I received my Tepui Autana Ruggedized yesterday. I had some serious difficulties with Conway freight but that is another story, it seems like most people have had a good delivery experience so I am willing to write my account off as a fluke and dismiss it.
For reference I am comparing this to an ARB Simpson III and a Hannibal Classic (10+ Years old).
After opening the packaging and unfolding the tent I inspected all of the seams, fabric, base, hinges etc. Everything looked perfect. Straight stitches, no imperfections in the fabric. The fabric itself is interesting, it is not as heavy as the Fabric on the Hannibal I am coming from but it is slightly heavier than the ARB, it also has a sealed/shiny sort of finish inside similar to the ARB. The Hannibal has the same soft touch/uncoated finish on the fabric inside and out. I am wondering if this leads to some of the condensation issues people seem to have with the Tepuis? I've had the Hannibal in 48 hours of torrential PNW downpour without the rainfly and it didn't even wet through where my gear was piled up against the walls (This is on a 10+ year tent with no maintenance) so it seems the inside waterproofing layer might be overkill and causing more problems than it's worth? Pure speculation on my part at this point, but the Hannibal has no roof vents and I have never had any sort of condensation issues and it has been all over in a variety of humid climates.
My only gripe on the install portion was the plastic plugs filling the holes for the mounting rails and ladder. They are a hard plastic and mine were cracking and brittle. The caps of all but two of them disintegrated when I tried to pry them out. I simply drilled a small pilot hole into the plastic, threaded a wood screw into them and pulled them out. A very minor hassle and they certainly do their job protecting the holes and keeping foreign objects out of the base. Sorry for the nitpicking but I am trying to be as thorough as possible.
Installing the ladder and mounting rails went flawlessly. All hardware was complete and every hole lined up perfectly. I would recommend wiping the rails down with a damp rag, hit them with some compressed air and maybe even throw a little graphite or other dry lube into the channels. When I initially installed the mounting plates they did not slide smoothly and liked to bind up in the channels. After a little cleanup everything was perfect. Top marks on the assembly portion!
Mounting it to my roof rack was a PITA! But that is just due to the extremely low clearance of my BajaRack and no fault of Tepuis. I had to run to Home Depot to get some shorter mounting bolts (10mm x 1.25 thread pitch - 35mm length) and utilize my girlfriends far more nimble hands to get everything bolted up.
The bar that supports the awning over the ladder is a little cumbersome. It stores away nicely inside the tent, you pull it out and then there are two pivoting mounts that it slides into. Once in place you tug the awning fabric over the bar and rotate it down into place. This is far more cumbersome than the ARB design. The bar slides into the base and you simply pull it straight out and use two twist locks to secure it. 5 seconds vs. a minute or so on the Tepui. Not a big deal. I will reserve final judgement until I have deployed the tent a few more times but it seems that there is no way to get a nice taught pitch on the awning. Even with the fabric pulled as far over the support bar as I could get it and guyed out it is still quite loose. Both the ARB and Hannibal pitch drum tight which makes for zero flapping in high winds. I'll follow up on this point when I have more experience with the Tepui.
After getting everything assembled and installed the only task remaining was installing the cover. It slide into the channel on the base without issue. Getting the zipper started was extremely difficult. It starts on the hinged side so there is no way to compress the tent further without bending the hinge. It took two sets of channel locks and a second person to get the zipper started. It was very tight the entire way around but zipped up fine. I threw the two outside straps over the cover, cinched them down tight and drove 20 miles home. This morning I noticed the zipper has separated on one corner and the stitching holding the zipper to the cover has blown out along the ladder side. This seems extremely unusual to me, every tent I have owned or had past experience with the cover would drop right over the closed up tent like a glove and zip up with no effort. The only times my previous tents were snug was when I had them loaded with all of our sleeping gear. And even then they were merely snug, not zipper exploding tight.
Has anyone else had issues with the travel cover or did I just get a defect?
