Eco-Roamer - F650 based Expedition Vehicle

[tjbliley]

Jay,
I have been riding around in ambulances for the last 20 years or so and I can tell you there are about a few hundred ways to work the connection from the cab to the camper. The door which does double duty is ok, but it will not fit either opening the way it should because of the compromise. The sliding/Pcoket door can work if you have a tracking system or the hinge setup which would allow the door to move forward and back after sliding to sit in the opening. You also will want to put a piece of diamond plate over the rubber bellows mounted to the cab and sitting on the floor of the camper to transition from the cab. This will allow easier traffic movement through the opening. Research in the ambulance industry a little bit and you may find some unique ideas. You could just stop at a few fire houses as you travel around and ask them to see the rigs for more ideas. I hope that helps in the quest for answers to your quandry. I have walked and crawled through just about every type there is and there are some out there that will meet your needs you just need to find the hardware and copy a design.

Jerry

 

[egn]

Emil, are you just talking about the cabin (camper) windows, or do you have double-pane windows in the cab, as well?

I assume that you just have them in the cabin, but since you have all flat glass in the cab, maybe it's possible to get double-pane windows there, as well?

I have this windows only in the cabin. In the cab they wouldn't be of much use because this is no living space.

 

[Lynn]

I have this windows only in the cabin. In the cab they wouldn't be of much use because this is no living space.

I just thought that when you are running down the road, double-paned windows would help insulate the cab.

I assume that since your engine is air-cooled, the cab heater is diesel? Or electric? Either way, running the heater less would save fuel and increase your range, right? But maybe the windows are a small factor over all.

 

[jayshapiro]

March Update

Hi Gang,

I know it has been ages since we updated the progress of the project, sorry!

Things are going well though and have been steadily moving along. We've pretty much been working on three main areas:

1. Procurement
2. Floorplan finalization
3. Cab customisation

1) Procurement:

I originally had a guy helping me on procuring all the thousands of various bits for the project. Unfortunately he worked for the company that I was using to build the camper "Startracks" in Elkhart, In.

I had spent a couple of months researching the various custom builders and talking to various people about options. We felt that "bob" at Startracks seemed to have some good experience and some great people, so in the end we went with them.

...then he stopped paying their salaries. Then I visited his shop in In, and realized that it was an empty warehouse with no ongoing projects, and no crew. I quickly became 'less comfortable' and after some very brief sould searching decided to walk away and start again.

Luckily I had much of the documentation with me, but without my parts guy, I've spent much of the past 2 months piecing together all the components. In the end though I'm really glad this happened, because I have refined a lot of our parts decisions, I have an intimate knowledge of each component, and we're saving a ton of money too...

I'll write a dedicated post someday about just the various parts, and I think we might post the whole parts spreadsheet in the interest of the "open source" mentality that we're trying to follow.

2) Floorplan Finalization:

I'm really happy with how the designs are coming along. Every inch of space has been optimized now, and I think it is going to be really bright and liveable as well.

I freely admit that we have been 'inspired' by several fantastic expedition vehicles that we've seen such as:

rear porch - Rob Gray's Wort
Drop bed - David Hammond's RTW mercedes
Induction Stove - Thomas @ Unicat
Bed Tend - Host/Lance campers
Generator - Doug Hackney

Here is what it is looking like so far:

We are 'over documenting' it with the 3D CAD files, because I really hope that this will be of use to someone else someday as we are increasingly thinking of the EcoRoamer as a prototype for a sustainable open-source RTW expedition vehicle and not just a one-off.

3) Cab Customization:

While all that has been going on, the amazing guys up at Alton Truck in Michigan have been hard at work on the cab. (I highly recommend Larry and Nick there, they have been amazingly helpful)

In my earlier postings I showed the extended-cab doors going on. Now in addition to that we have:

a passthrough, for accessing the camper. Will be surrounded by a 5-15" rubber bellows.

a flat floor in the cab. I always get scared when you put a sawzall and my truck in the same picture!

air-ride mounted under the cab, to smoooooth things out a little.

The interior is due to go back in again in the next two weeks.

The guys are also building a custom box for the next-gen 8.5kw generator on the driver's side, and an auxilary fresh-water tank with a heater coil on the passenger side. (don't worry, the rest of the plumbing and tanks will be within the cell, but we had an empty space and so are using it for extra capacity when not in freezing locales.)

That's all for now. I'll send more updates as the truck takes shape in the next couple of weeks. We're hoping to start cutting metal on the camper starting April 15th so stay tuned!

Jay.

 

[Redline]

Nice

 

[Carlyle]

Sounds like you've had some "interesting" experiences in Elkhart. Keep us posted on the build as it sounds like it's going to be awesome when complete.

 

[viatierra]

Any updates to share?
I dig following along with your progress...

 

[RHINO]

something i always thought about for a build to maximize space was a slide out rear section with a "murphy" style bed,,,, in that i mean the bed would mount upright against the rear wall and fold down as the rear was slid out creating a bedroom w/o encroaching on the rest of the floorplan.

 

[j_nigrelli]

......
Owning & driving a particular vehicle doesn't make you green or eco-conscious. Attitude, state of mind and behavior make you eco-friendly. Just the fact that Shapiro has this in mind while building his truck makes him miles ahead of most 4wd owners (and most Hybrid owners), who talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

could you please elaborate on this?

