JK/J8 Flippac rumor??

[The Swiss]

I agree. $14k U.S. seems awfully pricey for this type of product. I don't know, maybe I'm just out of touch with the times but I figured $5-6k total would be what to expect. Am I nuts?

I don't think you are nuts; Fourwheelcamper's shell models sell for $6,495. I think $4,000 to $5,000 for a JK shell should be about right.

I have the feeling the guys in South Africa don't really want to go through the hassle of exporting their cabins (some people are content doing just enough business to provide for their daily needs and don't really want to expand) As these perky Americans don't give up, they figured that overpricing their cabins might get rid of the Gringos ...

[Herbie]

I have the feeling the guys in South Africa don't really want to go through the hassle of exporting their cabins (some people are content doing just enough business to provide for their daily needs and don't really want to expand) As these perky Americans don't give up, they figured that overpricing their cabins might get rid of the Gringos ...

Right, this sounds like what we've always called "Go-Away Pricing".

Whenever I've gotten a bid from a contractor who clearly didn't want the job, I get the "Go-Away Price", typically inflated with an aim to end the conversation.

[locrwln]

I think you guys might be right.

Here is the latest response I got, not sure I understand it:

Yes, that is more or less the going rate in South Africa. We could think of exporting the roof section with the tent, then the mounting onto your vehicle must be done by an auto body shop in the USA..

Thanks for your enquiry.

Regards
Gerrie
+27826326406

Jack

[Ford Prefect]

The Earthroamer is very cool, I just don't need that level of refinement & integration at this point in my life. Who makes their 'flip pac', is it an in-house creation? If so, I wonder if they would sell a shell and rollbar kit for jeep owners. Perhaps a market worth investigating in these down times.

I think THAT is the best idea

If you would simply build a "hard top" for the jeep, and make it, say, five inches taller, allowing for the flip, then you could fold it forward and it could be done really low budget, and still really decent. All you would need to do is put in the matress, and perhaps some legs that go down to the front bumper.

[Ford Prefect]

By the way, if you are finding these GRT things for that price, I bet you could ship your jeep over to them, have them install it, and then ship is back for less than they would be able to send you an individual top.

[suntinez]

The Earthroamer is very cool, I just don't need that level of refinement & integration at this point in my life. Who makes their 'flip pac', is it an in-house creation? If so, I wonder if they would sell a shell and rollbar kit for jeep owners. Perhaps a market worth investigating in these down times.

The tent on the XV-JP is something called an “Electric motor-powered Loftop™” and I could never find any information on it separate from the XV-JP. It’s a great concept and I was researching it quite a bit before I got my flippac. I went by the Earthroamer factory last year just to gawk, but they didn’t have an XV-JP to look at.

I learned from mhiscox on this thread that:

I suspect that many/most are aware that the big tent on the top of the EarthRoamer XV-JP is air supported using five crossbody strut tubes filled from the air supplied by the engine-driven compressor. Pops up in maybe 15 seconds once the moveable roof section is back, deflates in a little longer; both operations controlled by a switch near the rear hatch.

which I thought was pretty interesting. If anyone is able to locate any information on that tent separate from the XV-JP, would like to hear about it. I seriously doubt that ER would sell a shell model of the XV-JP, but maybe.

[Ford Prefect]

I think if you have it fold out you might as well have it overhang the rear of the Jeep so you can use it as a shade canopy and or attach a screen or tent.

Hi all...

I have really enjoyed reading this thread.

I wanted to point out a few thoughts that I have had, and concerns.

The above quote certainly seems like a nice idea, and I liked it a lot in the roamers as well, HOWEVER... You are going to find, in the 5k price range, that your larger market is going to be for the ages of 30-40 somethings ergo, they are going to want to lift the jeep, thus making a pole that drops down to the ground for support (unless you are planning to add a couple of warn winches like the roamer does) are going to have to vary in length, where as if you flip it over the front bumper, the length will always stay the same with no regard to the height of the jeep, nor the terrain in which the jeep is resting. Second, with that age group they are going to have a LOT of kids! Most folks will have their children around that age, and so they are going to need to put in a few car seats in the back, so, yes we will need to have the back seat in there. I suggest simply making a pad (that can be set up with the fold out bed) which can be dropped down, with the seats folded forward, thus making a bed area out of the rear cargo area. When I have slept in my WJ we just put the car seat, and the gear up in the front seats, the kid on the front passenger floor, and we sleep in the back. In other words anyone can take the cargo area of a JK and move that gear to the front seats area when they are set for camping.

If you keep the overall price low then you can sell a lot of them. Shoot, I would take one, yall have even gotten me thinking about how I can chop my hardtop on my CJ and do this as well (actually I have found it would be really easy, so I am very tempted! haha)

Just seems like if you can raise that roof about four to six inches few people will see the differences from stock.

ALSO I have to say, I liked the idea of putting a gear rack on the front section of the top, pretty nice for extra gear there.

If you ever actually build it I say good luck to you!

Brian

[mhiscox]

If anyone is able to locate any information on that tent separate from the XV-JP, would like to hear about it. I seriously doubt that ER would sell a shell model of the XV-JP, but maybe.

Well, my friends, you are welcome to any information you care to have on the EarthRoamer XV-JP tent, among which facts . . .

