find when you let professionals install stuff:

I'm beyond pissed. It's coming to a point where everything we touch that is normally out of sight, we find some shit either from AluCab or TinyRig. This seems to have been someone who's utterly incompetent working in a shop - probably using power tools on everything from 316 stainless to soft plastics ... on the same power setting ...

It's beyond incompetence. People just don't give a $hit anymore

 

[cug]

It's beyond incompetence. People just don't give a $hit anymore

Pretty much sums it up, yes.

 

[MattK]

I'm beyond pissed. It's coming to a point where everything we touch that is normally out of sight, we find some shit either from AluCab or TinyRig. This seems to have been someone who's utterly incompetent working in a shop - probably using power tools on everything from 316 stainless to soft plastics ... on the same power setting ...

I find power tools to be the bane of the customer experience. We always pay the price for their use.

Sponsored