EarthRoamer XV-JP "Northwest Edition"

[mhiscox]

If you put it back together fairly similar to how ER had done the interior, then you make the Sink only about a foot and a half off of the floor, raise up the seat to about that same height, then you can make it so the bed spreads across the entire thing (over the sink) when sleeping, but still you have a work about cook area too. Of course you would have to sit to do the cooking and washing, but really this is not meant to be as comfortable as a Unicat, rather to be functional, yes?

Well, that's a workable and appreciated idea and one way to get a double bed on the lower level. But doing it that way would make it impossible to move anywhere (like to the toilet) when the bed was deployed. The two solutions I've come up with so far are :

--a double bed in the upper level (which would produce something similar to sleeping in an Autohome Columbus tent) and which has the advatange of having more length available, because the nose cone goes farther forward than the lower level length available before hitting the seat backs, or

-- one person (the shorter one) on the lower bench curbside and the other one on an upper level streetside bed that deploys from the roof.

Both of these approaches have the advantage of leaving access to toilet, sink, shelves, etc. in the night.

Actually, the best strategy would pretty much depend on how important it was to have two people sleep next to each other. Having the people on two different levels will keep the rest of the camper pretty useful, and would be the way to go if it was predominately a solo vehicle, which will be my likely situation.

 

[isaac]

Hey Mike, for the bunks, what do you mean by curbside and streetside? I'm having trouble visualizing that. Just curious.

Thanks,
Isaac

 

[washington taco]

Is it possible you will have this at the Overland rally at Ellensburg in July? Would love to see it in person!

 

[haven]

In North America, the curb side is the right side of the vehicle, where the passenger sits. The street side is the left, or driver's side.

 

[mhiscox]

Is it possible you will have this at the Overland rally at Ellensburg in July? Would love to see it in person!

Most probably. Given that it's just a little over 200 miles to Ellensburg--versus 1500 to Amado for OvEx--makes me a big fan of the NW Rally as a place to show up with the Jeep.

 

[mhiscox]

Hey Mike, for the bunks, what do you mean by curbside and streetside? I'm having trouble visualizing that. Just curious.

In North America, the curb side is the right side of the vehicle, where the passenger sits. The street side is the left, or driver's side.

There's an advantage to using this convention in camper design since it you don't have to take into account whether the user drives on the left or right side of the road. It's mostly the same as saying "driver's side" for streetside and "passenger side" for curbside, except that it works around the small percentage of people do use right-hand drive vehicles in right-driving countries and vice-versa.

 

[Project510]

Wow what great improvements on a awesome rig! Any photos of the inside after the tent swap?

Great job!

 

[mhiscox]

Any photos of the inside after the tent swap?

Ummmm . . . no. Still nothing to show for interior furniture. I'll work on getting some "tent from inside" pictures sometime soon.

 

[DKB2GO]

The two solutions I've come up with so far are :

--a double bed in the upper level (which would produce something similar to sleeping in an Autohome Columbus tent) and which has the advatange of having more length available, because the nose cone goes farther forward than the lower level length available before hitting the seat backs, or

-- one person (the shorter one) on the lower bench curbside and the other one on an upper level streetside bed that deploys from the roof.

Both of these approaches have the advantage of leaving access to toilet, sink, shelves, etc. in the night.

Actually, the best strategy would pretty much depend on how important it was to have two people sleep next to each other. Having the people on two different levels will keep the rest of the camper pretty useful, and would be the way to go if it was predominately a solo vehicle, which will be my likely situation.

Anything new with this?

 

[mhiscox]

Anything new with this?

A little bit. At least I don't think I've posted about this.

I've bought two Dometic CD-030DC drawer refrigerators, one as fridge and one as freezer. I'll put the freezer under the bench on the floor curbside, forward of the batteries that'll be at the rear, and put the fridge up on curbside of the nose cone.

That will still allow enough width to use the nose cone as part of the bed, and I'm leaning toward doing a one-person bed on the top with the second person sleeping on the curbside bench on the bottom. I've also pretty much decided to make a propane locker behind the passenger seat that can make use of the door in the side that had been cut into the side for removing the toilet cassette.

Also have the Cook Partner stove, the tiny microwave, the computer and a bunch of other components ready to go.

Things aren't going real quickly partly because my wife is retiring soon and we're likely to be replacing my Sprinter camper with some pavement-only thing that's bigger and works better for the multi-week trips she wants to take. Not sure what direction that's likely to take--the 170" wb NCV3 Sprinter is probably most likely--but it's not too critical to get the XV-JP finished right now.

One interesting thing is that since the suspension change and the DuraTracs, the truck is a sweet pavement ride, so we've been just driving it around as part of the normal vehicle fleet. Works great, though you do spend a fair amount of time answering questions about it.

 

[Ford Prefect]

...spend a fair amount of time answering questions about it.

Which is something I am sure you don;t mind at all!

 

[The Swiss]

James, Mike,

Saw a picture of the "Northwest Edition over on the JK Habitat thread. Not sure how I missed this thread; I guess I never look at the Earthroamer chapter as these vehicles are a wee bit out of my price range.

Absolutely love the Northwest Edition!! I too was never a fan of the original Earthroamer roof (and still not completely sold on the JK Habitat roof either) but the "Northwest Edition" catapulted itself immediately to the very top of my dream car list, leaving Sportsmobile and others in the dust.

Congratulations!!!

BTW, can you give me more information about the Pelican case that is attached to the rear door or a link to the thread, if you have already covered it somewhere else?

 

[mhiscox]

BTW, can you give me more information about the Pelican case that is attached to the rear door or a link to the thread, if you have already covered it somewhere else?

Thanks for the kind words about the truck's modifications. As far as the Pelican case goes, not too much to it. I have a Hardigg case on the rear door of my Sprinter and found it very handy, so I was eager to try the idea here.

Don't know the exact size if the Pelican case; it was left over from Unimog days and used to live on the Sprinter's roof rack. The trick was to find (from McMaster-Carr or similar) isolation bushings with studs out either end, the studs on the threads matching the threads already in the Wrangler back door. Then it was straightforward to drill holes throiugh the rear of the case to line up and put nuts on the inside of the case.

I've been watching to see if there'd be wear in the holes from the case bouncing up and down, but no sign of any. We've got big fender washers on both sides and that seems to be doing the trick.

 

[Harp]

"Northwest" tent

Mike,
How is the tent attached to the top and bottom? Velcro? I am very impressed with the setup and plan to steal several ideas to make my flawed camper better. Very inspirational and ballsy to cut up a ER! Makes my idea of major changes to my Flippac not such a big deal.

Thanks for posting a truly remarkable transformation.

Marty

 

[mhiscox]

Yeah, thanks for the understanding about hacking up the original design. I'm sure the millions of people who've never camped out of an XV-JP wonder what the hell I was thinking, while the dozen people who have used one know exactly why I did it.

There are two triangular side pieces and one roughly rectangular front. All three are permanently mounted to the top and held at the bottom with both snaps and hook-and-look. The snaps would hold everything fine, but the hook-and-loop makes the junction with the cabin bug-proof.

When you prepare to close up the tent, you roll each of the three pieces from bottom to top and then buckle the roll up into the roof with the quick connectors mounted there. Because the material is thin and the pieces small, these rolls tuck up nicely out of the way and are barely noticeable. This is a huge improvement over trying to store the giant original tent, which was very intrusive.

One of the key things is that all of the lower edges have a good-sized exterior flap a few inches above the tent-cabin junction that lies over the edge of the roof. This makes it so rain never gets around the junction.

Best of luck with your own project.