The TARDIS - A Four Wheel Camper Build

[chvy39z]

Your ideas have been of great use. So far I have a two burner SMEV, an Olympian Wave 3 heater, the 600r fantastic fan,a dreamtime mattress, the motion detection light,and the light weight aluminum bars for Yakima rack ordered. Thanks for putting this all together Overland Hadley.

[TACODOC]

[Overland Hadley]

Your ideas have been of great use. So far I have a two burner SMEV, an Olympian Wave 3 heater, the 600r fantastic fan,a dreamtime mattress, the motion detection light,and the light weight aluminum bars for Yakima rack ordered. Thanks for putting this all together Overland Hadley.

That is a nice list. Glad my research can be of help. (In reality I feel honored that you have found my info so useful. Thank you. )

Where did you order the aluminum bars from? I need to order my Thule bar replacements.

[Overland Hadley]

As I have been climbing in and out of my camper while working on it I have found that a longer and larger door handrail would be useful. Not sure if it is because I am a tall person, but I find the little handrail that FWC is using pathetic and far from ideal. Or maybe it is because I was frustrated with the handrail when I saw a picture of a FWC that had a second handrail mounted above the factory one. Either way I am excited to change it out to make an improvement.

Rail-OHD-18-T-1-316.jpg

Found a nice marine handrail from Dive-n-Dog. Did a little searching and found Here to be the best price, at about half of msrp.


Note: When looking at a replacement FWC handrail you will want to find a thru bolted one, as most marine handrails are male or female bolted.

[Overland Hadley]

I was a little disappointed to find that the camper blocked access to the 120v outlet located in the bed of the Gen2 Tacomas. Although I have never used the 120v outlet in the bed, it is not something that I want to block access to especially with the ''luxury'' items of the camper.

First I looked at installing a hatch in the camper to gain access to the outlet, but finding and installing a hatch that was sealed on both sides was looking to be a fair amount of work. So I decided to take a look at the outlet to see if I could move it to the other side of the storage opening in the bed of the truck. The seal on the outlet looks to be just fine if it is turned around, I kind of like how it works better than the factory installed way. So that was the route I was going to go. Turned out to be simple: unscrewed the outlet and cut off a clip releasing about 8'' of wire, unscrewed the storage box on the bed, drilled one hole and cut off a locating pin, and reinstalled the storage box upside down. Voila, my 12ov outlet is now accessible from the inside of the camper, via the turnbuckle access hatch. :)



A couple things that do not work like before is: the center screws do not line up but it is still securely mounted, the storage door would not work as good as it would now be upside down but it is 100% blocked by the camper and I do not use it when the bed is empty, the outlet is upside down but I feel the seal is still 100% and as I noted above I think it works better upside down.

[Overland Hadley]

Ordered the Tung Oil I will be using on the interior. It will be protecting the birch and aluminum interior.
(Thanks to Paul Jensens build for reminding me what a great product Tung Oil is.)

www.realmilkpaint.com/oil.

[takesiteasy]

...the storage door would not work as good as it would now be upside down but it is 100% blocked by the camper and I do not use it when the bed is empty, the outlet is upside down but I feel the seal is still 100% and as I noted above I think it works better upside down.

I looked at this on my truck after I saw your post. I too want to use the outlet when my camper is installed (hopefully near the end of May). It looks to me like the storage box cover will still work- the latch will just be at the bottom rather than the top. Did you check to see if you can just rotate the outlet in its opening to restore the original orientation or won't it fit upside down? Since you don't mind the new orientation maybe you didn't check.

As an alternative, I had thought I could just run an extension cord from the bed outlet to an outlet box installed in the camper. I would plug it in before the camper was dropped into the truck. I suppose if went this route I might want to make some kind of waterproof cover to protect the outlet from water getting in under the camper but that doesn't seem like a big problem. Do you think this is workable or isn't there room?

[Overland Hadley]

I looked at this on my truck after I saw your post. I too want to use the outlet when my camper is installed (hopefully near the end of May). It looks to me like the storage box cover will still work- the latch will just be at the bottom rather than the top. Did you check to see if you can just rotate the outlet in its opening to restore the original orientation or won't it fit upside down? Since you don't mind the new orientation maybe you didn't check.

I am not sure if the plug can be rotated, I liked the way it worked with the cover swinging down and went with that.

As an alternative, I had thought I could just run an extension cord from the bed outlet to an outlet box installed in the camper. I would plug it in before the camper was dropped into the truck. I suppose if went this route I might want to make some kind of waterproof cover to protect the outlet from water getting in under the camper but that doesn't seem like a big problem. Do you think this is workable or isn't there room?

In dusty conditions that area will get dirty, not sure if a lot of water would get down there but I am sure some would work its way down. Personally I just did not like the idea of having the outlet uncovered all the time. If you decide to go that way I think you would need a flat style plug to have a chance of it fitting, it is a really tight fit along there.

[takesiteasy]

Yeah, dust will get in there for sure. I guess I will have to wait until I have the camper to decide which way to go. Thanks for posting your idea, and all the other information you have collected. As others have said, it is a great resource.

[Overland Hadley]

Finished up with the Fantastic Fan.



Installed a single pole switch tapped into the wires coming in and going out from the thermostat. Now with a flip of the switch I can bypass the thermostat and use the fan whenever I want.



Fantastic Fan, Done.