 

[Bella PSD]

I think I know what you mean. I was over at a friend’s house the other day. He drives one of those Toyota something hybrids?? Always saying to me "how many gallons of gas to the mile do you get", and then followed by an annoying smirk! I always respond “zero gallons of gas, it’s a diesel”!

Well, the other day when I was over at their house for a party he said that he had to pay the city if he recycled so just pitch all those plastics and beer bottles!!! I was shocked!

Louie

 

[Ron B]

could you please elaborate on this?

I work on tv shows where the actors/directors/producers are "earth conscious" and drive prius (prii?). Yet they live in a 10,000 sq ft home and fly in private jets for weekend excursions to their 2nd homes in the mountains or NYC etc...

I think your truck would have to run for many years straight to equal an LA to NY flight.

rb

 

[Lynn]

<Insert here the sound of fingers drumming on the table>


WELL??

 

[jayshapiro]

At last, an update!

Hi All,

Many, many apologies for keeping you in the dark over the past couple of months. It has been a crazy busy time with work and travel, and so I haven't had a chance to update you on the progress. However, there has been a LOT of progress and it's VERY exciting.

There is a lot to update, and many different components, so I'm going to break it up into a few different posts, so that it will be easier to Reply-To, since I know there will likely be questions / objections to some of them!

Here's the first though...

When we last left the story, the truck was up at Alton Truck Co. in Pigeon, MI. The guys there had a hundred and one things to do, and did a fantastic job. I can't recommend those guys enough, they really did a great job.

In my last posting, they had cut my truck in half, and then added in the new doors at the back. The next step was to add lead to the structure to keep it from cracking apart. This adds a fair bit of weight, but then remember that it's a 10,000lb truck to start with!

Lead on the roof.

At the end of the day, they put it all back together, extended the steps and voila, it looks like this!

With the extra room that we created in the cab now, we were able to custom design / build a pair of jump seats on the rear wall. These will live in the 'up' position most of the time, but when we have friends/grandparents come along then we can move the kids to the jump seats. We welded in a set of Isofix points for the car seats in both the rear two captains chairs and the jump seats:

The marking that you see on the wall on the top is where the headrest latches in to the wall. We have paneled that top part of the wall on both sides with a whiteboard that we bought from Staples and cut to fit. All four of the main seats now swivel 180' so the rear two can turn around to face the back wall (with the white boards) and work on their built in desks, with laptops plugged in to the inverter outlets wired on the rear wall. This will give us an 'extra room' in the evenings once the kids are asleep, to have a small 'office' for blogging / emailing / visa-prep / etc.

The jump seats are much more comfortable now, with cushions on them!

All surfaces in the cab were covered with dyna-matt type sound proofing, and all the doors / crevices had foam insulation filled in before the panels were reassembled.

Then the entire cab was taken off its mounts, hinged on pins at the front and mounted on air-bags at the rear to soften the ride. Remember that the front suspension is still (very firm) leaf springs. I can attest to the fact that it rode like a cement truck when I bought the truck a year ago, but now with the new airbags (which are adjustable for 'softness') it actually rides like a standard SUV now. It's fantastic, and I'm convinced that we don't need air-ride seats or suspension.

On the interior of the cab we've made all kinds of revisions such as:

• Passenger Airbag compartment (empty) - added a sleeve treated with bedliner and a bungy cargo net to create a maps & snacks cubby
• Center Console to hold all light switches, CB & VHF radios, accessories, etc. (pictures of this in a future post)
• Gooseneck Maplights on the roof behind each seat
• Hardwired inverter off the truck battery (separate to camper) with 12v & 120v outlets wired throughout the cab.
• In-dash PC system (detailed in a very near future post)

That's it for this posting, more details in the next few posts!

Cheers,
Jay.

 

[jayshapiro]

The Pass-through

Hi Again,

Ever since we started this project there has been a lot of discussion / debate around the pass-through from the cab to the camper.

We knew we wanted to have a way to go between them, but the question was always "how big?"

We could go the Class-C style of a huge opening, which makes the cab feel like a part of the living space.

Like this:

We liked this, but that meant that we would have to lock the two sub-assemblies together, and we knew we wanted them to float free of each other. Also, given that we were already slicing the cab, we wanted to retain as much of the structural rigidity as possible.

The other end of the spectrum is a 'crawl-through' like you find on the Unicats.

Like this:

This is good for keeping the noise / thermal leakage down, but is a real pain for anyone bigger than a kid to go back and forth through a dozen times a day.

So in the end we decided on a compromise, something big enough to walk through, but still with the flexibility of a bellows tunnel.

Start with a standard pickup rear window:

Cut a big hole in it:

Then panel up the sides, and create a flat surface for mounting the bellows:

In the end it is 26" wide and almost the full height of the cab. We left the top and bottom structures in place to retain the strength.

The bellows we chose are a 5" - 15" accordian seal from Uni-Grip.

We've designed the camper such that the bathroom door serves a dual purpose. In the "open" position it covers the pss-through flush and can be padlocked from the inside in order to seal off access to the camper when we are shipping the vehicle, etc.

Now all we have to do is just build the camper behind it! - the "easy" part! ;-)

Jay.

 

[tjbliley]

Jay, I was just looking at your access to the rear area post and thought "Has he looked at any Ambulances for the door/passthrough options". I have been in and out of Ambulances for the last 24 years and I have seen just about every conceivable option for the doors and closures. You may want to look to them for ideas.