TetonX Hybrid

[Wendell-R]

The Hybrid has a door for storage on the drivers side - opposite the sink/stove drawer. But you have to be careful not to put stuff in there that would interfere with the hoses that supply the water to the sink:


I wanted to use that space better without interfering with the hoses, so I built a "shelf" that also keeps things from sliding where they could interfere - looks a little weird, but the "notch" lets the higher part of the hoses fit:


Once it's in place, it looks like:


The "screw jack" is used rarely to help level the trailer if I don't get it setup on "blocks" that I built which also go in that compartment now instead of taking up space in the 4 Runner like they used to:


I also keep the wheel chocks (large ones from "Truck-n-Tow", small ones on the "shelf" from someplace in Canada through Amazon) .

The "shelf" also holds spare hitch/ball mount stuff and a big enough adjustable wrench to assemble them.

And I keep a duffel with a bunch of "Ground Grabba" tent stakes for the awning along with a battery impact wrench to put them in the ground with:


There's still a bit of space left on top of the leveling blocks (which will probably need a post of their own someday).

 

[adamalli]

Regarding the battery...

Just got back yesterday from Moab. We have 3 LiPo batteries and 200 watts of solar. Based on our usage, we could definitely last through 2 days of completely cloudy weather and could probably last through 3 days. With sunny days, 1 battery will be totally fine - it's just the risk of continuous completely cloudy days (as Sunday through tomorrow, apparently, will be in Moab) that you have to worry about.

The night before we got to Moab, we were in Colorado and the temps dipped to 21º - we were down about 50 amp hours in the morning from running the furnace all night. Using the furnace draws both electrical power to run the fan as well as propane. What we learned:

1. Lower the top at night as you go to sleep - there's plenty of head room to sit up and lay in bed with the top down and it's much, much more heat efficient with the top down.
2. Set the thermostat at 60º instead of 70º - there are no numbers on the thermostat, so you'll have to experiment to see where it comes on. We have a indoor/outdoor thermometer that we use to tell what's going on (it can capture the minimum temp over a period).
3. The night in Colorado, I'd guess that we used almost half of a 20 lb tank pf propane - the furnace seemed to be on 40% of the time. I haven't refilled the tank, so I don't know how much we used in Moab although the temps never got much below 40º there.

Forgetting the outside (rock) lights on can use 10 amp-hours overnight if you aren't careful.

The fridge will generally use most of your battery power - haven't been in enough 80º days yet to have a feel for that. Keeping the interior "hatch" to the fridge compartment cracked will probably keep the heat from building up in the fridge compartment though.

More on storage shortly...

So hopefully in the next couple of weeks we will be picking ours up. Some of the options we chose are:

1. Truma aquago water heater
2. Truma Varioheat furnace
3. Rock lights
4. 40 gallon water tank and pump
5. 55" tongue box
6. Did the whole kitchen set up and fridge slide. Though providing my own ARB 82q fridge
7. OVS awning
8. Spare tire mount
9. Maxcoupler
10. 2000w inverter
11. Didnt do the portable solar as I found I could build something similar for a third of the cost
12. Also did not get the shower room option. Will probably get the OVS shower and mount in the same location
13. I also am having a wireless backup cam added. I went with one from haloview. It has a screen that fits over my review mirror. That should be pretty nice for driving down the highway

On the electrical side they are installing a Redarc Manager 30, which is a solar charger, shore powercharger, and 30amp vehicle charger all in one, at my request. There are pros and cons to this, only one piece of equipment so less space taken up, simpler wiring, though if it fails then no charging from any source. I provided them with a 170ah renogy battery. One overall concern I have is because I got the 40 gallon water tank the battery gets moved to the tongue box and because the tongue box isnt temperature controlled I wont be able to charge when below 32 or if the box gets really hot. Not sure where the Redarc manager 30 gets installed, tongue box or somewhere else.

@Wendell-R The info you provided was helpful as I live in the Denver area and plan camping in semi cold weather. How many batteries do you have and what size? Could you provide some more pictures of the battery location and location of other electrical components.

 

[Wendell-R]

@Wendell-R The info you provided was helpful as I live in the Denver area and plan camping in semi cold weather. How many batteries do you have and what size? Could you provide some more pictures of the battery location and location of other electrical components.

We've got three 100 AH BattleBorn LiPos located in a metal (tight fit, so probably couldn't be made out of an insulating material) battery box inside the tongue box:




The inverter is on the front wall under the bottom shelf forward of the water heater and furnace (more difficult to get to, so I didn't get a pic) - that basically minimizes the high amperage cable run from the batteries - the cable runs out the bottom of the tongue box, is tucked pretty well up inside the frame rails and up through the bottom of the cabinet housing the utilities.

From the master switch there, it runs to the rest of the power distribution fuses and the battery charger/shore power system above the driver's side wheel well.


