June 29 2009 by Darrin.

Friday night, Anna and I returned from Casper with the powder-coated parts.  I had a 25%-off coupon, but I’m thinking they must have tacked 50% onto the bill first.  The cost was beyond belief.  They must have been celebrating the passage of the new cap and trade bill in the House.

What a bunch of morons in DC.  The economy is in shambles (says Buffett, and he’s right) and we’re going to limit and punish industrialization by starting the balling rolling on a bill most of them never read.  Sure.  That’ll help.  I mean, “we have to do something”, right? That’s what they all say. If I behaved like the US gov’t, the next time I had a headache I’d take a hatchet and cut my freakin’ arm off.  My headache would likely go away for a bit, but only because my brain was distracted by the blood shooting out of my shoulder.   One more time…  Morons.  Narcissistic fools, and we’re all going to pay for it with a massive loss of freedom and income.  Can the Senate shoot it down?

An-eee-way,  I’m almost ready to consider painting stuff myself again.  But paint ain’t powder, and I can’t immerse the stuff in an acid bath either.  The powder DOES look good, there’s no question.  Here’s the tire lift mechanism without the tire carriage…

And the assembly completed with spares ready to go…

Also, the fenders and mudflaps are now installed for good too, so mud and cow-pies are of no more concern…

Wanna see how the tire carrier works?  Here’s a demonstration video I just posted to YouTube…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5H5kMUqfW8

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June 19 2009 by Darrin.

It’s still raining on and off, but the camper is safely parked with her tail snugged up to the workshop door.  There are are still a few things to complete externally, and the goals for this past week included mounting the fenders and fabricating a dual spare tire carrier.

Here’s the tire carrier, designed to carry two 11R22.5 tires on rims (some assembly required)…

And after a bit of CADD and that small detail of “required assembly”, the almost finished product…

The above photo does not show the completed carriage system for the tires, nor the upper support structure which locks the tires into place when the lift is raised.  The carriage is electric winch lifted and lowered, so the heavy truck tires only have to be wrestled around from a few inches off the ground.  When the tires are lifted up to the stowed position, they are locked tightly in place and cannot be removed unless the carriage is lowered.  Locking 5/8″ (~16mm) hitch pins hold the load in place and prevent theft (from hot-wiring the winch or cutting the cable).

 The entire system is modular and the carriage is built to accept a motorcycle carrier, extra toolbox, or anything built later to plug into it.  Below the carriage, there’s another set of receiver tubes which accept a tow bar I built previously when I conceived the system.  It’s lacking a couple pieces of triangulation, needed for towing.

 The fender mounts are also finished now, and secure a set of Minimizer 100 poly fenders to the bottom of the camper…

The above goodies are now safely at our powdercoater in Casper, Wyoming.  In a week, we’ll pick the pieces up and mount the components to the camper.  We’ll post something again next weekend (hopefully with video) when the stuff is installed and working.

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June 13 2009 by Darrin.

Today under a mostly blue sky, Anna and I got the camper mounted to the chassis.  It worked out really well, the pins tapped right in, the bolt holes lined up, nothing interfered anywhere, and the crawl-through came out perfectly.  What a relief!  Check it out…

See those wicked clouds in the background?  That was a tremendous thunderstorm over Glendo, about 25 miles from here.  It produced 1-inch “destructive hail” and intense winds.   Fortunately, it missed us!  We’re not out of the water yet, as another system is heading for us.  The AATREC-FM204 is safely parked inside at the ranch, to protect her from hail.  However, I never trust Murphy, and predict a micro-burst will flatten the building!

Anyway, Anna and I rolled tape while we did the big install this afternoon.  It took about an hour, but I’ve condensed it into a time-shifted video for YouTube, and you can see it here…

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0bWEf9VSf4

Sunday, I think we’ll take a break from physical work, and I’ll plan the steel we need to build the dual spare tire and motorcycle carrier.  Lots of welding to do next week!

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June 11 2009 by Darrin.

Every time the mud puddles nearly dry, the heavens open up again.  On Tuesday, I saw the process about to repeat and had to intervene with the loader.  A couple of strategically placed buckets of shale and the road was clear enough to make a move - as the clouds built! Here’s the cabin coming outside for the first time since January…

And the chassis on the way back to the workshop to get the torsion-free subframe components bolted down - note the ominous sky…

Sure enough, the rain started within an hour and as of Thursday morning, it really hasn’t quit yet.  We’ve had 1.9″ of rain at the ranch since Tuesday night, with solid rain coming throughout Wednesday.  We’d hoped to spend the weekend camping with old Unimog friends in Colorado on the 19th - 21st  of June, but the weather has finally killed all chances of that.  There’s just no way to make that happen now.  It’s fairly disappointing, as we’ve worked to that goal for months!

