The Ultimate DIY thread - Ubuilding (Pics)

Last time I weighed it, it was about 450 lbs without batteries. It's probably still pretty close to that, but I'll weigh it tonight.

I hear you on the battery care. At the marina we swap out batteries every 4 years because people DON'T maintain them. Just today I was readying a boat that hasn't seen its owner in 2 years. I'm not putting new batteries in it until the last minute so we can set up a charging schedule (which most people don't want to pay for and some think we should do for free)

EDIT: weight is about 665lb including one of the two batteries, so about 600lb without or 720lb with both batteries. With what I have left to do, I'm pretty sure I'll come in under my 1000lb target.

Cool beans, looks like you are making good progress.
Have you had a chance to weigh the trailer yet?

Good job on fixing that three bank charger. I bet that works out well for 'ya. Around here, some fishermen just pitch their one or two yr old batteries and get new ones. I've never been rich enough to handle them that way. I try to get everything out of them before replacement. I replaced my truck battery, last year. It was ten yrs, one month old and I have about 1500 watts of sound system and also, a defective door switch that keeps my interior lights on for 15 minutes. A guy can squeeze out a lot of longevity with just minimal proper care.

Looking forward to the next installment!

Gentlemen !
Things are definitely picking up but I'm never too busy for you fellas.

The build is clipping along nicely...though a lot has happened since I last posted. To catch up:

The galley

It's all framed in now and I've started slopping some paint around. There are two kick@ss LED dome lights in the hatch and four lights under the upper shelf shining down. More downlights will go underneath the counter top to light up the storage below, just on the right side since the cooler is in the left side. In the right side will be a naptha stove, fuel jug and the "kitchen" tote that I use for truck camping. The fuse panel on the right side will be boxed in and will include an AC outlet.

And this is what will feed it:


On the left is the battery switch. I salvaged that from a couple ambulances I scrapped out 20+ years ago.
I have the other one...somewhere :)
Next to it is a basic 1kW Xantrex that I got a screaming deal on.

The battery charger below that is a new acquisition - it's a ProMariner 3-bank charger that has a bit of a history...
A customer complained that his batteries weren't getting charged. As it turns out, he had his batteries replaced a while back and they installed AGMs in place of flooded batteries. This charger doesn't have a profile for AGMs and but they sold him the new batteries anyway...at $500 a pop.

It was easier to rationalize $800 for a new charger that could AGMs vs switching him back to floods for $500 plus losing the $1500 he had already spent. As a result, I wound up with the old, dead unit.
I'm no electronics whiz by any stretch, but I replaced a blown cap, one that was questionable, and two glass fuses and whaddya know, it works like a hot damm !

The box it's bolted to is the battery box, accessible from outside. Between the battery box (2 batts) and the front of the box (left in pic) there is just enough room for another battery. That's where the battery for the trolling motor will live and will be charged off the third bank of the charger.

I still don't have room for solar, but....
When the weather's good for generating solar, I will never have more than a weekend off. When I have time off, it's winter on the west coast and the sky is grey/white for months at a time. I don't have the real estate on the roof for panels but I do have space on the roof racks and in the tongue box for a generator and a jerry can.


This is the battery box, sized for two group 31 deep cycles. That will give me 200 A*h of battery which is more than I'll ever use for weekending but there's a reason for the overkill.
When we change out a battery in a boat after 4 years or so, it still has 'some' life left in it. I get the best of the dead ones for the core charge ($20) and use them till they die. If I wind up using the trailer enough to justify it I'll buy new batteries, but until then...

So...I know you're asking "But Deadeye, the battery box holds two but it's a three-bank charger."
Between the battery box and the front wall of the tongue box, there is just another room for a third battery....for a trolling motor for the boat on the roof racks, of course !

This is how I sealed the galley hatch hinge.

I made a curb of 1/2" ply to mount the forward hinge leaf to, so that it would never be in standing water. That got glued down with sealant and screwed through every other hole. The remaining holes were for aluminum strips that would hold down a piece of fabric-reinforced gasket to keep rain out. I don't see why it wouldn't work...but it hasn't been tested yet.

