Well, I've returned from a 3500 mile test run. Overall, it did real well. However, I did learn a few things.
1. The mattress I have sucks. Its fine for a short time, but after half a night, it feels like the foam is all compressed and no padding, so I need to do something different there.
2. I had some leaking issues. I was lucky though. On the way down(when we were sleeping in it), I only hit about 20 minutes of light rain while driving. Upon setting up camp that evening, I noticed near both doors the sheets were a bit wet. I figured it must have came in through the doors. That night it rained all night and there were no leaking issues at all though, so it's obviously only an issue while driving.
The big problem was on the way home. We made a 19 hour drive from Florida back to Michigan and it rained most of the way, quite hard at times as well. When I got home at around 2 AM, I was taking a few things out of the camper and noticed the mattress was soaked. I flipped the mattress up and the entire floor was wet. Also, when I flipped the mattress up, a bunch of water was squeezed out and started running out the back passenger side corner (it was parked on a slight hill).
Here is what I think happened. I built the walls to hang down past the floor over the frame rails. It was all tight when I was framing it up. I then took the cabin off the frame and epoxied everything. When we set the cabin back down on the frame, it was a tight fit. The epoxy obviously added too much thickness that I didn't account for so when we persuaded the cabin back onto the frame, it must have seperated the floor / wall seams and this is were my leak is. At least I was lucky enough not to have this issue until I was home and I didn't need to sleep on a wet mattress.
3. I made the sleeping area 80 inches long. This is what a standard queen size mattress is. However, most bed frames allow at least another 6 or so inches room between the head and foot boards. I didn't think of this either. So when sleeping in the tear, with pillows under my head (which pushes me down a bit) my feet are against the back and I can't exactly stretch out. Luckily, I built a small chest that takes up about 6 inches of floor space at the front of the trailer at the head of the bed. I am going to remove this, and now I should have plenty of length to stretch.
Overall, it was a great trip. The camper pulled great. Hardly even noticed it was there. Even in the mountains, sometimes driving a little too aggressively because it was just entertaining, the trailer pulled with no trouble.
Here is a few photos. One of it hooked up to the wifes Edge in the mountains...
And one of just a cool shot from the top of Clingmans Dome.
Now, along with the aforementioned fixes, I need to finish the cabinets inside and the galley area.
