StumpXJ
SE Expedition Society
Every now and then, I get bored. When I get bored, I often go out to my garage and stare at things, and occasionally an idea comes to me. I took my RTT off of my Jeep a few weeks ago to prepare for shipping my Jeep back to the US soon, so the RTT is sitting on saw horses in my garage.
This will work on all the tents that are like the Camping Lab style RTT's. I have the lower changing room for mine, and use it if I am staying in the same place for more than one night, or if the wife demands its deployment for privacy. The changing room is not hard to set-up really, but I always bring the changing room with me even if I am not sure if I will use it. It comes in a duffle type bag, and takes up precious space in my Jeep.
Today, I found a way to easily leave it mounted to the RTT, and free up that space, while also saving a little time when I am ready to set it up. The hardest part of set up is getting the rope fabric to follow in the track, especially on the corners, this will eliminate having to do that.
It cost me 4 dollars for the material, took about 15 minutes to complete, and I only needed this for tools:
Here you can kind of see what I did. Basically, I installed the changing room on the RTT. You are looking at the bottom of the tent 'overhang' when deployed, or the top of the RTT when it is closed. I rolled it up tightly around the perimeter of the tent where it connects to the aluminum railing. I then used my trusty pocket knife to cut a small slit in the thick blue fabric, just wide enough for the velcro strapping to slide through. The blue fabric is very thick, and there should not be an issue of ripping where the velcro goes through. The straps do not need to be very tight, since the changing room material is easily compressible.
Here you can see the small slit in the blue fabric.
Just another shot, if you look closely, you can see where I added another strap to hold the stake bag next to the ladder for the changing room.
I dont have any in use pictures, but you can imagine how it works. When I have no need for the changing room, it just stays rolled up neatly out of the way on the bottom of the overhang. When I need it, just un-strap the velcro, let it roll down, and set it up as normal. The changing room material compresses very easily, and the cover fits on with no problem. In fact, I will be doing a very similar thing to the cover itself, since it always hangs down over my rear passenger door (where I access my fridge! ). It will be nice to roll it up out of the way when the tent is deployed.
Just thought I would share!
~James
This will work on all the tents that are like the Camping Lab style RTT's. I have the lower changing room for mine, and use it if I am staying in the same place for more than one night, or if the wife demands its deployment for privacy. The changing room is not hard to set-up really, but I always bring the changing room with me even if I am not sure if I will use it. It comes in a duffle type bag, and takes up precious space in my Jeep.
Today, I found a way to easily leave it mounted to the RTT, and free up that space, while also saving a little time when I am ready to set it up. The hardest part of set up is getting the rope fabric to follow in the track, especially on the corners, this will eliminate having to do that.
It cost me 4 dollars for the material, took about 15 minutes to complete, and I only needed this for tools:
Here you can kind of see what I did. Basically, I installed the changing room on the RTT. You are looking at the bottom of the tent 'overhang' when deployed, or the top of the RTT when it is closed. I rolled it up tightly around the perimeter of the tent where it connects to the aluminum railing. I then used my trusty pocket knife to cut a small slit in the thick blue fabric, just wide enough for the velcro strapping to slide through. The blue fabric is very thick, and there should not be an issue of ripping where the velcro goes through. The straps do not need to be very tight, since the changing room material is easily compressible.
Here you can see the small slit in the blue fabric.
Just another shot, if you look closely, you can see where I added another strap to hold the stake bag next to the ladder for the changing room.
I dont have any in use pictures, but you can imagine how it works. When I have no need for the changing room, it just stays rolled up neatly out of the way on the bottom of the overhang. When I need it, just un-strap the velcro, let it roll down, and set it up as normal. The changing room material compresses very easily, and the cover fits on with no problem. In fact, I will be doing a very similar thing to the cover itself, since it always hangs down over my rear passenger door (where I access my fridge! ). It will be nice to roll it up out of the way when the tent is deployed.
Just thought I would share!
~James
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