So, short shake down run complete and here are some things I learned:
1. I still need to find that one last squeak!
2. The twin 6V AGM batteries are rock stars. When I pulled out of the driveway they were showing 13.0V on the solar controller readout (haven't received my special AGM charger/minder yet, so I went with the as-shipped level of charge). They are under no load during travel because I have a small inverter hooked into one of the stock switched outlets making the refer 110V during transit. Car shut off at ~9:30 AM and the batteries took over with the refer and water pump duty. I used the pump for dish washing, I took a shower after a long hike and I ran it fairly continuously for 5 minutes or so recycling water back into the tank trying to sort out the hot water heater (after a cold shower). I kept tabs on the meter and it never showed less than 12.8V. Drove home with the inverter working again and all load off the batteries and when I pulled into the driveway they were at 13.0V again! So after 18 hours or so, no input voltage and a rest period they basically rebounded to their previous charge state.
3. I was in the trees and there was a big brush fire off to the East with thick smoke in our area, so there was no opportunity to try out the solar panel. There was one little scrap of sort-of-sun so I mounted the panel just to see if I could get a look at the controller with juice coming in, but apparently there wasn't enough electricity bullets coming through to fire off the panel. At least I got the chance to mount it, plug it in and make sure everything was Hoyle with all of that.
4. I need to spend some time rearranging my stored items in the under-floor hatches as opposed to "sweet, this fits there" type of thinking. I spend WAY to much time sliding things here and there to access stuff under the floor so getting things I will use all of the time/part of the time/only in a crisis categorized and arranged better will be time well spent.
5. Sleeping setup works great, no issues there. I do need the second window screen to let air circulate through and some loose window coverings are in order, but I knew that.
6. Hot water heater was DOA, so that's boxed up and headed back to the Amazon. I'm going to take a breath and think about that one.
7. Water pump is a good, strong model. I ended up swapping the little push button on/off hose end dealio from the end of the hard pipe coming from the basement to the end of my 5 foot whip. It works a lot better for one-handing rinsing off dishes and whatnot, basically like a fancy garden nozzle which makes me think I could have juts used a fancy garden nozzle, but I like the push button functionality. And you can use it without a full depress of the button to dribble if you like, so that's cool for filling dog dish, etc.
8. The dog is a pain in the butt on the way up but a sleeping lump on the way back. Just like kids...walk the crap out of them and they are much more pliable.
9. Refrigerator seems to work really nicely. It will be nice when I get comfortable with it and can stop obsessing over the temperature readout. I set it for 38 and had it plugged into shore power overnight Friday before leaving Saturday morning. It was on inverter during the drive up and back and on battery the rest of the time. The readout seems to bounce around a few degrees up/down so I'm not sure if that's a function of the electronics, usage or what, but it never showed below 34 and never above 40 so I guess a window bracketed around your set temp is the game. From an analog-style analysis standpoint, everything stayed nice and cold.
10. No blown fuses, no car fires, no broken suspension pieces so that's all good. Fully loaded, by rear space between the fender and tire was -1" from my front, so a little squat as discussed previously, but not enough that it's even obvious and I didn't feel like I was driving a boat that won't plane out or anything like that. Felt normal on the pavement and didn't bottom out on any of the 22 miles of crappy waterboarded forest road with dozens of diagonal water channels across it.
11. Wind drag! I can FEEL the wind on the crap up in the cargo basket and it was very obvious that was killing my gas mileage. I had the spare, the propane tank, the shower tent, a folding chair and a storage box up there (the box being the biggest offender). I pulled it all down (except the spare tire) and threw it in the back for the two hour drive home and it was like night and day. Mileage crept up the whole way and was showing 24.5 for the whole trip when I got back, that was over a distance of 210 miles with ~25 on 15 mph dirt. I don't trust the computer completely because I know it's working on trends, but the trend it was showing on the way up was sub-20 and from where the gauge is sitting I think 24+ is about right. I spent the ride up designing an expanded front fairing that will cover all the way up to the top of my chosen cargo load out. It will be a pretty inexpensive experiment, so we shall see how that goes, but I don't want everything inside the car and I don't want 19 MPG, so I will look into it.
12. Courtesy lights! I have all of the interior lights set to "OFF" so I can be in and out of the car and leave the rear hatch open without affecting the car battery, but at some point I noticed that those damn little courtesy lights in the mirrors were staying on. Apparently they stay on indefinitely if a door is open, although I think the car has some sort of "battery drain" feature that will kill stuff like that at some point, but I don't want to find out where that kicks in! I went to move the car at one point and it was just the slightest bit wonky on the starter, and I was like "WHAT?!". That's when I noticed the CL's. So I will need to dig into how to disable those (not using a rock) because having the rear closed is NOT a good option. If anyone knows....
Think that's about it for now.
