Iain_U1250
Explorer
I put this up on the Unimog forum - and it was suggested I put it here as well - it is a basically just a bit of a rant about the complexities of getting things done here in Australia. But I would appreciate any help for someone who have built an expedition truck over here and what the pitfalls are.
Having finished the structure of the camper body, I'm now looking at various bits and piece that go into the camper, and what a mine field it is. Everything over here has to comply with the "Australian Design Rules" - which is basically a set of regulations about how things are to be built. In order to register my truck, I will need to get certification that if complies with the ADR's, and that is where the complexities come in.
My truck is a fully complianced 1984 Unimog U1250 with a GVM of 7500kg - all the right placards in place. I am now a "Secondary Manufacturer" as I am fitting the body permanently and need to have extra seating capacity.
Circular 0-4-12 - Certification of Campervans and Motorhomes is the Federal "bible" on what my truck has to comply with. The ADR's relevant to my truck is the date is was imported - than that was 1984. So most of them don't apply - or so I thought. Since I want to change the seating capacity of the vehilce from 2 to 4 seats - then I have to comply with the new requirements for a lot of things as they are all cross linked - nearly every rule has links to another rule which you have to comply with as well.
The first tricky thing is the GVM.
The GVM of the truck shall not exceed the GVM of the base vehicle but the following must be taken into account:
The truck must be measure with all equipment such as toilet, fridge, shower gas bottles, water tanks, fuel tanks. I also have to add a Personal Effects allowance of 60kg for the first two sleeping berths and 20kg for other sleeping berths, and 71.6kg per "designated seat"
So I have to allow for around 300kg of people + 200kg of Personal effects"
Luckily I don't think I come close to the limit but looking at some of the motor homes here I wonder how many comply - particularly the ones based on utes ( pick-ups).
The next thing is the windows - I would prefer to get the Seitz double insulated windows as recommended here on a previous thread, but despite them being used in most Winnebago and other motorhomes, I don't know if they are ADR approved but have to assume not as they don't have the necessary ADR stamp on them. I've asked Dometic - the local agents and after quite a bit of a run-around I found someone who knew what he wwas talking about and he has been a greart help - The windows are not ADR approved as such, but have a German standard approval which means they are OK to use - and he sent me a copy of the certificate.
The door and steps is another thing covered by the rules - the maximum I can have when exiting the vehicle is 500mm step down - so I have to have something that drops down from the cabin door to with 500mm of the ground - this has to be able to be done from inside the cabin.
Seating and seatbelts are another thing - the seats have to be "certified" and the seatbelt mounting points must be a set dimensions. I'll be using the old front seat from the truck as the two rear seats, and welding up a box as a seat base from 40x40x2mm.
As I need it certified to carry passengers in the back, the structure of the frame has to "adequate" with no real definition of what adequate is.
The other thing is the door - it has to meet certain size constraints which mine does, but the lock has to be ADR approved "anti burst" lock. I can understand why as you don't want the door opening in an accident or through vibration. This means that I need to adapt any existing car door lock to my door as that would be the easiest. The RV doors that are sold would not comply with this requirement, yet are used in a lot of RV's.
In any case - they are not suitable for me - the door handles are quite high up on them - and to open them on my truck my wife would have to stand on a ladder. I need a door handle on the outside to be close to the bottom of the door, yet the door handle on the inside needs to be higher up - I think a car door lock would work well with the right links etc.
There are a lot of other requirements:
The rear overhang can't be more than 60% of the wheelbase, so from the c/l of the rear wheels to the furthermost rear point I can't be more than 1950mm. My truck is just short enough that should I choose to put the rear wheel on the back - it will be fine.
The exhaust must exit behind the "rear most welded panel of the passenger compartment" - so I can't have a vertical stack and I'll have to thread the exhaust through the chassis to the rear.
There are all sorts of technicalities about moving the rear lights and how high and how far back they can be from the rearmost part of the vehicle that I have not gotten around to yet.
One thing I've found very interesting is that there is a lot of difference between what is "legal" and what gets registered.
In the March 4WD the is a Unimog based camper, but it looks like a Unicat box on the back - and the door opens on the right hand side - which is against the ADR's and local state DOT regulation and I didn't see any seatbelts for the rear cab passengers in the photos either. He has a vertical stack exhaust behind the cab. It looks like a U1300L based truck ( 6 bolt axles and the wide fender flares), but unless the rear box is substantially lighter than mine, I think they will be very close to the 7.5ton GVM. They are carrying over 800lt of fuel and water, runs huge 14.00 tyres, have a rooftop tent, winches front and rear, big batteries, generator etc and carry a minimum of 4 people and a U1300 starts out 400kg heavier than my U1250. Despite all this their truck is registered for road use.
