Alphamacaroon
New member
Thought I would start a build thread to document my latest project— a mid-size hard-sided popup camper inspired by the Sigma, Tago, and Hiatus campers.
Background
I've been overlanding since the early 90's back when we called it "going on an adventure in your car, finding the nearest campground, then driving as absolutely far away as you can from it to set up camp". My first real expedition was a 2 month trip from Colorado Springs, CO to Prudhoe Bay, AK shortly after graduating high school. Myself and two school buddies wanted to see how far north we could get in North America purely by road, and Prudhoe Bay was that place.
Our expedition truck was a heavily modified Nissan pickup truck. By heavily modified, I mean that we found a truck bed canopy and two rear seats from a Subaru Brat in a junkyard and bolted them to the pickup bed. Since there were three of us, someone always had to ride "Brat in the Back". There was no room for us to sleep in the pickup bed, so most camping was done cowboy style on the rough ground (we were still young and pliable then). That is until we hit a certain latitude and the mosquitoes found innovative ways of getting into our sleeping bags even when fully mummified— after that we pitched a tent every night. From that point on the mosquitos stopped bothering us when we slept, but still managed to find their way into everything we cooked, so we just considered them part of our diet.
Stories from that expedition could probably warrant its own series of posts, but it hopefully gives you a little background for why I'm taking on this build. I want to be able to do trips like I used to when I was younger, but my 40ish year old bones just aren't happy camping on the ground anymore.
Requirements
In order to get my wife to let me build this thing I had to convince her it'd be something she'd want live in for at least a couple days at a time. So my theme for this build is "Tacticool on the outside, resort spa on the inside". But let's be honest, it's not all her doing— I'm not a big fan of sparse tactical interiors with molle panels for wallpaper and axes and traction plates for pictures. When I'm outside the camper I can do all the "roughing it" I want. But when I'm inside, I want to feel pampered.
Beyond the tacticool spa theme, the most important things to me are reliability, strength, and above all else, minimal weight. Of course it's going to be almost impossible to accomplish all three, but I'm going to do my best.
In the spirit of reliability and strength, very early on I decided I wanted to have hard walls on my popup. Having never owned a canvas popup I don't have much first-hand knowledge of what it's like to own one, but I've just seen too many posts online with folks constantly dealing with rips and tears and water intrusion. I know many people will also swear by how great they are too, but it's just not for me.
When figuring out how I wanted to accomplish folding hard walls I knew origami would be the inspiration. Originally I was inspired by how cardboard milk cartons fold, and after a bunch of research I found that a number of people out there have come up a great solution (with minor variations) to the problem. As I mentioned above, Sigma, Tago, and Hiatus have the best overall approach in my opinion— I'll go into more detail why in later posts. I understand that Hiatus has a US patent (although likely not defensible if challenged) on the design, but I have no current plans to commercialize this, so hopefully they won't mind a one-off build with a similar (but not the same) design. Hiatus seems to have a great product, and I probably would have purchased one from them if it met some specific needs (most important one being budget).
The Alu-Cab Foundation
As I was planning out my build I decided that I wanted to do minimal metal fabrication, so that meant that I would probably have to start with a pre-existing truck bed canopy as a base to the popup. Unfortunately most canopies have fixed roofs, so it would mean that I would have to permanently maim and behead a beautiful canopy in order to build the popup walls on top of it. Preferably I'd still like to have a nice and usable truck canopy in the future if I decide that I no longer want to camp in it. The other reason I like this is that it will likely take me a few months to build this thing completely out, so at least I have a roof over my head if I decide I want to do a couple of small camping trips before the popup section is built.
So after a lot of searching for "modular truck canopies" I found the Alu-Cab ModCAP. This thing was literally made for this project. It has the ability to start with a hard roof, then take it off and bolt on a popup tent when you feel like it. Alu-Cab already makes two different sizes of beautiful tents you can mount on the base, but they are both canvas and so they don't fit my requirements.
The other thing that really set the ModCAP as a winner for me was the configuration of their rear door. Because it replaces the pickup tailgate with a fully sealing door, it minimizes dust intrusion— hard to feel pampered if you are coughing up dust. I also like the idea that the rear door can carry a full size spare (up to 33" I believe) which opens up some additional storage room in the spare tire bay.
Lastly, the ModCAP being aluminum and built by a reputable company felt like it fit the bill in terms of reliability, strength, and low weight.