I also did a curb when I put the roof hatch & skylight in:




I think that's pretty much up to date now. I want to camp in it for the third weekend of May (long weekend here) but I have long since given up making hard deadlines, so we'll see...

Moderator edit to re-size picture to forum recommended limit of 640px maximum width.

I bet Lefty is busy in the boat biz around now. I'm really wanting to see Project Glacial get along.

Looks like a nice rig there. Yeah I went another direction tried making it a LTL freight hauler rig hence the big sleeper found out could make more money with a Freightliner so it became a truck conversion camper and now the wife won't let me change my mind again, figured I had a year before she took over. :S

P.S. Sorry didn't post early claiming scatterbrain. :o

That sounds like it would be a great platform for an electric conversion and it ought to be pretty straightforward to convert a shaft drive. With the cost of lithium batteries coming down so fast already, it will be interesting to see what happens to the price when Musk's new battery plant in Reno is up and running. Then you're going to see electric everywhere.
Well, probably never in RVs :)

Electric outboard---wow! Keep on that, it would be awesome.
I have an electric boat project, too. I dug out a 26' Great Lakes steel lifeboat a couple of years ago. I'd like to outfit it with a 1/2 golf cart axle and the 6 batteries needed. That project needs about another year of sleep on it.

Ya, post up those trip pictures. Always cool to see different projects from talented guys. I'm looking forward to see how you laid up the glass on the exterior.

Thx for checking in, westy.
Interesting that you bring up the solar...
With the solar kit I've got, I was using it for about a year to make my toast and coffee in the morning in the old house - not because I had to, but to prove its practicality.

My work (marine mechanic) gives me access to an almost unlimited supply of old outboards with blown powerheads. A pet project that's been rolling around in the mad-scientist area of my brain (the wackybellum ?) is to convert an old outboard to electric. On my bench right now is an old 1968-ish Kiekhafer 39 (4hp Merc) that is getting a motor from an electric bike. It's a 'prototype' for a bigger one using an electric car motor and a 150hp donor motor. The trick is to keep the original cowl so it all looks like a classic motor.

Most folks around here run their boats from our marina for 10-15 minutes to the cabin where it sits for a week. Then they run it back to its slip where it sits until next time they come up from town. That's an ideal usage curve for electric and solar panels will have plenty of time to put the amps back into the battery between visits.

But I digress...
Your comments about solar are exactly why I want to put them onto hinged panels. That way I can secure them to the roof racks under the boat for longer trips and set them up wherever I need to in camp. I don't anticipate needing them for weekend trips since I have 200 A*h of battery and very little draw (mostly just LED lighting).

As you pointed out, being on the BC coast is pretty tight country so you do have to pick your spots. You know the old saying about finding north by which side of the tree the moss is thickest on ? That doesn't work here because it's carpeted all the way around the tree, lol. Even still, you can always find a patch of sunshine...though it's not usually where the trailer is, so portable panels might be the better way to go anyway. Fortunately I have power where it's parked now so I can leave the charger on while it's parked, which was one of my motivations for roof-mounted panels.

It looks like tomorrow I'm ordering the ball studs for the gas spring for the hatch so I can sort out the geometry before I start framing in the galley cabinets. I'll order the door handles at the same time. This weekend will be eaten up installing the EPS foam insulation inside the cabin.

I hear you on the relationship thing: happy wife = happy life. While camping solo is great and is something everyone should do, it's also great just to have my own crash pad when I'm camping with buddies.
I like having a tent to myself and a tiny trailer insures I'll get to keep that :)

I don't know how often I'll update, but at the very least I'll get some pics of the first trip.

Good to see you back, Lefty! From project Glacial to project Rolling Along, too!

Yeah, sorting out the relationship do's-and-don'ts is at the heart of getting along with your spouse, IMO. Besides, going out by yourself is a good thing, makes getting back together even better.

