Hi, and interesting thread!
My wife and I have been living in our camper since Nov 08, although for maybe a year of that we've been living on the driveway of friends and family. England, Scotland in winter, France and now Morocco.
We bought it on a Unimog U1300l chassis and built by the previous owner, and drove around the UK and France for about 18 months. It was 6.5m long, 4m high, the height being forced by having a fixed box (no pop) with double bed in the cabover. The 1300 is a 7.5ton chassis, so when we discovered how overweight the box was we thought the quickest and simplest way of becoming legal is to swap to a heavier mog. Its now a U1700, and weighs in travelling trim 9.5tons. To redress the tail heavy nature we have a storage box on the front bumper holding 5x20l jerrycans, adding 500mm to the camper length but giving a better ride.
The 1300 averaged 12mpg consistantly, now we do 10 (UK mpg of course!) and are mostly the slowest vehicle on the road in civilised parts.
We have 1 cubic metre of garage storage, whch is a little small, for tools, spares, table and chairs, bbq, petrol twin burner stove, part of the Little Giant step ladder, chain hoist etc etc.
Inside there is an L shaped dinette with removable table and "sofa" extension, on a false floor with heating, 260l water tank and 2x255Ah AGM's underneath. There is a good sized shower room with marine toilet and plastic fold down sink (compact and convenient, but not easily replaced if it cracks). 70l grey tank, 70l black tank underslung which has frozen occasionally. (A cassette would be easier, but does that require chemicals, making wild dumping a no-no?) 3 burner stove with oven, we now have an Omnia which we can make bread, apple crumble, cakes etc and really wish we didn't have a built in oven! A pressure cooker has also been fab. We have one 11/13kg sized gas bottle for cooking only. Room for a second bottle of some description for when the big one empties would be handy, smaller bottles are a lot more pricey though. A bottle swap is £22 in the UK, about £4 (butane only) in Morocco
Refilling your nice, tested, dent free UK bottle in Morocco is not possible. Room for a big bag of fresh veg, a stack of firewood, and even space to seperately divide your rubbish into food (peelings etc), burnable and other would be very good without the clutter it now creates
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We have loads of clean storage inside, so we have loads of stuff. We did initially carry lots of things like books on learning leathermaking and the materials for it, thinking time off work means time to do all sorts of things, but that time never materialised.
We have a PreMac water filter which has 3 cartridges and lasts 20-30000l of drinking water, but is bulky. We also discovered on one occasion that one big flat water tank makes it hard to get the last 20l out if you need to, and with no power you can't use the water filter, so we now have a seperate jerrycan with 20l of water and manual back up filtering!
Having seperate kitchen, bathroom, diner and bedroom areas makes it easy to keep out of each others way if needed, and is a very good reason we would not want to go much smaller.
Some inside pics before wallpapering etc
http://www.moglet.co.uk/page11.html
Camping in England is pretty much campsites only, elsewhere is probably illegal and you will most likely be moved on by the Police, so expanding your camper on a proper campsite with awnings etc is easy, elsewhere not really possible.
In Scotland you can AFAIK legally park anywhere, for a night or two, and the signs that say no overnight parking are illegal
But awnings etc would make moving on difficult if someone took offence, and would make what you are doing obvious.
France is set up for camping, and is a lovely place to do it year round. They have "Aires", which are for campervan "parking", not "camping", so in theory even a table and chairs and a wind out awning aren't allowed, for the same reason no caravans. An expanded camper set up would not really work here, and the French like parking as close as you would in a superstore carpark, so often there is no room to do so. They are either very cheap, or free, maybe a few Euros for 100l of drinking water. In the ski resorts the Aire facilities are often in an insulated box, so for a cassette no problems, but you need a container to transfer your blacktank contents or a lot of hose. European campsites are set up for cassettes often making a built in tank a real pain. The campsites are pretty much all good, but can be pricey, and along the French Med ridiculously cramped. One I stayed in with a tent there was no room to put the guyropes out. 20 miles inland is often empty even in August. Wildcamping is fairly easy especially away from tourist bits and off season, but discreet is still good so awnings etc won't help.
Morocco also has kind of Aires, as well as a fair few campsites of very varying quality. You would not choose to use many of the toilet facilities! Noone has yet minding us wildcamping, but finding a tap is sometimes hard, and it may well not be drinkable even from a campsite, as they themselves, and indeed the whole town (Mhamid for example) is 20km from fresh water with an unreliable supply. Their own boreholes supply salty water OK for washing once you've taken the wildlife out, but my inline filter will not only not touch the salt of course, but the manufacturer tells me this will reduce its life considerably. Asking to fill my 260l tank with potable water is to them as sensible as going to the moon for lunch.
Here there is also the fact that a woman has to be fully clothed. A western woman may get away with a little, but even with arms, legs and hair pretty much covered many men can still be disgustingly offensive though only if my wife is alone, perhaps walking 5mins from a campsite to get fresh bread. And this is not a strict country by any means. Shutting the camper door on that is highly valued.
