The TARDIS - A Four Wheel Camper Build

[Overland Hadley]

Installed the second Lagun mounting bracket. There is now one located on each side of the camper.

[Overland Hadley]

I also was able to get a fair amount of work done on the counter top. No photos, but I am excited about how it is turning out.

[chvy39z]

Ski3pin directed me to Amazon. I wouldn't have thought Amazon would have aluminum bars but they do. They were $31 each but it is the only place I could find them.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i00_details

[Overland Hadley]

Ski3pin directed me to Amazon. I wouldn't have thought Amazon would have aluminum bars but they do. They were $31 each but it is the only place I could find them.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i00_details

I am having a hard time finding rectangle tube to match up with my Thule bars. Looking for 7/8 x 1 1/4, or close to that. Need to test fit some other sizes and see if I can come up with something that will work.

[Overland Hadley]

I also was able to get a fair amount of work done on the counter top. No photos, but I am excited about how it is turning out.

Another couple of hours were spent with the baltic birch. Cabinets are getting closer.

Also ordered some more Aluminum for the cabinets.

[Valkiera]

[Overland Hadley]

Received and installed the new handrail.

When it came I was impressed with the quality, but I did not like the mirror perfect finish.



So I spent a while giving it a fine burnishing. It now looks like the aluminum on the camper.

Install was straightforward. Unscrewed the old handle, put a little silicone in the hole and reinstalled the screws to seal up the hole. Then I marked for the new holes, drilled a pilot hole, mushed silicone in and around the hole, and installed with 14x5/8 screws. Nice and solid.



Personally this handrail works much better for me. And it is another custom touch on my camper. :)

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.

Attachment 91763

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.

[WASURF63]

That looks good. Pretty slick improvement.
Your long awaited FWC build is coming along nicely...

[Overland Hadley]

That looks good. Pretty slick improvement.

Thanks, it does make getting in/out much better.

Your long awaited FWC build is coming along nicely...

At this point I get only a handful of hours a week to work on it. So it is coming along slowly.

[Overland Hadley]

Took a while to search out a pair of interior dome lights that I wanted to install. I already have the LEDs that I will use for the interior so I did not want to spend a lot for fixtures that already had LEDs installed. Looking to marine products I narrowed it down to dome lights from Perko and Hella. Finally decided on a surface mount dome light with dual bulbs from Perko. The fixtures will have a red set if LEDs in addition to the bright white LEDs. Bought the light fixtures from Hodges Marine

Passenger side fixture.




Driver side, white on.




Driver side, red on.




Now I need to gets the LEDs installed.

I will be changing all the interior (and exterior) lighting to LED. Each light will be split between a white light and a red light. I have used the white/red light system on boats, and it is good when working at night. It might not be as useful in a camper, but it is where I would like to start and if I need to I can change some lights back to all white.

I have ordered and installed white and red LEDs from v-leds.com in the cab of the truck to test them out before ordering the full set for the camper. I am very happy with them. 100 lumens is a lot of light. And 5000K is a good working spectrum of light.

Link

The campers interior LED lights will have to be used sparingly, as they will be running off the single truck battery. This will work for me, as the weight savings of not having a second battery is impressive.

I have been mulling over options for my main light source. I thought about a LED lantern like the Black Diamond Apollo. (Link) But in the end I hate dragging around small batteries as much as I hate the heavy big ones.

Then I remembered the three candle lanterns I bought for a trip in the pacific north west. There was something warm and comforting about sitting around a couple of candles, especially in the never ending rain. Sure, they can be a bit of a pain, but it's something I do not mind dealing with.

I have the standard UCO Candle Lantern, (Link) customized with some of my stickers.