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June 7 2009 by Darrin.

Another week’s passed since rain destroyed hopes of swapping the camper box for the chassis on schedule.  After cleaning up a few hundred pounds of tools, I wound up getting them all out again and scratching many more interior items off the list.

 Even though the ground was finally dry enough for the move yesterday, I had other plans.  I’d volunteered my minimal radio knowledge to the Converse County Rural (Volunteer) Fire Department and had to install some new VHF radios for them.  That process took a tad longer than I’d expected and I didn’t get home until after supper time, having left 0700.  Today was the day to make the swap - after taking care of a couple last minute items.  And, well, Murphy won again.  No good deed goes unpunished.

Here’s the Doppler radar image of the moment before I planned to head outside with the camper…

And a shot out the shop’s walk-door a bit later…

 I give up!  Now the tools come out again and I’ll run more wires here and there.  It’s starting to look like I won’t be able to make my planned shakedown cruise to the 2009 Rocky Mountain Unimoggers camp-out in Colorado the weekend after next.  I was really looking forward to that!  It would have been a perfect trial run, to be completed in Denver with a mandatory break-in service at Fuso.

Oh well.  C’est la vie!  I’ll close with a photo of the AATREC-FM204, ready to come outside…

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June 2 2009 by Darrin.

Murphy’s Law wins again…

 In a decade-long drought-stricken Wyoming, we only seem to get rain at the worst moments.  Last year around this time, I was completing an identical AATREC-FM204 for a customer on the west coast.  The day I needed to shuttle things around outside, the skies opened up and it poured for a week.  We live off-road, and the bentonite clay that forms our roads gets slick as snot when it’s wet, and hard as concrete when dry.  It’s not something you want on a project in-progress.

Now, on the exact day I finished the camper’s interior to the point I need to make the same box/chassis shuttle happen, there’s ankle-deep mud again.  Forecast?  Don’t even look!  Rain extending the next five days!  A rare sight in Eastern Wyoming - green grass, gray skies, and wet ground…

Okay, Mother Nature has other plans for us today.   A little update to the build-blog sounds good.  Anna and I were just discussing that a fire in the wood stove sounds pretty good too - on June 2nd.  It’s only 45ºF outside, at 1015.  A fire just might be in the cards!

So how’s the camper doing?  For once, I am (was, until the weather) on schedule.  All cabinets are installed and pre-wired.   Here are the last dinette-area wall cabinets going up.  You can see the Sika 252 on the wall before installation.  What you can’t see is Anna standing behind me, ready to hold the cabinet in place while I get the props and bolts installed.  She’s a fantastic help when it comes to hanging these.  For what it’s worth, each cabinet is bolted, screwed, AND glued to the wall and ceiling.  The mechanical fasteners just make me feel better.  The Sika 252 is amazing stuff that never gets totally hard, yet holds for ever.  It provides at least 70 psi of holding strength.  Do the math and you’ll compute that the cabinets will fall apart before they fall down!

 The fridge cabinet is the largest cabinet of the set, and will not fit through the door.  It must enter the camper through the cab crawl-through, so it’s the last built of pre-built joinery to go in.  It also has to get stuffed in before the crawl-through is trimmed out…

With the cabinet inside, it gets permanently mounted in place, and then the crawl-through is trimmed out and covered with an insulated internal rolling shutter…

And the shutter from the bunk area…

The final step before moving the box to our other building (for mounting to the chassis) is to get the entry door installed temporarily.  The big compressor fridge WILL fit through the finished door, but it’s much easier to bring it into the camper with the door off.  Just a few screws are holding it in place in this photo…

Note the fully-radiused door and frame.  There are no sharp corners cut into the sides of the box, as they create stress risers that eventually fail - especially on rough roads.  Using a conventional RV door with a square threshhold is asking for trouble.  I’ve seen so many “expedition” campers over the years with cracked bodies!  Every crack started at a corner, so NO RIGHT ANGLES.  Period.

So now what?  It’s pouring outside.  I think I’ll apply some decals…

and then move on to some more DC branch wiring.  Might as well get some lights and stuff working.

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