Hi
Apologies for what you will I'm sure view as a Newbie question. As I'm based in the UK I don't get to see many pop tops at all, and the usual discussions between makes on this forum are between people who have possibly seen several of the things! And the Alaskan website could be better!
I have a Mog camper, which was built well but heavily by the previous owner, ply throughout internally. The wife and I were looking into building something similar ourselves when this came up a few years back at a price it would have been stupid to ignore. We've lived in it for the last 25 months, UK and France only so far which was of course not the plan, but its still been fun! So these thoughts and ideas are for a camper for long trips to hopefully a wide variety of road and weather conditions, to live in fairly long term as we are now. But what we have now could be better insulated against the sun as well as containing heat a little more in the winter. It could certainly have a lower travelling height! Continental shipping will mean strapping on top of a container ship if we want to go that far, and a lot of that stuff never arrives! It could better distribute the weight we have, and that weight could easily be smaller. It could have a little more external storage space, possibly a little less inside. We don't have kids at the minute, but in the future???
So;
The big water tank that allows us to shower inside everyday for a week is a good thing. The diesel hydronic Eberspacher, compressor fridge, gas hob, fixed double bed, 30lb gas bottle and lots of internal storage are all things we want to keep. A little more external storage would be good, we can lose the oven, and mounting the two spares a little more up front and central would be ideal. More insulation for definite. Thetford I'm not decided on, too small capacity perhaps! Space to store a 1KW Honda genny, and run it where its stored is also needed. Around the chassis rails is full of fuel tanks and grey/black waste tanks at the minute.
I don't know for sure but the box probably weighs more than 2000kg empty easily. A common reason people say they won't have an Alaskan is weight, but we'd probably save a ton if not more
so that doesn't really come into it.
I know there is a stretched U500 having an Alaskan put on it, but no pics have yet surfaced of the two meeting?
Is an Alaskan the only pop top with solid sides without going to the extreme of Unicat $$$?
Our camper has an internal shower room, marine head mounted on ply, fold down basin, ply walls and a pvc type shower tray and none of it has minded getting wet since 2003 when it was finished. So why is putting a shower in an Alaskan a "bad" thing?
Our current box is 13' long plus overcab. I had thought that a similar length Alaskan, with the underside of the overcab camperbed within the box (as in the attached pic from the Alaskan site) like the U500's is a good plan, and avoids the folding bed walls. Dropping the camperbeds floor a little to allow a proper mattress would be needed. I also thought that typical truckbed sides like on Bill Caid's U1300l, but that were made to finish at the Alaskan top's bottom edge so as to protect the base at least, and then with doors to allow getting to the bed underside, would hang well together. These sides could go higher still to protect the windows fully in transit, but I don't think the popping height would make the windows fully appear? What is the total height difference popped to unpopped typically? The sides may have to be higher at the front to allow a big enough door to under the overcab (!), then curve down to allow an unfettered view out of the window with the top popped.
If the Alaskan is slightly higher than the cab, I could put a small rack on the cab roof to mount a pair of solar panels. If the Alaskan is lower then solar on there.
How tree friendly is the Alaskan build from a getting damaged point of view? Better than soft sided poptops but not as good as a rigid box? How do they hold up with really bad roads long term? Is the top only ever in contact with the bottom via the sealing skirt and the 4 jacks? Or is there some sort of bumpstop seating area for travel?
How drafty is the door? Is this the only area that does leak usually? So it really can be toasty, rather than a darn site warmer than something like a Flippac which I would kinda expect?! Toasty with a lot of input from the heater, or is it really well insulated full stop? Are their nice big windows double glazed? We have Seitz at the minute, but are scratched and protrude, asking to be pulled off perhaps?
I think Alaskan can make several or any width(s) you like? Any reason to not take advantage of this to give more internal storage space?
I'm unsure about tyre storage. They hang on the back at the minute, which could almost not be worse for weight distribution. If the whole bed underside was external storage, then some sort of tyre lift could be rigged off the truckbed sides to get them in, horizontal on top of each other or vertically against the bed front wall.
I could however build a 500mm thick storage sandwich over the whole truck bed area, so batteries, watertank, oils, recovery stuff and tyres (horiz) could all live under this. The under camperbed bit could then all be, down to the camperfloor at least, internal storage. The top of the Alaskan would end up higher than the cab roof though, but if I dismounted it the truck could be driven wheel less into a standard (high version) shipping container, camper slid in afterwards. I could even play with the height of the dividing floor between truck floor and underside of camperbed to provide some underbed internal storage and enough external storage height for a trail bike. The spare tyres would go rearward of this "garage" within the 500mm deep sandwich.
The construction of this sandwich could be really simple depending on how much support the Alaskan actually needed. A bare framework within the truckbed sides would save weight. Or strong and fully plyed out, so I'd have a big blank truck bed for a ton or two with the Alaskan dismounted.
The door threshold would be about 6' up making access interesting?
The proper length for the truckbed is 10', so the last 3' (to get to the campers 13') of the 500mm deep storage sandwich could be angled to improve the departure angle.
Maybe I should try drawing it to be clearer! And mixing dimensions doesn't help I'm sure. It may be a Mog chassis, and I can't imagine a second hand anything meeting up with my thoughts, but that doesn't mean I've got money to burn making it happen! These are plans for the future to try and get more usability from my Mog, and a lot of earning will have to be done first!
All comments welcome!! (if you got to the end of that huge pile of words!)
