Part 6 – The Long Wait
4 long months…
In reality 4 months is not an extremely long wait, but it feels it. It does however give me time to get a few things sorted and prepare for it’s arrival. As I mentioned in my previous post, we had to do a few upgrades to the Pajero, the Brake Controller and airbags, which are now installed. I have also just installed a permanent solar panel to the roof of the Paj which is connected to my permanently installed AGM battery under the back floor. The battery used to be in our old camper, but it wasn’t going to have a home, so it made sense to have it as a backup in the car. It’s only charged by solar and not by the alternator. I might get around to this one day, but for now, I don’t think it will be needed. I also installed a rear awning that I got on-sale, but I am pretty sure I will remove it and move it to the new camper as I’m not really happy with how it looks on the car. I now have 3 awnings on the roof, it feels a little over kill. I think it will make a good home on the boat rack above a shower awning.
One thing I have found online in a few FB groups I am part of, is the large amount of mods and hacks people do to their new campers. Obviously you try to buy one with most of it done, but there are a few things we want to change or modify to make the trailer suit our needs and wants. This list will probably never end as I enjoy doing this stuff too much, but here is a list of a few updates I plan.
Quick Shower/Toilet tent
We own a double ensuite and it’s great. It’s a pull up tent, so the setup takes only a few minutes and gives us two rooms, one for a toilet and one for our shower. The Tele X comes with an ensuite room that attaches to the awning, but it looks a bit fiddly to setup and we are not sure how much we are going to use the awning, so alternatives are on the card. Plus it’s a big canvas room, so not having that will reduce weight.
Our plan is two fold, for long stays we will setup our double ensuite, but for short over nighters or even two nighters, we are going to attach our shower awning to the boat rack and possibly a small awning over the top incase it rains (as I said above). We have seen others do this and it’s a great idea. This gives us a quick toilet setup, even if are in a caravan park, we think we will set it up to use as a toilet for any late night bladder emptying we need to do and to save us having to trudge all the way to the park toilets. It’s more a convenience thing, but we think it’s a necessity….at our age. :)
Hot water for all
Currently we use a Joolca Hottap and that wont change, in fact we got them to remove their shower from the quote as the Joolca is pretty much the best system out there. However currently there is only cold water piped to the sink, I have seen a few mods on this and so the plan is to pipe hot water to the sink as well. This requires a little bit of work, but it doesn’t look too difficult.
*Photo is of a drag chain with both hot and cold water hoses inside.
It’s all about the bed
One reason we decided to get a camper trailer in the first place is having a good bed to sleep in. We upgraded the mattress in our current camper and the plan is to do the same in the new camper. As of writing this, we plan to move our current mattress over to the new camper, but we have been told that it may not close properly. Our current camper mattress is 20cm thick and we have been told that 18cm might be the maximum size. Anyway, we will know once we have it, if not, we can pick up a thinner mattress fairly easily, but it must be innerspring.
Hot water system
As I said above, we have a Joolca and currently it has plastic legs it sits on, not fussed on these, they are pain to put on and I think they will break easily. So I plan to mount the unit permanently, where? There are 3 places I have seen this, one is inside one of the storage compartments, this would make sense to keep the wind away from the flame. The second spot is on the inside of the door of the same compartment, this is the number one choice for me at the moment. The third is too remove the rear winch, which I doubt I will use and mount the unit to the side of the rear tool box. I like this idea, but not sure how practical it will be.
DCDC
I will be adding a DCDC charger to the camper. This is so I can take power direct from the car via the rear anderson plug and charge the batteries while we drive. This DCDC also includes a solar charger, this will allow me to plug a solar panel directly into this unit.
Carpet
Plan on getting some marine carpet. It’s cheap and will be nicer than the wooden floor. (Photo for illustration purpose only and not the kind of carpet I intend to install)
Turn the heat up
Diesel heaters are all the rage at the moment. You can pick up a pretty cheap, but good one on eBay. This is permanent install under one of the seats and exhausts out the back away from you. Will mean we should be able to camp all year round.
That will do for now. As I install stuff, I will show you. I am not sure if the mods get more excited than the actual camper or not.
Have a great week everyone.
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