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2 Comments

  1. re:
    Rich’s box-truck RV

    I glance at these RV conversion videos as I wonder about their intent.

    For our Expedition Vehicle, we used a 7.5ft x 12.5ft box 7ft high on a Class 8 heavy truck.

    Because we back-up to rivers and shores, we built a rear entry. Over it we built a steel roof of 2″ black steel pipe with a 20-gauge sheet-metal panel atop. Backing-up and smashing the occasional branches is a ‘so what?’.

    We boondock exclusively, often in remote areas accessed by dirt tracks, so we enjoy our ‘pin-stripes’ from busting through narrow lanes as we forge ahead.

    Our porch floor is ‘expanded’ steel, framed with hinges to access the battery bank == six Group 31 AGM plus the two starting batteries built interested the truck frame. O-bolts secure the roof panel plus hold the shower curtain while in use.

    For showers, we use a couple new garden sprayers on the porch. And yes, a shower is mandatory.

    Aft of our porch is the combination hitch == fifth-wheel, gooseneck, bumper-pull.

    Our conversion took less than one week. Since 2003, we did South America twenty-four months twenty-four thousand miles, Alaska Panama, all over North and Central America.

    We usually winter on the beaches of Baja. Caravan out onto those perfect beaches, set-up camp for the kayaks and SCUBA. Nobody else around for months at a time.

    Using a similar commercial chassis, we built our fifth-wheel toy-hauler with a 7.5 x 16 box with Tuck-Away lift-gate. We mounted a 120-gallon fuel tank ‘saddle tank’ from a heavy-truck wrecking yard.

    Our ground-clearance == 16″.
    Our GVWR == 29,000#.
    Weight across to scales == 14,000#.
    We have a nice 15,000# cushion of cargo capacity.
    1997 Ford CF8000 Cummins 8.3 250/800, Allison 3060.
    Rattle-canned a nice shade of ‘blend-in tan, orange, black’.
    In theory, our fuel tank range == Anchorage to Acapulco.

    We see one problem with Rich’s conversion == he seems interested in getting his rig to look right.

    We are interested in our rig to full-time travel.

    And yes, we are way too busy to YouTube our conversion and travels.

  2. Just a note on the West German snow camo ponchos – I have a couple and they’re made of 100% cotton, so make sure you apply some water repellent before using them. Otherwise they can get waterlogged and freeze up into a solid block. Another alternative is to buy some white silnylon, sew it into a poncho and add a few splotches of brown/grey paint.

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