Unimog Camper under construction

[Overland Hadley]

I have tried emailing the chair company but er had no luck either.

I also tried emailing them and never received a response.

[Iain_U1250]

That's strange - my wife just bought another two chairs today from them, they emailed back in an hour.

PM your email address to me, and I'll send you Raj's gmail address.

[Iain_U1250]

Just started playing around with various bits of the sound system for the cab of my truck. I have an Eclipse 8200 12" subwoofer which works with a relatively small enclosure. I chopped up the old box I had in my Jaguar XJ-S for a trial fit. On the Unimog forum, guys from Russia put up a video of their Unimog, and that's where the idea for the subwoofer placement came from.

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This is a "substantial" subwoofer - weighs in at 18kg so it will need a substantial support to live in the truck.


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The rest of the sound system consists of two 6x9s behind the seats, two 6.5" coaxials in the doors, and four 4" coaxials in the overhead roof console. I have two amplifiers - one to power the subwoofer, and the other the speakers. All this to drown out the OM352.


Here is a link to the Russian Build up:

http://avtotravel.com/Forums/Brands-...E%D0%B3-1300l/

and their video of the finished truck.

[Iain_U1250]

We trial fitted most of the internal cabinetry this weekend. The there are a few minor "adjustments" but nothing serious and all going well, the basic cabinets will be fitted in a week or two. The lockers around the bed need to be installed before the others can be fitted - one of the problems of the sloping rear wall means that the angles etc are quite complicated, and making sure you can get things into the truck a bit more difficult.

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Everything fits and it all looks great.

I also got the wood plinths for the lights - we have three of these around the truck - two either side of the bed, and another one above the seats.

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I spent last weekend working on the roof rack - quite a complicated bit of fabrication, due to all the angles on the roof etc but it's close to being ready, just a general clean up and a few "adjustments" to a couple of the legs and it is ready for painting. That is today's job.

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Yesterday I had a visitor - Tony brought his U1250 DOKA around for a visit - this gives a sense of scale to a Land Rover 110.

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Finally, since we were so impressed by the Roorkhee chair, we decided to order another two chairs from J & R Guram for our Mog - this time we went with the Martin chairs. These fold out and can be assemble in a few seconds, whilst the Roorkhee chair take a minute or two to assemble. The Martin chairs are smaller - and only weight 6kgs. They arrived from India in less than a week, and the quality was on par with the Roorkhee chairs we have - in other words, very good. Next thing is to get a matching table made up - we will get our interior cabinet maker to build a table that fits into the back storage compartment, using the same composite method as our cabinets, it will be fairly light as well.

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[Iain_U1250]

Just about ready to install the roof rack/solar panel guards.


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This has been quite a fabrication exercise, lots of little components, lots of bending, lots of welding, and due to lack of proper fitting and welding, lots of grinding as well 28 legs, ( 12 of them are curved ) 30m of pipe, and 2.8m of flat bar.

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I sanded down the roof, then vacuumed all the dust away - tomorrow the roof rack gets glued on. Then I can paint the roof with the heat reflective paint at last.

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The interior fit out continues at a snail's pace - the lower part of the toilet cabinet has been installed. It now needs the top part of the cabinet - which goes to the roof, the doors, latches etc - then I can start to install the toilet. The front overhead locker has not been started, neither has the rear. The frames around the windows, step through, and door have been started but are a long way from being fitted, and the fronts of all the drawers and cabinets are not where close to being started. All of this will be finished before my builder goes away on holiday.

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The front for the bed has been installed, along with part of the Stove/Fridge cabinet.

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All going well, the locker around the bed will go in next week, and hopefully the rest of the stove/fridge cabinet, and maybe even the sink cabinet as well, but then I remember thinking that last month as well.

[Overland Hadley]

The rack looks beautiful! It will look very good on the roof.

Looking forward to seeing it installed.

[Iain_U1250]

First up the roof rack is on - lots of clamps and straps to hold it in place for the Sikaflex to dry. In order to have the maximum strength - the Sikaflex needs to be a minimum of 3mm thick. The is a small rubber spacer under each leg to keep the space.

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The straps go all the way around the truck - the foam is to protect the paint, which more of less worked - but I still have a bit of damage to the paint which I will have to touch up. The hammer Finish Epoxy is very hard - once it has been allowed to set up for a week or two. The really nice part is that you can't pick the touch ups - the hammer finish blends right. Checking last night, I have a fair amount of touch-ups to do, as I only waited 48 hours before putting all the clamps and straps on it, if I had a bit more patience, I would have less re-painting, but I wanted to get it up and on the roof.

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Here is the finished result - that should be capable of protecting the solar panels and the skylights from the odd branch - and will give me something to hang onto is I even fall slip on the roof rack. I tested it already - I can hang my full weight of the rack and it doesn't flex.



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I also got the drawers for under the bed made - they are 1mm steel, and pretty strong. The top one is for Trish's clothes, the bottom one for mine. Which seems out of proportion to me considering I'm almost twice her size and she normally wears about half as much clothing as I do - but she insists that what is needed. Still figuring out that one.


