Hondo Garage's New Thing

My thoughts exactly!

 

Orange County. I go west occasionally, where are you?

 

Mine will be at ExpoEast at a booth, and I know Graeme and team will be there as well. Should be a lot of opportunity for you to see one next month in person. If you can make it to Asheville.

 

Im in lenoir NC. About an hour away from Charlotte.

Sadly im not sure if i will make it this year. If i do it will be for sunday only.

 

Not with that attitude you won't... HAHA Just kidding, hopefully you can find the time to make it. If you're thinking about dropping 6K or more I'm sure it'd be worth making the time. I can only assume SNAP!, Vagabond, AT and of course GFC will all be there, it sure would be nice to compare them all in person. I made my purchase when these things were only a concept, If I had the opportunity to see them all in person I defiantly would have. Hopefully you try to make it to Expo even for a day I am sure you'd find it time well spent. If not hopefully you're able to track one or two down and look at them before making a decision.

 

I'll be there as well!

 

Colorados are the same frame but the mounting tabs are longer and in different spots. But they could be made to fit one another by any competent fab shop with not too much work.

 

Here's a link to the sealed version of the latch: https://www.southco.com/en-us/c2/c2-43-25

 

Question for Wiley: Why did GFC decide to build the horizontal and vertical members of the space frame out of 1-1/2" round tube steel instead of 1-1/2" square tube steel? It seems like flat surfaces and square corners would be much easier to gasket and seal.

 

@wileydavis would have to give you the “official” answer since it’s his design. But in short round tubing is ~20% lighter than the comparable diameter square tubing and it is of course stronger/ stiffer as well by design. Basically 1.5” DOM (drawn over mandrel) tubing is suitable for race car chassis, is it over kill for a camper? Yep, that’s why we love it!!!

I’m not saying one has never been made from square stock, but race cars, buggies, driveshafts, ext are always round. It’s simply stronger for a given weight. The downside is of course it’s not as easy to cut and weld (hence his fancy robots)

Long story short the GFC was designed to be light and strong. Round tubing will always win when those are your primary objectives.

For what it’s worth the sealing system they came up with works very very well. My tailgate allows way more water into the bed than the GFC does. It’s not “waterproof” but it certainly seals out 99.99% of moisture. I’d feel comfortable in the bed of my truck with the GFC closed up during any weather.


Just noticed that was your first post!!

Welcome to Tacoma World!!!!! You’ll love it here. Though your wallet may begin to hate you.

 

We went with round tubing because it's torsionally stiffer and somewhat readily available in DOM form (square/rectangle isn't), which is what we need for our thin-walled structure (the space frame is very light). The round tube is just as easy to gasket as a square tube frame would be. The sides of the frame are mitered and form a continuous tangent face around the perimeter (meaning if you were to lay the frame on its side against a flat surface, it would touch all the way around.)

The hardest part to the sealing is the fact that we wanted the entire side of the camper to open up. Not just a large window opening, but the entire side. The tradeoff for cabana mode is more sealing surface to have to get right.

 

We tell people it's not a submarine, but it was designed to keep you dry in the rain

 

1 more camper completed late last week and a bunch were shipped today. From my math it looks like 68 have been completed.

Not Shipped: Too many to count
In Production: 42
Ready to Ship: 6
Shipped: 62
Completed: 67

 

@wileydavis while I’m thinking about it any progress on insulation and heaters? I know you mentioned them a while back. From the weather I’ve seen you guys/gals in Montana need them now. Just curious, not inpatient.

 

We installed a propex heater in my truck over the weekend. It's just a preliminary install to test. With no insulation the heater seems to be able to easily raise inside temps about 25F over outside temps. Still needs more testing though, but the process has begun.

 

HS2000. Right now made a plate that mounts the heater over the driver's side bed cubby. You pull the box out and bolt the plate to the heater, then the whole assembly covers the hole. Combustion inlet and exhaust go right out inside the fender with exhaust exiting near the bumper and the inlet over the spare tire. No drilling required. testing out the ducting from there. Right now i just have it exiting 90 degrees pointed up.Heats the whole place up with a floor panel out.

 

No joke. There were two different 2019 owners that posted about it.

 

That's funny. They never make things easy. Assuming there's not some new safety feature hiding behind there, it would be easy enough to cut the two holes required in that spot.

 

Nothing behind there. The one owner posted a pic. Same as before, just missing the box.

 

And not everyone has a 3rd gen...