Vagabond Drifter Camper Buildout and Mods

Yup I hope I'm not stuck with this crazy expensive awning. Wish they had known this before and said something to all of us. People have been chatting about 270s on there. This ain't new.

 

This is exactly how I felt after a trip to the Grand Canyon where we woke up one morning to a torrential downpour and had to quickly put our RTTs away. While collapsing the tent and having to go back and forth to driver and passenger side, and zipping up the cover overhead, water was rolling down my sleeves and in the quick couple minutes I put the tent away, I got completely soaked head to toe.

Never again. It takes less than 10 seconds to close the Drifter - everytime.

Shameless plug for said trip

 

How are you able adjust air-fuel ratio? Do you know if adjustability is typical of the "knockoff" heaters? I've been trying to figure out which heater to get given that the typical use will be around 8,000 ft.

 

Welcome to TW

 

We have two Odyssey PC 1400 batteries (main / aux) in the engine bay. Routed the wire through the back driver cubby, and will be hooking up the Vagabond panel to this Blue Sea Fuse Block.
https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Sea-Bla...r=1-17&keywords=blue+sea+fuse+block+6+circuit.

 

the settings are in the menu to make changes. This adjustment feature is typical of the digital display modes. Any of the 2kw or 5kw with digital displays will work fine.

 

married life always messes up the ratio!

 

I am realizing now I don't have really any great photos of videos of the table (even though its one of my favorite parts of our build).

The table top itself is a sealed piece of plywood that was originally a temporary table top on a mount I made for the flippac. We started putting stickers on it from the places we have gone in the truck and decided we wanted to keep it in the drifter.

The table mount itself is called a Lagun Table Mount. It was originally designed for yachts and boats. When Phil and I were at the Northwest Overland Rally, he saw it in a teardrop build from a company out of bend OR called Overkill campers. They were awesome people and let us play around with it. Depending on the application it will swivel 360 degrees on both the table and horizontal arm.

In the drifter we can rotate it from the front to the back and also have it mounted in a way that allows us to raise it up to our bed platform height in case we want to set the ipad on it etc.

I came up with a mount to store it inside the front driver side cabinet out of site when not in use. (see crappy red arrow)

 

Thats a really cool idea to have that table in the back. I am going to try to incorporate in my build

 

Thanks! We use it all the time!

 

That's really awesome! Looks fantastic

 

This unit looks like it connects to your coolant lines to hear up the heat exchanger, much like it works in the cab. So it would work, but the truck would have to be running to really take advantage of it.

 

I'm a little worried - the photo has flames shooting out of the thing.

 

Thanks Iggy! probably wouldn't have stumbled on it if @Overlanerd hadn't tipped me off!

 

Since I will probably forget to take a vid of the table set up.. this is a great vid demonstrating how it works and reminds you to "avoid the classic bum shuffle!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAjLjp9hG_E

 

Oh yeah! We he brings the knowledge we call it Philosophy

 

@Eazy.E

Man that is a sweet set-up, really digging the table like everyone else. God darn it. Third bed reiteration now underway haha. Kidding. I need my truck to be a truck, until I buy a second vehicle and it gets made into fun time only truck, even then I'll probably still leave it as is. I've got way to much time and money invested in this sucker now. Only a few more mods to make then I can actually use my truck, hehe.

-replace rear hangers, and get a stiffener bar to stiffen up the rear end a bit(guessing archive?)
-add on radio, probably Ham
-Shot gun rack for the grizzly camping days (teach dog how to fetch reloads) and lure the bastard in closer as i will only have buck shot, pray I don't hit the dog
-new battery/electrical setup in the back of the truck to lighten up the front. Although I will probably just leave the dual up front for powering some elects, and use the rear battery for the lights in the camper, diesel heater, fridge, computer, TV, blender, stripper pole that will come up from the floor. oh and disco lights and balls, gotta have a disco themed truck and whatever else i can jam in the truck to make my camping experiences more comfy.
-Diesel heater
-2000w sine wave inverter (maybe, most of the elects I need to charge I can do via 12v), having it would be nice though
-Change to the light bar to some amber lights (probably Baja designs, really want the dual bar, should have bought it), I use my current one all the time, yes even on the road, I am that guy, haha. I do shut it off though if traffic is around. However on my trip back north, I found that nobody would pass me as I would have the light bar on and well if you have a light bar you hate not using it as everything is lite up, everyone just kind of got in line behind me. Didn't matter how fast/slow I went
-Reinstall my squadron pros in the ARB bumper somehow. Fabricate some sort of mounting plate/tab, sadly nothing is available aftermarket for the new summit bumpers, just the older versions.
-Change winch from shittybilt to something of quality
-New tyres/rims for offload trips and leave the stocks with AT tyres
-New ski plate as the TRD pro one is beat to hell, odd as I don't recall hitting anything, lately, I must have though.
-possibly sell my arb elements fridge and slide for a 50 quart dual zone fridge, so I can keep the dog food frozen and not everything else in my fridge

Steve

 

Hey Steve - Have you had problems with the smittybuilt winch? Asking because I'm in the market for a winch and their price point is hard to ignore.

 

Oh yeah I have had problems from it working sometimes and not the next. Connectivity issues with the wireless remote and when it is wired. Sure it has been underwater, but it is marketed as waterproof.

i agree, you cannot beat the price point, I got it for 600 bucks cdn. I'd rather buy a warn, comeup or superwinch then have another of these on my truck. Too many people i know have problems with them, think mine is the X20? Its the waterproof, synthetic line one, I'd have to go look for the model number. So far it has worked when I needed it, thankfully, but other times when I just want to unspool and respell the rope it just doesn't work, other times it will.

Its another crappy product sold/manufactured by 4wp!!

On aside note, I just saw it has a lifetime warranty, hmm, I thought it was only a year.

 

@aaen good luck with warranty.

My solenoid bracket broke after like 2 months from bouncing around and they wanted me to bring it in for inspection. Not the truck, just the winch, so I would have had to drop my bumper and unwire just so they could look at a little piece of plastic. I would understand if it was the whole unit I was requesting warranty on but just a bracket was kinda irritating.