I searched for old threads on this topic but couldn't find much info from anyone who has actually bought a hard shell RTT from China/Alibaba so I wanted to share my experience incase anyone is considering this cheaper alternative.
Its obvious why I went this route, I cheaped out. When I do mods on my vehicles or even bicycle for that matter, I never cheap out because you get what you pay and I hate buying things twice. For some reason I convinced myself against my normal train of thought and since majority of affordable tents are made in China, I decided why not just buy direct and take a risk. After all is was only about $1,932.77 to my door for an 80"x54" hard shell RTT that would have been more than a $1,000 at the time from the competition (Roofnest is on sell for $2,295+shipping at the moment, back then I would have jumped on this deal in a second).
I originally received my tent in April of 2018 for which it sat in my warehouse "airing" out for a couple of months while I figured out how I was going to secure it to my rhino rack pioneer platform. After almost 9 months the smell has reduced a lot, it's not causing a headache, but I feel its worth noting as I like to avoid coming in contact with chemicals, especially unknown ones from China.
The difficulty with mounting this to my Rhino Rack was that I was using the backbone system and it limits access to the underside of the rack from just the front or back and that would be very unpleasant to install. I decided to just make 3 aluminum cross bars from 1.25" square tube with a .25" thick wall that would clamp to my existing rack. This would give the RTT base a grid style platform when mounted to the channel rails on the RTT. I created the design on Solidworks so I would have blue prints incase I needed to make changes. After machining the needed components I got my cross bars installed on my tent and was then able to install it.
The install was fairly easy at this point. I picked the RTT up using a fork lift and was able to slide it onto the Pioneer Platform and install it without any help. The clamp system felt solid and I decided to go for a test drive. Aside from the 2-3 mph drop, extra wind noise and sail on my roof, everything seemed to hold up well. I got up to 70mph momentarily to see if it was going to fly off and surprisingly the tent held on and I was able to drive it home for an initial test. My only concern right now is too much air could build up and break the fiberglass shell from the channel rails since I don't know how good the quality is. I plan on addressing this with some type of custom deflector.
The maiden voyage will be sometime in the next month or two when I get a few other projects completed. The plan is do the ~120 mile long Mojave Road at which point I will report back on how it this RTT holds up.
After Install
After making it home and parking in dirt for the full overland experience
Its obvious why I went this route, I cheaped out. When I do mods on my vehicles or even bicycle for that matter, I never cheap out because you get what you pay and I hate buying things twice. For some reason I convinced myself against my normal train of thought and since majority of affordable tents are made in China, I decided why not just buy direct and take a risk. After all is was only about $1,932.77 to my door for an 80"x54" hard shell RTT that would have been more than a $1,000 at the time from the competition (Roofnest is on sell for $2,295+shipping at the moment, back then I would have jumped on this deal in a second).
I originally received my tent in April of 2018 for which it sat in my warehouse "airing" out for a couple of months while I figured out how I was going to secure it to my rhino rack pioneer platform. After almost 9 months the smell has reduced a lot, it's not causing a headache, but I feel its worth noting as I like to avoid coming in contact with chemicals, especially unknown ones from China.
The difficulty with mounting this to my Rhino Rack was that I was using the backbone system and it limits access to the underside of the rack from just the front or back and that would be very unpleasant to install. I decided to just make 3 aluminum cross bars from 1.25" square tube with a .25" thick wall that would clamp to my existing rack. This would give the RTT base a grid style platform when mounted to the channel rails on the RTT. I created the design on Solidworks so I would have blue prints incase I needed to make changes. After machining the needed components I got my cross bars installed on my tent and was then able to install it.
The install was fairly easy at this point. I picked the RTT up using a fork lift and was able to slide it onto the Pioneer Platform and install it without any help. The clamp system felt solid and I decided to go for a test drive. Aside from the 2-3 mph drop, extra wind noise and sail on my roof, everything seemed to hold up well. I got up to 70mph momentarily to see if it was going to fly off and surprisingly the tent held on and I was able to drive it home for an initial test. My only concern right now is too much air could build up and break the fiberglass shell from the channel rails since I don't know how good the quality is. I plan on addressing this with some type of custom deflector.
The maiden voyage will be sometime in the next month or two when I get a few other projects completed. The plan is do the ~120 mile long Mojave Road at which point I will report back on how it this RTT holds up.
After Install
After making it home and parking in dirt for the full overland experience
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