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I decided to do a load test to see if the drawers touch - I found all the full paint tins, drinks, food and stuff - it's about 25kg of stuff in it and they don't deflect more than a mm or so.

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I installed the compression lock and reinforced the front with a bit more steel spot welded in place, and another folded section over the rim. The drawers get a composite panel over the front of them, which will match the rest of the cabinets. I'll fit the other lock tomorrow - that one will be upside down, and will have striker under the drawer. Not an ideal solution, as it means I have to bend down to open my drawer in hindsight I should have put the big one on the bottom, so that I could get the missus to do the bending over, a much more pleasant a sight

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At last some more progress on the cabinets - this is the only full height cabinet in the truck - The section with the wires is for the control panel with the switches, circuit breakers, solar regulators, battery monitors and 12V sockets. It will also house the computer system. These are the raw composite panels - the get a covering of Laminex both sides. The shelves are supported on aluminium "T" section. The top three get doors on them the others are open. There is a full width locker across the front of the truck , and another above the bed, and around the bottom and side of the bed. There is another locker behind the two seats - access will require the seats to be wound forward, and since they are electric, it make that locker quite secure, and I can install a switch to cut power to the controls quite easily. I think I have enough storage inside the truck, and the "boot" space is pretty big - enough for the camping chairs, out 1200x800mm Jarrah top table, barbeque, extra clothes storage boxes and a fair bit of other stuff.

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Final, the two skylights are in - in the end I changed my mind for a third time as to what skylights to use. I ended up with some Vetus Magnus boat hatches. The first ones I tried were the Dometic Mini Heiki hatches, which were good, all plastic but looked like they could take a bit of a knock, but would not sea - at least the Australian version does not have seals, so on dusty roads, we would have the back filling up with dust. The second ones were the Fiamma roof hatches, they would seal up air tight, but were a bit too flimsy for my liking - I dropped on from the top of a desk and it cracked. These ones are full CE classification A1 hatches - ocean going yacht hatches. A solid aluminium frame and a 10mm acrylic - that should be tough enough. The main problem was the RV style hatches were 400x400mm, and the boat hatches are 421x421mm - so I had to expand the cut out in the roof, which meant removing half the frame I had made. The hatches are not that light, and the 2mm skin deflected a bit too much for my liking. Since I could not rebuild the frame properly since the lining is in, I added another 3mm thick sheet to the outside to reinforce the roof. This is now pretty stiff and should do the job.

I decided to install them this way, so that I could have them open a bit in light rain - The risk is that I drive off with them up, and a tree takes them out. I though about putting the the direction of travel, so they would just fold down, but then I'm just a likely to reverse out of a spot as drive forwards - and I would not be able to open them if it was going to rain, or even with heavy dew. Time will tell if i got that right.

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Next week the interior lining will be cut out to match, and a nice Jarrah frame with a mosquito net installed.

I'm hoping to have all the cabinets in by the end of next week. I though I said that about two months ago though.

[Overland Hadley]

The top one is for Trish's clothes, the bottom one for mine. Which seems out of proportion to me considering I'm almost twice her size and she normally wears about half as much clothing as I do - but she insists that what is needed. Still figuring out that one.

That is the way it should be.

[Iain_U1250]

Decided to finally sort out mounting the a/c compressor. All the other systems I have seen either had a substantial bracket to rotate the a/c compressor, or a tensioner pulley. I then had a brainwave - instead of figuring out how to move the a/c compressor to tension the belt, why not use the new alternator as an tensioner pulley - and then run dual belts for the a/c and the 120A alternator, and run the OEM alternator in the stock location.
After a lot of cutting and grinding and a few attempts, I came up with this design ( Mk VI or VII)

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I have dual electric fans for the radiator and a/c condenser, and could always do with the extra power - 120A + 55A give me a bit of redundancy as well. Just have to do a bit of rewiring to get the power to the batteries. Next thing is to find some V-belts. I measure it up as a minimum of 1455mm and a maximum of 1495mm - I need something around the 13A1475- 13A1485 mark. Both seem common enough, just to got to get to a parts store next week. I'll run dual belts, as the a/c compressor and the alternator will have a load just about the maximum for one 1/2" belt, and because I can. The last thing will be the tensioner - probably just a bit of flat plate with a slot going from the a/c compressor to the alternator.


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[Mickldo]

Hi Iain

Great work on the build, as always. I don't get on ExPo much anymore but this thread is one I always check.

You will like those little LED's (Baby Buzzards?), we use them on every truck we build at work. It also looks like you are using the same pancake LED's too, they are a great light too.

How have you mounted the fuses on your batteries? Do you have the fuses just bolted between the battery terminal and the cable? I'd be careful there, I've had a couple fail even when mounted in proper fuse holders. I'd be concerned that vibrations, etc would damage the fuse and I would mount the fuse on proper studs so it would have the best chance of surviving.

Someone else mentioned sand bending pipe using wet sand. That may be OK if you still use a pipe bender but if you cap the ends and heat the pipe as per the old school traditional way of sand bending then you will have a bomb on your hands as the wet sand will turn to steam and expand. If any heat is applied make sure the sand is fully dry. But you said you are using a JD2 bender, good choice. They are a nice bender.

Your build is awesome, very jealous.

Mick