It seems that the ADR rules can be a minefield - and costly to comply if you make the wrong choice early on. Luckily I've done a fair bit of research, but I look at a lot of campers on the road and wonder how legal they are and what would happen to the owners if something went wrong.
Having finished the structure of the camper body, I'm now looking at various bits and piece that go into the camper, and what a mine field it is. Everything over here has to comply with the "Australian Design Rules" - which is basically a set of regulations about how things are to be built. In order to register my truck, I will need to get certification that if complies with the ADR's, and that is where the complexities come in.
My truck is a fully complianced 1984 Unimog U1250 with a GVM of 7500kg - all the right placards in place. I am now a "Secondary Manufacturer" as I am fitting the body permanently and need to have extra seating capacity.
Circular 0-4-12 - Certification of Campervans and Motorhomes is the Federal "bible" on what my truck has to comply with. The ADR's relevant to my truck is the date is was imported - than that was 1984. So most of them don't apply - or so I thought. Since I want to change the seating capacity of the vehilce from 2 to 4 seats - then I have to comply with the new requirements for a lot of things as they are all cross linked - nearly every rule has links to another rule which you have to comply with as well.
The first tricky thing is the GVM.
The GVM of the truck shall not exceed the GVM of the base vehicle but the following must be taken into account:
The truck must be measure with all equipment such as toilet, fridge, shower gas bottles, water tanks, fuel tanks. I also have to add a Personal Effects allowance of 60kg for the first two sleeping berths and 20kg for other sleeping berths, and 71.6kg per "designated seat"
So I have to allow for around 300kg of people + 200kg of Personal effects"
Luckily I don't think I come close to the limit but looking at some of the motor homes here I wonder how many comply - particularly the ones based on utes ( pick-ups).
The next thing is the windows - I would prefer to get the Seitz double insulated windows as recommended here on a previous thread, but despite them being used in most Winnebago and other motorhomes, I don't know if they are ADR approved but have to assume not as they don't have the necessary ADR stamp on them. I've asked Dometic - the local agents and after quite a bit of a run-around I found someone who knew what he wwas talking about and he has been a greart help - The windows are not ADR approved as such, but have a German standard approval which means they are OK to use - and he sent me a copy of the certificate.
The door and steps is another thing covered by the rules - the maximum I can have when exiting the vehicle is 500mm step down - so I have to have something that drops down from the cabin door to with 500mm of the ground - this has to be able to be done from inside the cabin.
Seating and seatbelts are another thing - the seats have to be "certified" and the seatbelt mounting points must be a set dimensions. I'll be using the old front seat from the truck as the two rear seats, and welding up a box as a seat base from 40x40x2mm.
As I need it certified to carry passengers in the back, the structure of the frame has to "adequate" with no real definition of what adequate is.
The other thing is the door - it has to meet certain size constraints which mine does, but the lock has to be ADR approved "anti burst" lock. I can understand why as you don't want the door opening in an accident or through vibration. This means that I need to adapt any existing car door lock to my door as that would be the easiest. The RV doors that are sold would not comply with this requirement, yet are used in a lot of RV's.
In any case - they are not suitable for me - the door handles are quite high up on them - and to open them on my truck my wife would have to stand on a ladder. I need a door handle on the outside to be close to the bottom of the door, yet the door handle on the inside needs to be higher up - I think a car door lock would work well with the right links etc.
There are a lot of other requirements:
The rear overhang can't be more than 60% of the wheelbase, so from the c/l of the rear wheels to the furthermost rear point I can't be more than 1950mm. My truck is just short enough that should I choose to put the rear wheel on the back - it will be fine.
The exhaust must exit behind the "rear most welded panel of the passenger compartment" - so I can't have a vertical stack and I'll have to thread the exhaust through the chassis to the rear.
There are all sorts of technicalities about moving the rear lights and how high and how far back they can be from the rearmost part of the vehicle that I have not gotten around to yet.
One thing I've found very interesting is that there is a lot of difference between what is "legal" and what gets registered.
In the March 4WD the is a Unimog based camper, but it looks like a Unicat box on the back - and the door opens on the right hand side - which is against the ADR's and local state DOT regulation and I didn't see any seatbelts for the rear cab passengers in the photos either. He has a vertical stack exhaust behind the cab. It looks like a U1300L based truck ( 6 bolt axles and the wide fender flares), but unless the rear box is substantially lighter than mine, I think they will be very close to the 7.5ton GVM. They are carrying over 800lt of fuel and water, runs huge 14.00 tyres, have a rooftop tent, winches front and rear, big batteries, generator etc and carry a minimum of 4 people and a U1300 starts out 400kg heavier than my U1250. Despite all this their truck is registered for road use.
It seems that the ADR rules can be a minefield - and costly to comply if you make the wrong choice early on. Luckily I've done a fair bit of research, but I look at a lot of campers on the road and wonder how legal they are and what would happen to the owners if something went wrong.