THE BULLET 10 YEAR REVIEW
Yup, it's been 10 years since I completed building the Bullet, if you remember, the first trip was memorial day weekend 2011 where we got to unexpectedly test out the hot water and space heater.
I thought I would go through the various design aspect to update you all on what has worked, not worked, what I would do again and what I would do differently.
Overall, I am amazedly happy with the overall design and construction, it has been a perfect vehicle for getting us from one experience to another.
I will break this into multiple categories;
THE STERLING BULLET
12 Years in I am still so glad I started with this vehicle. compared to my Tacoma, this thing rides like a Cadillac, and having left the original suspension in tact, I have had no suspension issues whatsoever. I will admit, this vehicle was built when car companies were somewhat incestuous and this one is no exception,- truck by Dodge, electronics by Chrysler, warrantee by freightliner. The electronics have given me some issues, replacing sensors, fixing some shorts, and chasing some odd engine lights, but each time we fixed it, that specific problem never occurred again, so things are pretty reliable at this point, and most importantly, I never went into 'limp' mode, I was always able to take my time to get things looked at properly. overall, a good choice for my needs.
THE 3 POINT SUSPENSION FRAME
I designed the camper frame to attach at two points just behind the cab, and at a third pivot point at the rear
you can clearly see how much it can twist on my twisty driveway
I will admit, this weighed more than I hoped, coming in at about 1200 lbs., but I can also admit, I have had no issues with this at all, and after seeing some of the catastrophic failures on this sit with other designs, I am glad I built it as tough as I did. Connecting at two fixed points at the front means that the camper box always stays planar with the cab of the truck which allows for a tighter clearance between the cab roof and the bottom of the cabover
I will also say I really like the way my lower storage was worked into the frame. Overall I would definitely do this again.
THE UHAUL BOX
This is yet another choice I made to work with that I am so glad I did. Having taken the box completely apart, cleaned all of the panels, extrusions, and bolts even, then cut them down to make them what I needed, I ended up with a fantastic erector set of components to work with. Putting them all back together with modern sealant/adhesives has led to an amazingly strong box that has endured thousands of miles of washboard and stays perfectly rattle free!
THE ELECTRIC/HYDRAULIC LIFTING ROOF
Everyone has a preference between hard and soft sided pop ups, for my needs, I like the soft side, as I like to hear the woods and the wind at night, I like the sound of critters moving and eating at night as well as the sound of birds in the morning, I like the way the morning sun warms the interior letting us know we are part of the outdoors, for these reasons and more I would stick with a soft sided pop up, I am aware it does lack some security that a hard sided pop up roof has, but I can live with that.
One of the design aspects I originally wanted, was the ability to manually lift the roof if the hydraulic pump failed, this was not possible with the system I purchased, but to this day, it has never failed. I will admit, when it gets hot out, for some reason I get some cavitation, which means it makes more noise, and goes up a little slower. I am not sure why this only happens when it's hot out, or why it happens at all, but it has never compromised the function of the pump. Maybe it is caused by the 90 degree metal elbows coming out of the manifold and into the cylinders being a true 90 degree sharp corner vs. a smooth bend, but I cannot change those now and they don't cause any issues except for my brain, so I'll live with it.
The other aspect was my fit of brilliance of connecting all four roof lifting pipes with 1/16" cable like a drafting mayline to get them to all work in parallel. This has worked flawlessly and to this day, the roof lifts perfectly planar with not tilt or sway whatsoever. I would definitely use this whole lifting system again.
THE FLOOR PLAN
I have always appreciated how large and open the Bullet feels inside, a big part of this is that I have no dedicated bathroom, so no big chunk taken out of the interior. The initial design started around the front to back dimension of the cabover, plus room for the dog beds, plus the depth of the dressers equaling that of a queen size bed. the dogs love their 'bedroom' I like being able to close them off with the sliding dresser, and the remaining floor area is perfectly comfortable for two to cook together (we cook a lot) Another aspect that got me some flack 10 years ago was the pee toilet, to be honest, it still works great, and I still like not having to deal with any solids. For poop, we go outside, but for the middle of the road or middle of the night pees, it works great and doesn't sacrifice any space or convenience (you just have to be careful not to drop any raisinets !)
