EarthRoamer XV-JP "Northwest Edition"

[Ford Prefect]

...spend a fair amount of time answering questions about it.

Which is something I am sure you don;t mind at all!

[The Swiss]

James, Mike,

Saw a picture of the "Northwest Edition over on the JK Habitat thread. Not sure how I missed this thread; I guess I never look at the Earthroamer chapter as these vehicles are a wee bit out of my price range.

Absolutely love the Northwest Edition!! I too was never a fan of the original Earthroamer roof (and still not completely sold on the JK Habitat roof either) but the "Northwest Edition" catapulted itself immediately to the very top of my dream car list, leaving Sportsmobile and others in the dust.

Congratulations!!!

BTW, can you give me more information about the Pelican case that is attached to the rear door or a link to the thread, if you have already covered it somewhere else?

[mhiscox]

BTW, can you give me more information about the Pelican case that is attached to the rear door or a link to the thread, if you have already covered it somewhere else?

Thanks for the kind words about the truck's modifications. As far as the Pelican case goes, not too much to it. I have a Hardigg case on the rear door of my Sprinter and found it very handy, so I was eager to try the idea here.

Don't know the exact size if the Pelican case; it was left over from Unimog days and used to live on the Sprinter's roof rack. The trick was to find (from McMaster-Carr or similar) isolation bushings with studs out either end, the studs on the threads matching the threads already in the Wrangler back door. Then it was straightforward to drill holes throiugh the rear of the case to line up and put nuts on the inside of the case.

I've been watching to see if there'd be wear in the holes from the case bouncing up and down, but no sign of any. We've got big fender washers on both sides and that seems to be doing the trick.

[Harp]

Mike,
How is the tent attached to the top and bottom? Velcro? I am very impressed with the setup and plan to steal several ideas to make my flawed camper better. Very inspirational and ballsy to cut up a ER! Makes my idea of major changes to my Flippac not such a big deal.

Thanks for posting a truly remarkable transformation.

Marty

[mhiscox]

Yeah, thanks for the understanding about hacking up the original design. I'm sure the millions of people who've never camped out of an XV-JP wonder what the hell I was thinking, while the dozen people who have used one know exactly why I did it.

There are two triangular side pieces and one roughly rectangular front. All three are permanently mounted to the top and held at the bottom with both snaps and hook-and-look. The snaps would hold everything fine, but the hook-and-loop makes the junction with the cabin bug-proof.

When you prepare to close up the tent, you roll each of the three pieces from bottom to top and then buckle the roll up into the roof with the quick connectors mounted there. Because the material is thin and the pieces small, these rolls tuck up nicely out of the way and are barely noticeable. This is a huge improvement over trying to store the giant original tent, which was very intrusive.

One of the key things is that all of the lower edges have a good-sized exterior flap a few inches above the tent-cabin junction that lies over the edge of the roof. This makes it so rain never gets around the junction.

Best of luck with your own project.

[Bill@EarthRoamer.com]

One of the biggest parts of the (re)build of this XV-JP had to do with the top. In case you've never seen the inside of an XV-JP with the tent deployed, here's what it looks like (pic from EarthRoamer website):



This setup poses a few different issues. Firstly, have you ever tried to sleep in a tent this bright? Here in the Northwest, the bulk of the camping that we do is in the summer. Daylight can be 5:30am... see where I'm going here? The second issue has to do with dew, and even worse, rain. The tent that came from EarthRoamer is far from watertight- if it's raining outside, it's raining inside. Say you've had enough of getting all wet after 5 minutes of rain in your $100k+ rig- you fold up the top and head to a drier area, or even back home. Meanwhile, your saturated tent drenches everything else in your truck, and some of the components that don't have a waterproof coating start to rust... like your roll cage, which then leaves rust stains on your tent.

We worked very hard to design a build a single-wall tent that was completely waterproof but unfortunately we never were able to build one that was 100% waterproof - especially in an environment as wet as the pacific northwest. We did however come up with a simple solution that is very effective and completely solves the problem…

a rainfly:

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there's this rope, arm, and winch system to deploy the top/tent. While it is certainly 'techy' and cool, it also puts the bulk of the pressure on the drivers side of the camper box, and after a few months of use stress cracks had appeared all the way across the rear pivot point of the camper box. Not good- the winch was literally pulling apart the truck.

The closing system was designed with a "stop" on the rope so that the winch would only apply force to the primary aluminum support hoop. As designed, no force from the winch was being transmitted to the fiberglass body. My guess is that someone removed the rope stop from Mike’s camper which would result in exactly the problem described.

[Ford Prefect]

I'm still waiting for the completed interior of the XP-JP...

[jrueppel]

I bit off the current topic, but I was just admiring the photos of the NW JK again and noticed the rear bumper. Was that part of the original Earthroamer installation or something added later? It has a good lean "overland" oriented look to it. (Something I'm finding really rare in most of the JK aftermarket rear bumpers out there.) Could you tell me who the maker was?

Would enjoying seeing what has been done with the interior as well. I've been a big fan of the adaptions made for the NW JK. Cheers.

[mhiscox]

I'm still waiting for the completed interior of the XP-JP...

What?! I forgot to post up the pictures of the beautiful teak and aluminum interior I did for the Jeep?!

Just kidding. No progress whatsoever. Severe decision paralysis about what to do. Trust me, Brian, when there's the merest hint of progress, you'll know about it. I am, of course, plenty embarrassed, but since the truck drives great and holds a lot of camping gear, it's being pretty functional as is.

[Ford Prefect]

since the truck drives great and holds a lot of camping gear, it's being pretty functional as is.

So are you sleeping in it then?

Or is this just a nice vehicle to bring your tent along with you?