Hondo Garage's New Thing

Heck yeah dude, would love to see one on your build.

 

If I can get the time off work I’ll be driving down as well.

 

Might have to do that as well.

 

@wileydavis @gmacmt

Do you guys have a 'walk-around' video of the prototype?

 

Really hoping I can make it happen! I might be eating a bunch of ramen between now and then, but it should be worth it.

I put the $500 refundable deposit on Paypal credit with no payments no interest for 6 months.

Nothing to loose!

 

Everyone should drive over! If we schedule it with more than just like one person we can all go camp...

We are working on that soon. Finishing up the canopy portion in the week and sending it off for powder. All the bits for the camper upper are shipping in next week, so we should be able to a walkaround video of what would effectively be a production unit really soon. Then taking it to baja and wiley is gonna try to break it, but I doubt he will be successful.

 

Also, just threw a new blog post on the site to let other people know about the stuff you guys know.

https://www.gofastcampers.com/gfc-blog/2017/12/8/the-spaceframe

 

You guys are killing me.

I might have to move up my time table.

 

Can i try? Im pretty destructive...

 

I like to think anything is possible with the right attitude

 

I’m in! Order #00028. Stoked for this

 

Heck yeah dude! I think I am as excited as you guys are too have the parts all come together. That next few weeks will be extremely picture heavy...

 

#28
Really nothing to lose by reserving one.
A wise woman once said, ''Sometime more is lost with indecision, then wrong decision.".

Now I just have to lay the ground work with the wife for the road trip to Montana in the spring.

 

We got word the extruder had no trouble pushing our two tent frame profiles. Sometimes there can be a bit of back and forth with the die to get it to extrude right. But sounds like they nailed it on the first try so we should be building tent frames next week! Here's a picture of short sections of the two profiles:

 

That's a pretty intricate extrusion. Looks awesome!

 

And we got some more work done on the lower frame last night. The passenger side here is the non-hinged but removable panel. It's attached with six Dzus fasteners. The panel is dimpled so the fasteners sit flush. I love the way this panel goes on and off. Between the spring of the Dzus fastener and the EPDM gasket, the panel pulls nicely against the tube frame and when you knock on it it responds with a dull thud rather than a tin-can snare drum sound.




The driver side panel is hinged and has some bead rolling on it. Production versions won't have different panels but this rig is going to Baja for three weeks of flogging and we wanted to test a couple different options. So we'll be testing the non-hinged style, and actually two different hinge designs. The linkage hinge and a continuous composite hinge on the hatch. Whichever one works best is the one we'll use on all the hinged panels. And we might forgo the beadrolling as the hinged versions will need internal ribs to provide enough stiffening for a panel that opens (the bead rolling wasn't quite enough) and the non-hinged versions are so solid when mounted they don't need it at all. That means that the bead rolling is effectively purely cosmetic. My preference is for the smooth side aesthetically, but if everyone really wants bead rolling it will probably still be an option. What does everyone think?

 

I like where this is going.

I think the bead rolls are cool. I also think they would look better one the panel is painted or PC or whatever. The bare aluminum it doesn't looks so good.

Either way is sweet. Id make it an option. Why not? haha

 

Well, since you brought up aesthetics, I vote against the bead rolling. To my eyes, the corner radii look different, which I'm sure is an optical illusion based on the the differing angles of the different corners. So it looks odd to me. But, function over form ...

 

Yeah, do away with the bead rolling. In current form the triangle order, and proportions are a little off. It also makes it look taller then it is. And on a short bed it will be real hard to make it look right.

 

When you say "continuous hinge" do you mean a truly continuous extruded hinge (ie two mating extrusions which rotate relative to each other over say 90-120 degrees; or a full-length piano hinge with interlocking knuckles? The former is more dust and waterproof, but most standard camper shell rear window hinges aren't a very good design ... if you do a custom extrusion design you can provide some pretty good features, for attachment, integrated rain gutter etc. but of course extrusion dies aren't cheap. Since the rear edge of the roof is forward of the tailgate (due to the slope of the rear window) it's important to prevent water running off the roof, and especially the lifted rear window, down into the bed when the rear window is opened.