About the solar: Since installing my meager system, all I can say is that it's something I'll never be without if I have to operate a 12 V system. There is just too much goodness to leave behind.

I can envision that some of the roads you travel up in BC are heavily wooded. That presents issues with solar modules. I have seen mounting on the sides of the RV. Maybe you could confabulate a side wall mount with a plywood cover to insure durability.

Anyways, keep us posted, it will be cool to see the final result of your build.

Hey!
Sorry to hear your camper build didn't see the end but it looks like you're charging on in a new direction...so am I but I guess we need to catch up a bit first.

I had separated the shell into a few pieces and stowed them until I had the space to carry on. As of August and our move into a much bigger place (3000 sq ft vs 900) I was in a position to carry on, but the pieces didn't survive the move. Truth be told, by the end of it I just wanted to be done with moving and figured I could rebuild whatever I needed to while correcting all those little compromises that had been nagging at me.

One of the changes will be to use a coring foam like Divinycell or Klegecell and polyester resin in a more conventional layup. In retrospect, the savings in using XPS foam (blue/pink) as the core were more than eaten up with the cost of epoxy, the quantity of which I had underestimated. As time went on, it seemed like I was putting more money in glass onto a core which wasn't everything it could have been.

I had also had some issues with the floor delaminating so it was like the old dilemma of what to do when you're building a house and you realize there are problems with the foundation.

The one I'm building now is stick-frame and ply and I'm sheathing the outside in glass (you know there had to be glassing involved somewhere!)

I've sanded, etched and painted the jalousie window frames from the Glacier and am using the roof vent and inverter from it as well. I kept the appliances I refurbished for the Glacier for the next build, which will be a similar full-height, lightweight project...although on a wider platform. I also kept the door I made up though I don't know whether I'll use it or not. The next one will likely be built for some level of off-roading and, since the Ranger's days are likely numbered, the next truck will be a 4X4.

My primary tow vehicle for this one will still be the Ranger though it's off the road right now. It needs a clutch and, after having done the last one laying under the truck, I'm going to pull the motor and tranny out together and do it on the ground. At the same time I'll do the timing belt and head gasket since it's out.
Of course, it's crossed my mind more than once to put a 5.0 back in instead of the four-banger....

In the meantime, we bought an Escape back in March. It has the 2.0 turbo....and a tow capacity of 3500 pounds ! I could never feel comfortable towing that much weight with it, but the trailer as it sits right now is only about 500 lbs. We still need to get a hitch installed on it, but that's not a big deal.

When I started the Glacier, I was under the impression that, if I made if comfortable enough, she-who-camps-with-me might get into the whole camping thing. We've been together 20-odd years and it turns out she was just humoring me when she came camping...I almost wish she'd been having an affair instead, hehe.
Anyway, that made me look at my priorities again and I realized that all I really needed was a kitchen and bed for one person that was always ready to roll. Less time setting up camp means more time on the lake or chasing deer...

So this is what those priorities became:


The new platform gives me a bed that's 52" X 79" and still enough depth in the galley for a 24" deep counter top with a cooler stowed underneath it.

I just finished the glassing on the roof tonight (hence the work light) and started pulling wires inside to get ready to insulate and panel the interior. The hatch at the back opens to the galley and the entire inside of the cabin is a mattress. The tongue box holds two deep cycle batteries for the trailer and another for a trolling motor for the 7.5' Livingston dinghy that will be on roof racks. Also in there is a 3-bank battery charger and 1000W inverter. At this point I foresee no real need of AC power but I'm sure that if I install the outlets they'll get used... I also have no plans for an entertainment system but I'm still wiring for speakers as well as 12V and 110 for it.

There's no way I can fit the solar panels on top of this roof (I brought all of my Tetris skills to bear in trying to make it work) so they'll get save for the next one. I've been thinking about mounting them to hinged ply panels like the suitcase kits but that's a project for another day.

We have a month-long shutdown at Xmas so I want to be able to camp in it by then. I don't expect it'll be 'finished' but...are they ever ?