Reviving this thread to see if Greg, Daurie and Herk have any forehead slappers saying "I wish I had/hadn't gotten that!" now that they have some miles under their belt.
I gave it some thought and here is my response...
First, we have no major regrets on what we decided in terms of configuration and options on our Patagonia. Given what we knew at the time based on our past experiences we think we did the best we could to configure the truck for full time travel the way we wanted given our budget. Since then we have sold our house and are living full time in the truck and we headed to Alaska in early July after some delays and are planning to head back south sometime in Oct.
At this point we can see minor things that we could have done differently but nothing major. Four Kenworth Patagonias have been delivered since ours and with each one we can see options that we might have chosen which is the way it goes. With time and experience with the truck we will continue to see things that we could have done differently. There is no question that with actual experience traveling and living in the truck you will find things that you would do differently if you were doing a second build. We already have done several major upgrades that were not available or not considered when our truck was built: front bumper with winch and light bar, upgraded shocks, and upgraded seats. We also had the cabinet by the entry door reconfigured to add additional depth that better allows shoe storage (this was an item that we thought we specified adequately but it turned out the cabinet was slightly too small to handle shoe storage efficiently). The shock upgrades along with the new seats created a very smooth ride on the highway and off the highway the ride is much better also. The new seats have more adjustments and have internal heating/cooling which is nice. The only other major change we are planning is to have the cab roof rack with a light bar installed which is something that was not available when our truck was built.
There are only two items we would change or are planning to change:
The awning that was installed on our truck is a manual Carefree Freedom Wall Mount which got damaged due to a sudden unexpected wind gust when it wasn’t secured to the ground using the poles. It needs to be replaced and we will be looking for another option that is a little more rugged and resistant to the wind (all awnings are going to be damaged at some level of wind but this was not a strong gust that damaged our awning).
One of the decisions we had to make originally was whether to go with the Webasto Dual Top or a Webasto hydronic system for heat and hot water. The Dual Top works fine and is cheaper and simpler than the hydronic system. It is installed under the bench seat which prevents that area from being used for storage. The hydronic system is significantly more expensive and more complex in terms of components and while it does have more BTU capability that is not an issue for us since we don’t expect to get cold with the Dual Top at very low temperatures. The hydronic system would have been installed in the lower outside compartment where the grey tank is located and would have taken up most of the available storage space in that compartment (trade off of losing storage inside the truck or outside the truck). The hydronic system has the advantage that it can also be used to add a radiator / towel warmer in the bath which helps to keep it warm and reduces the humidity (with the Dual Top, you need to open the bathroom door to get heat into the bathroom). Given our budget we decided to go with Lithium batteries and the Dual Top rather than AGM batteries and the Hydronic heating, just one of the many trade offs we had to make to stay within budget. This is the only major decision we made that we would do differently if we had to do it over. We would have gone over budget but it would have probably been a better choice given the flexibility of the hydronic and the added storage space we would have gotten under the bench seat. So, we would have chosen the hydronic heat and the Lithium batteries and gone over budget it we had to do it over again.
There are other minor items that we would have done differently but most of those are things we can handle ourselves over time.
Each new truck that is delivered gives us ideas on things to do to improve ours but so far we have not seen anything that invalidates the two most critical decisions we had to make during the design process:
20 ft cabin (the last 3 delivered have 22 ft cabins and one of the earlier builds has an 18 ft cabin)
2 ft of full height storage in the rear with a garage door and spare tire inside the storage area (you can move the bed to the rear and trade the 2 ft of full height storage in the rear for 2 ft of added living space with the spare tire outside and more outside storage compartments on the rear)
Again, we live in the truck full time so we decided to have an increase in rear storage area to carry all the stuff we want to take. Adding the cab roof rack will allow us to move some of the rarely used items from the rear storage to the roof, freeing up more space for stuff in the back.
Hope that answers your question...
Greg