Next post...
Alu-Cab ModCAP install and modifications.
Background
I've been overlanding since the early 90's back when we called it "going on an adventure in your car, finding the nearest campground, then driving as absolutely far away as you can from it to set up camp". My first real expedition was a 2 month trip from Colorado Springs, CO to Prudhoe Bay, AK shortly after graduating high school. Myself and two school buddies wanted to see how far north we could get in North America purely by road, and Prudhoe Bay was that place.
Our expedition truck was a heavily modified Nissan pickup truck. By heavily modified, I mean that we found a truck bed canopy and two rear seats from a Subaru Brat in a junkyard and bolted them to the pickup bed. Since there were three of us, someone always had to ride "Brat in the Back". There was no room for us to sleep in the pickup bed, so most camping was done cowboy style on the rough ground (we were still young and pliable then). That is until we hit a certain latitude and the mosquitoes found innovative ways of getting into our sleeping bags even when fully mummified— after that we pitched a tent every night. From that point on the mosquitos stopped bothering us when we slept, but still managed to find their way into everything we cooked, so we just considered them part of our diet.
Stories from that expedition could probably warrant its own series of posts, but it hopefully gives you a little background for why I'm taking on this build. I want to be able to do trips like I used to when I was younger, but my 40ish year old bones just aren't happy camping on the ground anymore.
Requirements
In order to get my wife to let me build this thing I had to convince her it'd be something she'd want live in for at least a couple days at a time. So my theme for this build is "Tacticool on the outside, resort spa on the inside". But let's be honest, it's not all her doing— I'm not a big fan of sparse tactical interiors with molle panels for wallpaper and axes and traction plates for pictures. When I'm outside the camper I can do all the "roughing it" I want. But when I'm inside, I want to feel pampered.
Beyond the tacticool spa theme, the most important things to me are reliability, strength, and above all else, minimal weight. Of course it's going to be almost impossible to accomplish all three, but I'm going to do my best.
In the spirit of reliability and strength, very early on I decided I wanted to have hard walls on my popup. Having never owned a canvas popup I don't have much first-hand knowledge of what it's like to own one, but I've just seen too many posts online with folks constantly dealing with rips and tears and water intrusion. I know many people will also swear by how great they are too, but it's just not for me.
When figuring out how I wanted to accomplish folding hard walls I knew origami would be the inspiration. Originally I was inspired by how cardboard milk cartons fold, and after a bunch of research I found that a number of people out there have come up a great solution (with minor variations) to the problem. As I mentioned above, Sigma, Tago, and Hiatus have the best overall approach in my opinion— I'll go into more detail why in later posts. I understand that Hiatus has a US patent (although likely not defensible if challenged) on the design, but I have no current plans to commercialize this, so hopefully they won't mind a one-off build with a similar (but not the same) design. Hiatus seems to have a great product, and I probably would have purchased one from them if it met some specific needs (most important one being budget).
The Alu-Cab Foundation
As I was planning out my build I decided that I wanted to do minimal metal fabrication, so that meant that I would probably have to start with a pre-existing truck bed canopy as a base to the popup. Unfortunately most canopies have fixed roofs, so it would mean that I would have to permanently maim and behead a beautiful canopy in order to build the popup walls on top of it. Preferably I'd still like to have a nice and usable truck canopy in the future if I decide that I no longer want to camp in it. The other reason I like this is that it will likely take me a few months to build this thing completely out, so at least I have a roof over my head if I decide I want to do a couple of small camping trips before the popup section is built.
So after a lot of searching for "modular truck canopies" I found the Alu-Cab ModCAP. This thing was literally made for this project. It has the ability to start with a hard roof, then take it off and bolt on a popup tent when you feel like it. Alu-Cab already makes two different sizes of beautiful tents you can mount on the base, but they are both canvas and so they don't fit my requirements.
The other thing that really set the ModCAP as a winner for me was the configuration of their rear door. Because it replaces the pickup tailgate with a fully sealing door, it minimizes dust intrusion— hard to feel pampered if you are coughing up dust. I also like the idea that the rear door can carry a full size spare (up to 33" I believe) which opens up some additional storage room in the spare tire bay.
Lastly, the ModCAP being aluminum and built by a reputable company felt like it fit the bill in terms of reliability, strength, and low weight.
Next post...
Alu-Cab ModCAP install and modifications.
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