Cheers
Jason
Apologies for what you will I'm sure view as a Newbie question. As I'm based in the UK I don't get to see many pop tops at all, and the usual discussions between makes on this forum are between people who have possibly seen several of the things! And the Alaskan website could be better!
I have a Mog camper, which was built well but heavily by the previous owner, ply throughout internally. The wife and I were looking into building something similar ourselves when this came up a few years back at a price it would have been stupid to ignore. We've lived in it for the last 25 months, UK and France only so far which was of course not the plan, but its still been fun! So these thoughts and ideas are for a camper for long trips to hopefully a wide variety of road and weather conditions, to live in fairly long term as we are now. But what we have now could be better insulated against the sun as well as containing heat a little more in the winter. It could certainly have a lower travelling height! Continental shipping will mean strapping on top of a container ship if we want to go that far, and a lot of that stuff never arrives! It could better distribute the weight we have, and that weight could easily be smaller. It could have a little more external storage space, possibly a little less inside. We don't have kids at the minute, but in the future???
So;
The big water tank that allows us to shower inside everyday for a week is a good thing. The diesel hydronic Eberspacher, compressor fridge, gas hob, fixed double bed, 30lb gas bottle and lots of internal storage are all things we want to keep. A little more external storage would be good, we can lose the oven, and mounting the two spares a little more up front and central would be ideal. More insulation for definite. Thetford I'm not decided on, too small capacity perhaps! Space to store a 1KW Honda genny, and run it where its stored is also needed. Around the chassis rails is full of fuel tanks and grey/black waste tanks at the minute.
I don't know for sure but the box probably weighs more than 2000kg empty easily. A common reason people say they won't have an Alaskan is weight, but we'd probably save a ton if not more
so that doesn't really come into it.I know there is a stretched U500 having an Alaskan put on it, but no pics have yet surfaced of the two meeting?
Is an Alaskan the only pop top with solid sides without going to the extreme of Unicat $$$?
Our camper has an internal shower room, marine head mounted on ply, fold down basin, ply walls and a pvc type shower tray and none of it has minded getting wet since 2003 when it was finished. So why is putting a shower in an Alaskan a "bad" thing?
Our current box is 13' long plus overcab. I had thought that a similar length Alaskan, with the underside of the overcab camperbed within the box (as in the attached pic from the Alaskan site) like the U500's is a good plan, and avoids the folding bed walls. Dropping the camperbeds floor a little to allow a proper mattress would be needed. I also thought that typical truckbed sides like on Bill Caid's U1300l, but that were made to finish at the Alaskan top's bottom edge so as to protect the base at least, and then with doors to allow getting to the bed underside, would hang well together. These sides could go higher still to protect the windows fully in transit, but I don't think the popping height would make the windows fully appear? What is the total height difference popped to unpopped typically? The sides may have to be higher at the front to allow a big enough door to under the overcab (!), then curve down to allow an unfettered view out of the window with the top popped.
If the Alaskan is slightly higher than the cab, I could put a small rack on the cab roof to mount a pair of solar panels. If the Alaskan is lower then solar on there.
How tree friendly is the Alaskan build from a getting damaged point of view? Better than soft sided poptops but not as good as a rigid box? How do they hold up with really bad roads long term? Is the top only ever in contact with the bottom via the sealing skirt and the 4 jacks? Or is there some sort of bumpstop seating area for travel?
How drafty is the door? Is this the only area that does leak usually? So it really can be toasty, rather than a darn site warmer than something like a Flippac which I would kinda expect?!
Toasty with a lot of input from the heater, or is it really well insulated full stop? Are their nice big windows double glazed? We have Seitz at the minute, but are scratched and protrude, asking to be pulled off perhaps?I think Alaskan can make several or any width(s) you like? Any reason to not take advantage of this to give more internal storage space?
I'm unsure about tyre storage. They hang on the back at the minute, which could almost not be worse for weight distribution. If the whole bed underside was external storage, then some sort of tyre lift could be rigged off the truckbed sides to get them in, horizontal on top of each other or vertically against the bed front wall.
I could however build a 500mm thick storage sandwich over the whole truck bed area, so batteries, watertank, oils, recovery stuff and tyres (horiz) could all live under this. The under camperbed bit could then all be, down to the camperfloor at least, internal storage. The top of the Alaskan would end up higher than the cab roof though, but if I dismounted it the truck could be driven wheel less into a standard (high version) shipping container, camper slid in afterwards. I could even play with the height of the dividing floor between truck floor and underside of camperbed to provide some underbed internal storage and enough external storage height for a trail bike. The spare tyres would go rearward of this "garage" within the 500mm deep sandwich.
The construction of this sandwich could be really simple depending on how much support the Alaskan actually needed. A bare framework within the truckbed sides would save weight. Or strong and fully plyed out, so I'd have a big blank truck bed for a ton or two with the Alaskan dismounted.
The door threshold would be about 6' up making access interesting?
The proper length for the truckbed is 10', so the last 3' (to get to the campers 13') of the 500mm deep storage sandwich could be angled to improve the departure angle.
Maybe I should try drawing it to be clearer! And mixing dimensions doesn't help I'm sure. It may be a Mog chassis, and I can't imagine a second hand anything meeting up with my thoughts, but that doesn't mean I've got money to burn making it happen! These are plans for the future to try and get more usability from my Mog, and a lot of earning will have to be done first!
All comments welcome!! (if you got to the end of that huge pile of words!)
Cheers
Jason