No ER shell plans at this point, I don't think, probably because you guys wouldn't buy any. I suspect you'd be looking at maybe $20K or more for the XV-JP shell. It is very nice work, done by a company that does aerospace composites. Very thick, very rigid--you can dance around on the top, for example, it's about 2 inches thick in spots--and very high quality. Beyond the cost, I'll bet a lot of you would consider it too heavy; an XV-JP weighs about 7,000 pounds.

The tent is, as I understand it, a completely custom-made item, sourced from the US solely for EarthRoamer. The volume of the XV-JP (just over a dozen) was, I suspect, not enough to interest a tentmaker we'd have heard of (e.g., Kelty, Mountain Hardware, etc.) in the job.

The air support idea is very cool and trick, but there's not enough rigidity to keep the tent from moving quite a bit in a stiff wind. The tent is also noisy in a wind.

When you flip over the top, you need a good amount of overhead clearence, something on the order of 14-15 feet. A couple times, I parked the Jeep, went to raise the tent and found I had branches in the way.

The bed is enormous, pretty much queen size. The matttress had to be thin, however, to be skinny and light enough to attach to the roof, so the Froli plastic spring setup had to be used underneath. It works fine, but its a cost and complexity you might not think of.

The tent had some areas where it leaked. I suspect most foul weather users XV-JP have devised/will devise some sort of rainfly to solve this problem.

THE BIG--and unsolvable--PROBLEM for the ER tent and any tent like this is that when you've deployed it in the rain and then it's time to move on, you are folding up fifty-plus pounds of wet tent and storing it wet. Not any different than you have to do with a backpack tent; you just dry it out first chance you get. The problem in the Oregon winter was getting it dried out. You could put the backpacking tent in your garage to dry, but drying the big flip tent meant putting it up on a nice sunny day, and we don't have them on a regular (or even occasional) basis much of the year. And even though I am fortunate enough to have a shop big enough to park the XV-JP with the tent deployed, it was still cold and damp enough that the wet areas took many days to dry out. This resulted in mildew on the tent and some surface rust on metal in the cabin.

I point this out because wet tent storage may be an issue for anyone with this sort of fixed tent planning to use it in a climate where winter "drying out days" are hard to come by.

[Ursa Minor]

Mike - Interesting tent design challenge if you can't ever get it to dry out, you almost have to go to a hard-side. You mentioned in another thread you were reworking your XV-JP tent, did you look into a tent out of mil-spec tarp materials, I looked at that for the first camper I built, but figured it would be like a sauna inside since it doesn't breathe. It is really good at keeping mildew at bay though, and might work for an open-fold tent design as a rain fly. Was your Earthroamer tent material super lightweight nylon, similar to the flip-pac tent? I looked at Scott's at the ExPo and it looked similar to backpacking tent material -John

[mhiscox]

Mike--You mentioned in another thread you were reworking your XV-JP tent, did you look into a tent out of mil-spec tarp materials, I looked at that for the first camper I built, but figured it would be like a sauna inside since it doesn't breathe. It is really good at keeping mildew at bay though, and might work for an open-fold tent design as a rain fly. Was your Earthroamer tent material super lightweight nylon, similar to the flip-pac tent? I looked at Scott's at the ExPo and it looked similar to backpacking tent material -John

Yep, the current tent material is essentially ripstop nylon as would be used for a family style recreational tent. The material itself is waterproof, so as you suggest, you get a lot of condensation on the inside. So there are lots of windows--ten big ones--to provide air flow, but they're also where water can get in.

Don't get me wrong . . . the current tent could be made sufficiently functional by designing and deploying a giant rain fly. That would keep the tent drier outside, so better to pack up. The fly would cover the windows so they didn't leak (and large enough to cover the tent/cabin joints, which also wouldn't leak) and having the windows open would get enough airflow to greatly reduce condensation. I suspect every XV-JP owner except me is working on, or has managed, a rain fly.

In my case, though, I just didn't find the flip over bed very appealing and I am short enough to sleep inside the cabin on a bench along the passenger's side wall. I'll only have to raise the roof to about a thirty-degree angle to get enough headroom to walk around the cabin standing straight up. And the inserts (still under design) to fill the gap between raised tent and cabin sides will be small enough to store in a stuff sack, easy to dry out, and (probably) made of some breathable waterproof fabric like eVent or GoreTex, which I can afford because the area will be small.

A lot of my redoing of the design is to make it fast and unobtrusive to set up. You can't use the ER cabin until the roof is raised, so even if you just want to stop for lunch at a rest stop or parking lot, you'd have to fully deploy and inflate the ER tent, which takes some time and looks pretty "overdone" for a quick stop. I'll be able to use my revised cabin in 30 seconds without taking up any extra space. And with the original tent, the tent material is hanging into the cabin using up several inches of headroom, making it unpleasant to just sit there. With my plan, someone up to a bit over 6 feet will be able to sit comfortably on the bench with the roof closed.

I'm running on about this in this thread because many the drawbacks to the EarthRoamer tent are pretty much those of any "flipover" tent. And don't get me wrong; the flip tent has huge advantages to offset its disadvantages. My "redo" is pretty idiosyncratic and had a lot to do with me traveling solo (so no need for a queen-sized bed), living in a drippy climate, and wanting to have a useful cabin without doing the full, time-consuming setup. If I traveled in Arizona with a partner, I'd probably be doing a roof fly for the occasionally rainy time and be otherwise happy.