Be careful what you ask for - I'm "wordy"!
Inside updates - hmmm. Well, I did upgrade the bed a while back. The old bed was only partially removable. Only the back half (the cabover part) was a removable cushion. The front half, part of which extends into the living space, was 'built in'. This was rough to manage, and makes the cushioned area underneath (the one in front of the cab-to cab window) unusable. It was supposed to fold up, but due to some PO shenanigans, it didn't fold. So, fixed all of that. I just cut some 3/4" plywood the same size as the former cushion, and piano-hinged that sucker on there. I also moved the existing folding legs over, and now it folds up, AND the whole mattress comes out. I got the new foam from these guys at the Foam Factory:
http://www.FoamByMail.com
View attachment 388590
(I'll put a picture here later of the fold-up part..)
I didnt know what I was doing, so I called them up and asked for their suggestions. Really nice folks. They suggested a nice medium foam 2" base, and a softer 2" memory foam for the top. They also sew up custom covers so I had them make me one for the whole thing. Great improvement. No telling how old the original foam was, so good riddance. It also made that forward sofa usable, so I stowed a porta-potty under one of the front cushions. Another nice thing to have, when you need it! Sometimes nature calls at a bad place and moment, and she doesn't like to leave a message, LOL!
(I'll put a picture here later..)
Speaking of which, very shortly I will be replacing all of the seat cushions. New foam and new fabric. We had an incident over New Years Eve, camping at a friends place. The gang fried a Turkey, which was delicious, however, they left the oil vat sitting on the ground and forgot about it. My dog found it, and ate several pounds of solidified oil. He got sick, needless to say, so we put him in the camper to calm down (before we realized what made him sick.) Well folks - he puked up turkey grease all over the cushions. Good thing we hadn't already replaced them, right? We cleaned it up as well as we could, but you just can't get that stuff out. So yeah - replacing the cushions soon.
Also, later this summer I will probably tackle replacing the countertop. It's delaminating here and there and made of particleboard - so it's heavy and crappy - an award winning combination. I will either use corrugated lexan plastic sheet (extra light) or I will use road case style vinyl clad wood-and-aluminum extrusion (little heavier, but looks better, and still lighter by far than the existing counter) Whatever I do I will post photos.
I am also considering replacing the entire roof top, and while I'm at it, the vinyl soft sides. Already got the plans drawn up, and trying to find a local awning shop to weld up the 1" square-tube aluminum frame for me. That's a serious can of worms, but rest assured I'll post about that as it happens.
Last thing is just today I got in my new battery. I'm very exited about it actually. It's a LifePO4 12v 50AH. It weighs LESS THAN A THIRD of my existing battery - so I'm saying goodbye to about 30 extra pounds. Eventually I will get a second one, and parallel them into a 100 amp hour monster!
Why two batteries? Well, they are 'prohibitively' expensive, so it allows me to space out the purchase a bit. Another reason is that I can pull one battery out, and charge it either by solar or by shore power. What I mean is: the solar panels on the top of my rig are usually in the shade when were camping, so not doing much good. I carry a second solar panel and charge controller, so I can carry everything out into the direct sun and make some progress. We also camp regularly in a situation where generators are not allowed, and we don't have shore power we can plug into, but there is power in the shower house. So, in that case I can carry one battery up there and charge it while the other one is working. Each of these batteries weighs only 14 lbs. Amazing. I wish they were cheaper. Here's my battery if you're curious:
https://www.bioennopower.com/collec...s/products/12v-50ah-lfp-battery-abs-sealed-ws
Besides weight, the other advantage to LifePO4 batteries in usable amp hours. A regular lead acid battery of any variety (SLA, AGM or flooded) only allows you to use about 50% of it's rating, so if you have a 100 amp hour battery, it's only usable for about 50 amp hours. It's because they rate the battery's capacity all the way down to 0 volts. If you drain it down past 10 volts or so, it's not going to come back, or at least not too many times! This LifePo4 battery is about 90% efficient in amp hours, so you can use pretty much all 50AH, making this 50AH battery closely equivalent to a 90 amp hour lead acid battery, in terms of usable power. Anyway, it just got here today, so nothing to see here yet really. Once I have a few campouts on it, I will post more.
Good to hear from you, Mr. Marmot! And, thank you LuckyDan!
