The TARDIS - A Four Wheel Camper Build

Overland Hadley

on a journey
Installed the second Lagun mounting bracket. There is now one located on each side of the camper.

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Overland Hadley

on a journey

Overland Hadley

on a journey
Received and installed the new handrail.

When it came I was impressed with the quality, but I did not like the mirror perfect finish.

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So I spent a while giving it a fine burnishing. It now looks like the aluminum on the camper.

Install was straightforward. Unscrewed the old handle, put a little silicone in the hole and reinstalled the screws to seal up the hole. Then I marked for the new holes, drilled a pilot hole, mushed silicone in and around the hole, and installed with 14x5/8 screws. Nice and solid.

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Personally this handrail works much better for me. And it is another custom touch on my camper. :)


As I have been climbing in and out of my camper while working on it I have found that a longer and larger door handrail would be useful. Not sure if it is because I am a tall person, but I find the little handrail that FWC is using pathetic and far from ideal. Or maybe it is because I was frustrated with the handrail when I saw a picture of a FWC that had a second handrail mounted above the factory one. Either way I am excited to change it out to make an improvement.

View attachment 91763

Found a nice marine handrail from Dive-n-Dog. Did a little searching and found Here to be the best price, at about half of msrp.


Note: When looking at a replacement FWC handrail you will want to find a thru bolted one, as most marine handrails are male or female bolted.
 

Overland Hadley

on a journey
Interior Dome Light

Took a while to search out a pair of interior dome lights that I wanted to install. I already have the LEDs that I will use for the interior so I did not want to spend a lot for fixtures that already had LEDs installed. Looking to marine products I narrowed it down to dome lights from Perko and Hella. Finally decided on a surface mount dome light with dual bulbs from Perko. The fixtures will have a red set if LEDs in addition to the bright white LEDs. Bought the light fixtures from Hodges Marine

Passenger side fixture.

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Driver side, white on.

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Driver side, red on.

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Now I need to gets the LEDs installed.



I will be changing all the interior (and exterior) lighting to LED. Each light will be split between a white light and a red light. I have used the white/red light system on boats, and it is good when working at night. It might not be as useful in a camper, but it is where I would like to start and if I need to I can change some lights back to all white.

I have ordered and installed white and red LEDs from v-leds.com in the cab of the truck to test them out before ordering the full set for the camper. I am very happy with them. 100 lumens is a lot of light. And 5000K is a good working spectrum of light.

Link


The campers interior LED lights will have to be used sparingly, as they will be running off the single truck battery. This will work for me, as the weight savings of not having a second battery is impressive.

I have been mulling over options for my main light source. I thought about a LED lantern like the Black Diamond Apollo. (Link) But in the end I hate dragging around small batteries as much as I hate the heavy big ones.

Then I remembered the three candle lanterns I bought for a trip in the pacific north west. There was something warm and comforting about sitting around a couple of candles, especially in the never ending rain. Sure, they can be a bit of a pain, but it's something I do not mind dealing with.

I have the standard UCO Candle Lantern, (Link) customized with some of my stickers.
 
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Overland Hadley

on a journey
That looks great! Can you explain how you burnished it? I like your look much better than the bling of the high polished look

There are many ways to do it, from grinding wheels to Brillo pads. For this project I have been using a soft wire cup brush that fits on a drill instead of a grinder. I like it because it can either do a circular pattern (like I did the aluminum sheet in the interior) or it can do parallel curved lines like I did on the handrail. Either way it can create a unique, but uniform finish.
 

24HOURSOFNEVADA

Expedition Leader
N-

The build is going well. I'm leaning more and more towards installing a Wave 6 heater in my Hawk. Right now I'm using a Mr. Buddy and it works well, but I'm growing tired of changing the propane canisters throughout the night, this mostly applies to camping with the kids. My question to you is this; If I mount it on the back wall, next to the door, would you be concerned about the heat in regards to the small side cabinet?

Mine is a shell model, so the cabinet is the small sliding door model above the side window.
 

Every Miles A Memory

Expedition Leader
There are many ways to do it, from grinding wheels to Brillo pads. For this project I have been using a soft wire cup brush that fits on a drill instead of a grinder. I like it because it can either do a circular pattern (like I did the aluminum sheet in the interior) or it can do parallel curved lines like I did on the handrail. Either way it can create a unique, but uniform finish.

Thanks for the explanation
 

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