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An 800A car battery is nowhere near 800Ah. Maybe 50Ah? They only deliver 800A for a few seconds. And the units for the charger will be in A, not Ah. Considering that most of us do fine without any of this, 30-40W seems huge. Lead acid batteries are OK being trickle-charged when full. I'd find...

It would be interesting if you can convert that to an average W/F of heat supplied. That's Fahrenheit between indoor and outdoor temperature. I think our campers are fairly comparable in size. Mine is ~13 W/F in testing (For instance a 50F delta T, would be 650W) after saturating for 3 days, and...

Ya, that was a really dumb design change. I finally replaced mine in a parking lot at Bryce Canyon when it had near 200k miles. Luckily since I had an '84 the housing was big enough to accept the previous generation's chain and guides. Another dumb thing at ~80k miles was the oil pressure...

I measured the input to an electric heater. It's simple and works well. Hard part is gauging the exterior environment when you have variable sun and temperature and wind... but estimating is good enough. I don't camp in extreme temperatures, but it's nice when the body heat of one person is...

I just checked Consumer Reports reliability history for the entire 2007-2021 run of the 2nd gen Tundra, which is mostly the 5.7L. 12 of those 14 years got the highest rating, 5/5 for "Engine Major". The other two are 4/5. For the "Engine Minor" category 9 years are 5/5, and the other 5 are...

1000 ml and 500 ml are volumes. Air is a compressible gas, not a fluid. By the rationale I think you are trying to make, a tire with double the volume and same pressure would carry 2x the weight. And similarly, a tire with 2x the pressure would carry 2x the weight. But... tread width and...

These are options in your current size. https://tiresize.com/tiresizes/235-85R16.htm Can you fit a larger tire without clearance issues?

I expect a heavy duty tire with high psi and load, and low speed rating, to have high rolling resistance and high fuel consumption. That's why I thought the LT would be better, not worse! The commercial tires are made to haul a lot more weight than you need... that's the issue. Maybe that is...

Those are < 36". If you are worried about fuel consumption, stick with your original idea of LT... and get tires with low rolling resistance. Size has nothing to do with it.

The only obvious issue I see is where your platform is interfering with the rails.

Probably similar to "you don't need to outrun the bear, you just need to run faster than the slowest person in your group... " So... you need to attract bears less than the other campers at your site.

Low strength steel is actually very good at absorbing energy through permanent deformation. This is a nice feature if you are trying to reduce G forces on occupants, but the steel gets mangled in the process. If we want to reduce damage to the vehicle and the bumper itself for low speed...

About 11,000 hrs... yikes! Over 5 years of full time work... Hope you had a great time at Burning Man!

One thing I'm confused about is... can I get the $120/mo plan with the mini if I don't care about in-motion use? If this is merely a power cable, just add the appropriate ends to a long set of wires (12ga 100 ft is <6% loss @ 30W nominal draw) and plug into both devices.

I've never worried about it... but then I stayed away from campgrounds and didn't cook meat (no refrigeration). Black bears that aren't acclimated to humans are afraid of us. Often there were plenty of bears around but they never bothered me.

Mine isn't a topper. I removed the bed and it mounts to the truck frame. It's all fiberglass and carbon layup and PVC foam core. I got the foam from Carbon Core. Aluminum framing is going to create a pretty pronounced thermal bridge, but maybe you don't care about that? And if you toss in...

ACM is usually very thin skin with plastic core. Poor insulation and not very strong or stiff for a sparse frame. Have you considered PP honeycomb and fiberglass skins? This is what the Aterra uses. https://www.carbon-core.com/product/plastic-honeycomb-sheets/ Many angles are good! I'd taper...

If you can't get the weight down to ~8k lbs on the rear axle, then LT tires will be over their weight rating. If you can, then swapping out wheels with LT tires mounted should work. I know some SS manufacturers have an option for LT or military, anyway.

Sounds good to me! I would expect a sway problem since you should be well under the weight rating of the tires. You can fit 12.5s as well, I assume?

When the insulation gets quite good, the ventilation loss becomes an important factor, and a heat exchanger would certainly help. But I think this is probably only practical for someone really trying to minimize heat energy... maybe use only body heat, electric heat, or a very simple heater...