Iggy's $1 Taco

So are your plans to get a new material to act as the tent fabric or continue to work with what you have? Hoping you get it all figured out soon, we are all stoked to see the final project.

 

Continue to work with what I have. I just have to pull out the awing track and resew it.

 

Having owned and camped many nights in a Flippac and 2 Fourwheel campers, using a lighter tent fabric would make the camper like... a tent. Because the Flippac has to pull all the material up and over, a heavier fabric may not work. Same for the Habitat. The Flippac was great. Camped near the beach with all 6 windows open, in the desert, or in most places in summer. Very spacious and light as well.
For cold, rain, and snow, the 4wc prevailed. The heavy fabric didn't make it feel like a tent. It was like you were stepping into a room. It cuts noise if you end up at a campground on a road trip and can't find a spot to stealth camp. With kids, sometimes you have to just call it and begrudgingly pull into a KOA. The fabric is completely waterproof, doesn't flap as much in the wind, and has some insulation value. Super durable too. Never needs waterproofing treatment. The 18oz vinyl coated polyester fabric is exactly what they use in Fourwheel campers. Sounds like it's a bitch to install though!
Both the Flippac and the 4wc have pros and cons. Our campers, IMO, have the best of both worlds. And deployment is stupid easy.
I feel bad, since I talked Iggy into this fabric, but know it's the right material for 4-season camping in Northern California.

 

Ignore my bitching man, I'm just not setup to sew such large heavy fabric. If I had a massive table it would be no problem, but I'm basically doing this on a mobile sewing setup so that's why it's so hard. The stitching I have to do is stupid easy. I think I have it figured out and I'm going to try something else once I get everything ready again.

 

We all believe in you!

 

That gif made me lol for a second, then I felt really sad. Still do. Thanks a lot Blake.

 

That explains a lot, I feel like this is the best of both worlds when it comes to fabrics, I'm assuming the window placement and all that is yet to come but I'm interested to see what you come up with.

 

I just replaced the stock foam mattress in my Flippac with an Exped Megamat Duo. Its a foam filled semi self inflating mattress that puffs up to about 4" thick, but can compress down as much as you want depending on how much air you let out. It is way more comfortable than the open cell foam of the Flippac and adjustable in firmness with air pressure. I use a $10 12v air pump meant for air mattresses to quickly inflate it to final pressure. Might be an option to look in to. It is 78"x52"x4" and about $350. Probably a little more expensive than getting some foam cut from a fabric store but this is way nicer. My open cell foam mattress got a little wet then started growing mold. I took care of that problem but hopefully won't happen again with this thing.

https://www.rei.com/product/113720/exped-megamat-duo-10-sleeping-pad

 

Thanks! That might actually fit perfectly in there! I'll check it out.

 

No pics tonight but I just wrapped up going back to step 1, finished hemming and now ready for the track. Getting back at it and close to being done!

 

Hi OP, sweet build! Very similar to my suspension setup. I was looking at your CV angles and they look a lot more neutral than mine. Did you do a diff drop to avoid the hyper extension? I haven't installed the winch or skid plates yet. Maybe the added weight will level them out? Thanks!

 

No diff dropped I would stay away from any of them. The the springs have settled a but more now and the CV angles almost look stock, so I'm going to bump up the front a bit. It looks like 2.5" of lift is the happy number.

 

I wonder if I can get away with a memory foam mattress topper. Amazon has them for $105 with 1.5" of Memory foam and 2.5" of high density foam.

 

That's what I've been looking at using when pricing out building my own camper, inexpensive and theoretically easy to trim to fit vs an air mattress. Not sure how different it is than the 2.5" foam mattress in our RTT without having them side-by-side to compare.

Wife finds the 2.5" RTT mattress too thin, so we just bring along a thin backpacking sleeping pad and throw it on top of the mattress for some extra padding

 

That fabric looks great for hotboxing.

 

I had been looking at a Wrangler with an Ursa Minor hardtop camper, but I'm buying a Taco, so your design is *exactly* what I need. Subscribed!

How difficult would it be to create machine-routed edges (or a fiberglass shell?) so that the topper has some aerodynamic curves, like your original Snugtop, or the Ursa Minor product?

 

Subbed for finished product!

 

Coming together nicely. Stoked.