Recent content by Vance Vanz

Rear Bumper & Camper Assembly Design - Continued...... More hardware orders. Here is most/all of the hardware (and some small specialty parts) for the rear bumper & camper assembly. This required a ton of research and digging to find the specific items I needed. Hopefully not, but I'm pretty...

Rear Bumper & Camper Assembly Design - Continued...... 5. Spare Tire Carrier There are simply no prebuilt options out there for a spare tire carrier that would have worked for my build. I might go as far as saying that they are only one or two prebuilt spare tire carrier options out there for...

Rear Bumper & Camper Assembly Design - Continued...... 4. Bumper Ladder/Steps. This is probably the most miss designed, or ignored, element of an expedition vehicle I see. Some builders will include large/tall gear lockers on the back of a camper and no way to get to them (or no way to access...

Design, Design, Design & More Design……, After getting the solar panel racks designed, I had to track down all of the material (metal) and hardware. Not a huge deal, but just a few more things to add to the amount of time everything takes. Way back somewhere in the build thread, I bought a...

I'm still here and cranking away on the Beast ITTOG (y). The build swallowed me whole for a while (I had to shut the world out for a bit), but luckily spit me out for a much needed vacation and build thread update. We get on the plane tomorrow and will disappear for three weeks :love:! I...

Grey Water Tank Install It's still a little dirty inside the compartment from the rainy day trip back from the paint shop for the interior of the camper. I'll get it all squeaky clean before the final install. I'm sure I will need to remove and re-install the tank and brackets another 100...

Front Hidden Winch Dry Fit Hidden winch mount Getting the winch on the mount Getting the heavy assembly onto the truck and snugging it up Dry fit complete (almost) A few more fitment things to trim, grind, and repaint and then everything will come apart so the chrome bumper can head...

Reviving the Build Thread Well, it is January 3rd 2026 and my last post was August 11th 2025! It is bonkers how these builds distort time (a month feels like a week and a season feels like a month). I don't even remember fall and I'm still wondering what happened to summer :unsure:? I hope...

Sealing Items to the Camper - Continued ...... Cut lines dialed in Quick test of the AC before it heads to the roof and finds a new home My new shop manager (Erin) giving the green light. What a Nerdy Birdy ☺️😍😘 Getting prepped for the pook Getting there All sealed and ready for the...

Sealing Items to the Camper I'm going stir crazy over here 🤪! Finally a break from designing and time to get stuff mounted. Trying to perfect straight, clean and crisp cut lines on LINE-X 🤨. This is crucial, because I'm mounting/sealing everything on the outside of the camper with Black 3M UV...

Slide Out Solar Panel Rack/Arrays - Continued...... Going with the lockable surfboard racks vs cross bars reduced my walkway to get to the boards pretty significantly. In addition, one of the actuators had to be mounted across this path, so I wanted to lay out something to scale. I needed to...

Slide Out Solar Panel Rack/Arrays I was originally super excited about this project, in the beginning of the build 😄🥰🤗. BUUUUT….., now that we are (I am) years deep into this project, I have been contemplating whether to scrap the stacking solar panel slide out racks altogether. I had to go...

Heating System & Auxiliary Alternator Not the most exciting stuff, but all of the items that just consume a lot of time on the build. I needed to finalize how I was going to route and support the ¾” x two coolant hoses from the engine compartment to the very back of the camper (for the Rixen...

Heat Shielding the Gas Tank I didn't realize the time :oops:. My last post before I get my butt to bed :sleep:. I have a long day of designing tomorrow. Hopefully my gramar and speling have'nt been atracious :ROFLMAO:! My little rant........... I'm always surprised to see when builders (the...

Heating Pads & Surfboard Rack I told you we were going to jump around 🤡. Who would have thought heating pads and surfboard racks would be in the same post 🥸. Grey Water Tank & Battery Heating Pads: This baby will be 4 season, so I gotta keep things warm in the dead of winter. I try and test...