Mattress for sleeping in car

madmax718

Explorer
The inflating and deflating of camping mats inside the truck is a little tiring. I guess an inflatable would work. Was looking at:

Truck Bedz
Coleman suv inflatable bed
or
find some memory foam.

I kinda dig the memory foam. The ads say you wont feel the other person moving (I am the other person). its extremely durable (no punctures!) and low in height (3-4 inches).

Anyone use one of these?
 

Bretthn

Explorer
Airbedz

We have an airbedz inflatable that works great.


It has cutouts for the wheel wells in a pickup bed or suv. It also comes with fillers for using as a normal airbed. Built in rechargable air pump.
 

obscurotron

Adventurer
My kid has a 3-4" memory foam mattress on her bed. Thing is, when you're a full-sized adult, 3-4 inches of memory foam doesn't work that well. It seems to act more like regular old foam rubber. I've tried sleeping on it (had the same idea as you a while back) and it's not comfortable.

FWIW I'm like 155/5'7", so I'm not 'fighting gravity' as bad as some folks, so to speak. For a 40lb kid it's fine. For a man, NFW, IMHO. I'd go with the inflatable.
 

chickadee

Adventurer
Check out www.foambymail.com

You can order different thicknesses of foam in custom sizes. We ordered a full size 4" mattress and cut out the wheel wells for our 80's series. Added a queen size mattress cover and it fits perfectly. Super comfortable!

Be careful with memory foam in colder temperatures, it gets pretty firm.
 

racehorse

Adventurer
For three or four years, I've slept with my wife in the back of our land rover camping. It's comfy and nice but I've learned.

*Memory foam gets rock hard in colder temperatures, making it really difficult to roll out or fold up and to sleep on.

*Air beds are great in moderate temperature - in cold climates they get really, really cold and miserable sleeping on. Your body just can't displace all that cold air in the bed by warming it up and insulating the top with a sleeping bag works OK but not great. In moderate temperature, airbeds are fine inside the rig. Still, yes you do feel every movement from each person.

I use an exped mega mat at this point.
 

shmabs

Explorer
Having tried an air mattress, simple futon mattress and a nice thick 3.5 inch sleeping pad; the sleeping pad is an outstanding winner for me. I get some of the best rest i have ever had with a thin wool blanket on the floor, a sleeping pan and sleeping bag while stowed away in the rear of my 4runner.

Mike
 

madmax718

Explorer
Ya I tried that out. Sometimes i get great sleep. Sometimes I don't. I guess it just depends on some factors. I think sometimes its just the noise.

I'd honestly be happy with just egg crate material.
 

mhiscox

Expedition Leader
You may not want to pay for them, but two Exped Megamats would be a fine solution. I agree that a cut-to-shape foam mattress could be slightly better, but if you ever wanted to use the back of the truck, it'd be much more difficult to pull out the mattress and store it than to deflate a couple of pads. They're mega-comfy, and two of them together would equal a queen-sized mattress, though if you don't build a sleeping platform, the wheel wells will be in the way. (Though regardless of your approach, you probably want to build a sleeping platform anyway, since the wheel wells will otherwise be pretty intrusive if you're sleeping two.)
 

madmax718

Explorer
the only issue I have with the platform is that I enjoy the overhead height- As it is right now, I get just enough head room where I can fully sit up. (35" max height in the jeep wj). I think the wheel arch is about 6" tall. Im going to have to weigh this out a bit. The wheel arch isnt quite that bad, as Im wider up top by my arms rather than my waist, so 6" of my arm just is on the side by the door. The space between the wheel arch is 40.x inches wide, which is enough for 2 standard camping mats to fit.

the WJ just isn't all that large- I have a cargo box, but Im trying to see if I can make do without it. I can almost do it, as long as i have a quick and easy way to move stuff from the rear to the front seats. so im trying to find all the nooks and crannies. Im about to get rid of the jump starter pack because it takes up too much space! Just need to find a good place to stash batteries.
 

loren85022

Explorer
We added 1-1/2" of memory foam to our van's rear foldout bed. Wow, what a huge difference. It's a pain to stow but I'll jettison a lotta of other creature comforts to get it on board.
 

1leglance

2007 Expedition Trophy Champion, Overland Certifie
Another vote here for the exped mega mat....I even tried 2 REI 3.5in sleeping pads stacked and it wasn't as comfy as the single megamat. The square sides really make a difference.
I am just worried that once my wife tries the megamat I will have to pony up for another of them :)

I understand ya on the sleeping platform taking up the headroom. However the storage under it was worth the loss of upper space...but I am running a Suburban so I can move to the rear seats to change and then crawl in the rear for sleeping.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
185,900
Messages
2,879,328
Members
225,497
Latest member
WonaWarrior
Top