The Tempurpedic bed is amazingly comfortable, the comforter we have keeps us perfectly warm all night no matter the exterior temperature, and having the thermostat within easy reach for turning on the heater in the morning is also a must.
THE INTERIOR CABINETS
If you remember correctly, I chose to build a hybrid, European/ face frame style of cabinets, mostly for the challenge, and to this day, those cabinets have worked perfectly, I thought the no-clearance between the drawer faces would become an issue over time, but they seem to be staying perfectly in line with each other despite my abusive travels. Gluing and screwing the drawers and the frame also helped. I also used spring loaded RV drawer glides that require 13 lbs. of pull to open the drawers, but if you look back you will remember that these really didn't work for off-road conditions, as the heavier pan drawers would fly open when doing some more extreme side to side off-roading, so I added some Rutherford electric cabinet locks. These I set to be in the unlocked position until I put the key in, and then all the door and drawers would lock automatically, this has worked perfectly, the only alteration I made was to add a bypass switch inside the camper so if we're driving and someone climbs into the back to get snacks, they can unlock the cabinets. After several times of driving off with the drawers unlocked, I also added a buzzer to let us know when they were unlocked while driving.
Overall I am completely satisfied with the amount of storage we have and how functional it all is.
THE APPLIANCES
The Bullet, for all of it's innovation in other aspects, is appliance-wise pretty simple, I have a standard 3 way fridge, I like using propane for this, the heater, water heater and the cooktop, plus, I have never been in a situation where we parked not level enough for the fridge to work, it has always worked fine. I like 12 volts while driving, and 110 volts while it's parked getting ready for the next trip, so this fridge has worked perfectly for us.
The space heater- initially I had a two stage heater with a digital thermostat, I would not recommend those hi-tech options when off-roading much, bouncing around, or dust affects things in odd ways. The heater started acting funny a couple years in (truthfully, it always was a bit funny) so I changed it out for a single stage unit with an analogue thermostat and have been perfectly happy ever since.
The water heater also doesn't like being bounced around much, so I have had to replace the control unit once, and it continues to work fine.
The cooktop is a two burner non-self igniting unit, really, it's so simple it has nothing really to go wrong, so it continues to work perfectly. The only thing I may consider doing differently here if I build another camper, is that the unit I chose sits on top of the counter proud by like 2" or so, I would not mind a counter-flush unit with a cover smooth with the countertop, just to give more prep space when not cooking.
WATER TANKS
The Bullet has a 30 gallon fresh water tank, plus a 15 gallon grey water tank. With this I can go about 3 or 4 days between fill ups dependent on cooking. Ultimately I would prefer a larger fresh water tank, like 50 gallons minimum, preferably 60 gallons. What I had before I built this was a Four Wheel Camper with a 13 gallon tank, so I thought this would be more than enough, but as things grow, so do your expectations. I would have liked to go about 7 days between fill ups, but I had to choose a size that fit in the area I had and leave room for the storage I needed, so as with everything in these tiny mobile homes, it is a compromise.
OVERALL
Well.. .. I get very attached to things I build !
The two and a half years I spent building this (nights and weekends) are a great time and memory in my life. I still use the camper regularly almost all throughout the year, (maybe minus two months in the winter) and am in-fact, getting ready to leave on another two month trip across the country in a couple weeks (gotta go visit mom in Boston again) I cannot imagine another camper fitting the way I personally move better than the Bullet and see myself living in this more and more per year as I phase into retirement or at least working less, specifically to enjoy life more. For this reason alone, it is good to have a 10 year tested and proven vehicle I can trust.
That is all humans
picture from last weekend's trip to eastern Oregon