We might have had the first 2000W inverter? In any case, the main fuse is on the positive battery terminal inside the battery box. Ours came with an 80 amp fuse which wasn't going to handle the inverter load. I pointed that out to Kyle and they sent me some parts to split the high current loads after the master switch between the inverter and the shorepower charger/supply - with a Redarc, yours will likely be a bit different. I put a separate 70 amp breaker in between the master switch and the shorepower supply because it can (and does) generate 60 amps in the reverse direction when charging the battery - there are separate 25A (I think) fuses between the shorepower supply and the main fuse block.

Some of this stuff may have changed since we got ours and with a Redarc, there will definitely be other changes on yours.

 

[Wendell-R]

One other thing we noticed last week in Moab - keep the solar panels clean. When we got in to Moab, the solar panels were only generating 20 watts. I figured out that they were dusty, so I used a windshield cleaner at a gas station to clean them off and they went up to normal output.

By the time we got out and camped (including following a few vehicles down a dusty road for a mile or two), the output was back down to 40-50 watts so I climbed up and cleaned them up again. After that, no problems.

Gratuitous campsite pic:


It was pretty nice having a rig that could get into a campsite overlooking a view that covered 40+ miles (half a mile from a real road) that no-one else wanted to try to get to! There's a 200-300 foot drop-off 15 ft behind the trailer.

Here's the data from the Victron Solar controller:


Didn't quite catch up from the cold weather furnace draw for a couple of days!

 

[RoninWanderer]

We just threw down our deposit to get in line for a Hybrid! We've been looking at this trailer since March and have been unable to find anything comparable. I appreciate all the info in this thread and might be reaching out with additional questions as we get closer.

We will be building a fully-loaded trailer that is setup for difficult terrain (suspension). So far Lindsay and TetonX have been amazing to work with and have made me feel very comfortable about the purchase. Unfortunately, over a year wait! Not bad, considering the circumstances in the world right now though. @Wendell-R , she mentioned you specifically for info, hopefully you will not mind if I reach out!

 

[Zaoverandunder]

Nice! We are on the list as well. What's your suspension set up plan? Our goals sound similar for the trailer.

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[RoninWanderer]

Hopefully more clearance and travel. Lots of time to figure it out tho! How long have you been in the list?

 

[Zaoverandunder]

Since August, wish we had pulled the trigger much sooner! Although I'm interested in hearing more about the potential of a composite body.

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[adamalli]

We just picked up ours this past weekend and took a few nights to try it out. All I have to say is this is a very well thought out camper trailer and we couldn't be happier. The wife and I loved it. It took us less time to setup and pack up then when we did tent camping.

We camped in an area off of exit 131 on I70 in Utah. Basically the middle of no where. It was also very cold, at least for us, and the camper performed very well. It got down into the low 20's for two nights and down to 18 on the last night. The heater and water heater were able to keep up without a hitch. We kept it about 60F at night. It is so nice to have instant hot water and be able to get dressed in the morning without freezing in a tent. Not sure how much propane we used but the 20lb bottle for the water heater and furnace didn't runout. On the power side of things between the lights, fridge( I suspect this didn't run to much) furnace, and water heater we never used more than16% of our battery in a 24 hour period. We have a 170AH battery so that would be 27AH in very cold night time temps. During the day it was around48F

Lindsay and Kyle are great to work with. I brought my own battery and fridge, found them cheap on craigslist, and they had no issues with installing them. They also spent about 4 hours with us going over the camper and making last minute adjustments.

We tow with a 2018 grand cherokee trailhawk

Happy to answer any questions people have.

 

[Wendell-R]

@Wendell-R , she mentioned you specifically for info, hopefully you will not mind if I reach out!

Always glad to help where I can. We're heading out tomorrow morning for a week, so I probably won't respond until after that.

 

[EPO]

Very interesting looking. I've watch some videos and one commented on how small the door was...easy to get in and hard to get out. Any experiences with that?

 

[Old Tanker]

Very interesting looking. I've watch some videos and one commented on how small the door was...easy to get in and hard to get out. Any experiences with that?

I think they expanded the door, but the door doesn't seem small compared to the available space, or doors in other Teardrops. It seems that with a traditional teardrop you expect to sit and twist directly into the bed, but with the Teton X you expect to step up into it like a Winnebago. So a door feels smaller than it really is.

 

[rcniss]

Made a down payment on there new prototype Porter model. Looks to be a year or so out as well. Im hoping by the time it makes it to production that it will have a composite option.

 

[adamalli]

I agree with old tanker. The door is the same size as most tear drops. It is a little difficult to get out if you don't have a little step stool.

 

[RoninWanderer]

Since August, wish we had pulled the trigger much sooner! Although I'm interested in hearing more about the potential of a composite body.

Agreed, we have been looking at this since March...wish I would have just thrown down then. I'd have it for next summer's travels. Oh well. Yeah, I am hoping that being so far out means we will be a composite body and reduce some weight.