The above is a little OTT, and totally O/T if this thread is OP specific and only for the USA, but in our experience, for where and the type of weather we've travelled in, inside room that does not need dismantling to move is a godsend!
However
When travelling south through France we wanted to enter Spain via Andorra. Unfortunately our height meant we could not, with either bridges or tunnels stopping us. One road from Spain was big enough, but we'd need a huge detour to reach it, and the same route out again, so our size made the decision to not go there. The UK has a lot more size restrictions, but the mapping quality makes route planning easy. I won't know what we're missing on these detours though! And the smaller more interesting lanes won't be used to big vehicles even if there are no man made known restrictions, so our camper has hit a few trees in her time. Spain seems to have no maps showing heights etc at all, although bridges do once you've reached them! Not having much infrastructure at all Morocco doesn't have much of a problem in that respect
In Morocco we recently spent 3 days driving either on piste on very minor roads, having filled with diesel at the start, and the map showing fuel at the end. There were two 5 ton weight limit bridges shown on the Michelin map which we hoped to be able to ford instead, and at the end one 15 ton limit. The small bridges had long been washed away, but the suspension bridge at the end turned out to be only 5 ton. The older bridge some years before was 12 tons we were told, so I don't know where Michelin got their 15 ton info from. The fuel was still a good few km ahead, but I don't think we had enough left to retrace our route as it was all steep slow going. We had one 20l can for diesel which the smaller vehicle we were travelling with could have spent a day shuttling back and forth filling us up, then 3 days to retrace our steps. But bridges are built with a big safety factor aren't they surely, and none of the local's lorries can have a clue if they're either slightly or hugely overladen?! What would you do?
Start the trip with a smaller vehicle?!
Smaller also possibly means new? ie, older mog vs new Landy? Our mog is definitely well built, and although shows only 23000km is that a true figure, what did its former owners put it through? Take it to a garage before your trip and ask them to change everything showing dubious levels of wear is OK, asking them to change everything that might break while you're on some remote track requires a crystal ball. We currently have a few squeaks, but there is no garage to take it to for reassurance.
So go with a new vehicle and perhaps you gain reassurance in that respect, but also a huge can of electronic worms that are as unfixable on a remote piste as a failure of a part you don't have the space to carry. In Morocco if we get stuck there is nothing for miles big enough to pull us out. If we break down there is nothing big enough to tow us. There mostly is nothing to winch from, and anywhere there actually are trees they are really old, stunted and too small. If we travel to places that required the Mogs capabilities to get us there, it follows that you would need a Mog to get to us to help. That is all a little negative, but I have to say that each new weird little noise that pops up dwells in my mind, and without a definite answer regarding its cause or seriousness I find it hard to deal with. I'm responsible for us in the vehicle I chose, but putting us at risk knowing I can't fix everything isn't easy. Would a new vehicle have fewer issues, would a smaller vehicle have smaller and more managable problems?
Some of the pistes we've been on are very rough, often it seems from tour groups travelling at high speed unladen. In retrospect we should have taken more air out of the tyres, but those rocks looked sharp! While the Landcruisers etc shot past at 40kph, we rarely exceeded a painful 10.
As has been said the tyres are expensive and heavy. Deals are there to be had, but not when I needed to buy some when we started out (on the smaller sizes for the 1300 at least). A couple of the older rims leak a little despite sealing paste/lube, which if you are lazy and are parked for a while, you need to reseat them. (Same with a puncture, as pressure loss makes the tyre debead, so fixing it with a plug may work, but reseating with ether needs taking the wheel off. I've never got the bike inner tube thing to work?!) Cleaning the bead means taking them apart, while they are flat on the floor. This isn't hard, but I'm 40 and reasonably strong. No way could my wife do it alone, and if I was ill or injured neither could I. Thats on the flat on tarmac. On a steep piste? Tying something to the tyre to stop it rolling just a little to quickly too? We can use the hoist to pull the tyre upright if needed, but thats at the back. A lifting point above each corner would be a good idea.
So for us it depends on the time of day! Sometimes a new 6 ton T-Rex Bremach with a small custom pop top would be an expensive ideal, sometimes having a north south bed that the width of that dictates is too restricting! Save up for an equally pricey nearly new mog and get a small Alaskan on the back, running a ton or more inside its gross? Staying at home on the sofa cos its all too much hassle?!?! We've met quite a few people with a Landy sized vehicle with roof tent who wonder why we need all Moglets space, but they could not easily and comfortably be parked up at the foot of a Hebridean lighthouse in winter with the Atlantic trying to pull the cliff down we're parked on! We didn't sleep much, but it was fun!
We've yet to go anywhere that you actually could go fully "off road" to a decent extent even if you wanted to, trail breaking as it were, but despite that our clearance, traction, small turning circle (3250 wheelbase) and even just its presence has been handy quite often, but much longer would have been a problem mostly where U-turns would not be nice! Wildcamping actually out of sight is pretty much impossible though.
A bath under the sofa is a cool idea though, maybe with a portaporti in it? Our loo door is not noise or smell proof anyway!
No apologies for such a huge post :Wow1:, but well done if you've got this far!!!:ylsmoke:
Jason
