Kimbo Camper BS and Mods

Yeah, bout to just take it off. Doubt I'll notice.

 

Hell ya, good for her! I just emailed Jim / Collin about pricing + pics for the extra bed and will follow up on here if anyone's interested. It'l be a cool feature to have if one of my friends wants to do a weekend warrior ski trip with me. Then we wouldn't have to get too intimate by sharing a full-sized bed LOL.

 

YESSSSSIR!!!! please share - thanks!!

 

I was thinking the same but may be a bit of an edge, looking at making a slip on cover for the struts to resemble the one in the bed area. Have noticed there is a fair amount of thermal bridging going on with the struts and the aluminum angle running down the bench areas on each side. Looking at testing some bedliner on the angle brackets and thin insulation and wood maybe on the struts.

 

I'm still on the fence deciding which way to go, Kimbo or AT Summit Topper. But last month when Kimbo sent me the most recent brochure the sleep platform is in it. I tried to attach the brochure here but not sure if it will work or not.

 

Thanks for sharing @Mntguy! Wow this looks a lot better than I expected LOL. I think i'm going to do it for the extra $1000 (especially because i'm not going with the ski rack option).

Regarding you being on the fence about the Kimbo VS AT Topper, my opinion is that they're for slightly different audiences. The AT would be a great fit if you are leaning more towards the overland lifestyle and you want to go deep in the woods with very minimal sacrifice. Although the Kimbo is lightweight, it's still pretty massive and will limit your off road capabilities due to height + weight distribution.

I came from the overland community (sold my jeep rubicon with 35s + rooftop tent) because i felt that 90% of the trails I went on, I didn't need a jeep for. It was pretty overkill...Additionally, we are considering living on the road full time and wanted something more casual where we can stealth camp in a city if need be, shower inside, and "camp" comfortably in winter at the base of a ski resort. If you want to stealth camp, it'l be a little difficult with the pop up style tent....so I guess it comes down to what your hobbies are.

PS - didn't go with a van because 4x4's are very expensive, I am not handy at all so building it out myself was out of the question, and didn't want to invest a ton of money in something that was reliant on one engine VS putting a slide-in on any truck.

 

Awesome - it opened for me so that's great. The sleep platform is interesting, I've got an Iceco fridge that needs to remain accessible that lives in there, so i've got my work cut out to fit functionality for sleeping and fridge access (top loading)...luckily i have some ideas that are getting sorted.

 

I agree, if someone was looking at a minimalist setup the AT is nice but in the PNW - rain/cold makes that an unsavory option IMO. The Kimbo is capable of some light wheeling if you can keep the trail limbed high enough .

 

I've gone back and forth but at this point am leaning towards the Summit. Right now we've got a nice 18' travel trailer we use when we want to have all the features of home, just be totally comfortable and set up a base camp. When we go places we can't take that and or we want to move quick and nimble we've been just sleeping in the fiberglass topper. But that's growing a bit old. And since I use my truck as a truck most of the time I think the Summit may be more practical since I never have to remove it and store it along with the trailer. Also living where we do we can only get about 6 months of use out of the trailer before its just too snowy to even get it out. A better truck solution will allow us to camp 12 months a year. If we did not have a trailer then it'd be the Kimbo for sure. Hopefully we'll make a decision in the next couple of weeks.

 

If you plan to leave the Summit on the truck full time, check out the reinforcements for the bed sides.

Below is a post and forum on the subject.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/posts/18870320

I ran into a guy in Polebridge mercantile a couple years ago with a stainless flip top camper and a full size truck (should have taken pix) and he'd had it on for years and the bedsides were slowly being crushed - I hadn't thought that'd be an issue before I saw his truck, I'd reinforce before adding a topper for sure.

 

Hey gang, how are you storing your grey water in the Kimbo? Do you have an extra small tank under your sink?

 

Hows that second platform been working out? Kimbo just released theirs, but the simplicity of yours is more favorable for me. How thick is the plywood?

Thanks!

 

Updated the first page with links to different mods and some of everyone's photos. Let me know if I need to add anything else to make it easier to find or other photos. With almost 50 pages if figured it was time for a little reorganization.

 

Some new seat covers. Baby mattress covers are just the right size if you’re curious…


Also, here is the spot I tested the wood stove in the wild. Learned it’s best to have the fan on blow rather than suck.

 

New Kimbo shakedown trip report: First trip with my new Kimbo #148 for 3 days/2 nights to the Pacific coast. (38 deg - 54 degs F). The River Max battery pack was set to max 80% by the Kimbo folks (instead of 100%)....apparently because it will last longer they told me...not sure of the details and will have to dig deeper),....after 3 days, it was down to 31%. This was basically with next to no solar charging due to cloud/rain cover. I thought this was pretty good since the Refrigerator was on all the time (cycles on/off) and I used all other draws such as lights, roof fan and heater fan....more to come when we get a good solar charge day. Propane heater was great with a good turndown ratio for small heat and full out got things hot fast. On windy days, it was a bit finiky starting though. The Dometic fridge was also stellar with keeping the temp right on with no issues. Nice touch with having the small freezer section on top. The new and improved LED light strip is controlled by a small remote switch. If you loose it or the battery runs down, you have to get a new one (remote) from Kimbo. I was surprised though by the wattage it drew on the high setting so i mostly kept it at a medium setting.There is no manual switch to turn the lights on if you loose the remote. Roof fan (Maxair) works by manual or remote. Nice and quite and it is needed when you cook inside with a window cracked. Tacoma handled well with 30 psi in the airbags. I was conservative and kept it at 55-60 mph max. Using the ETC function I think was a big help....14.5 mpg average. Slow down around curves.I am not sure why they only put one wire basket in the kitchen now....could use a few more and in some old photos, they had 2 or 3 more...those of you who have on on-order may want to add a few.....that's all for now.

 

Man - that snow looks awesome!!! We should be getting some here in the near future too but we'll see, can't wait!!!

Did a little experimenting myself this weekend with 40-ish degrees and 99% or so humidity again. For a while now we've been running with the back window cracked and the vent pulling the warmest air out. Trouble is that there is a cross breeze and pulls the air out of the living area before it can settle in (we bought a fan to help get the air down to the lower sections but haven't installed it yet). This weekend I tried something different, I opened up the side window enough to latch the center handle in the middle of the catch to keep it open at a consistent and repeatable spot. Then set the fan to pull air out again on the lowest setting - with this I had no moisture accumulating on the plastic screw heads and it seemed considerably warmer in the living area below the seating platform. I am very interested to see how this works at near/subzero temps this year. Oh, I was not running the dehumidifier because I would only use while storing the Kimbo and not in a normal camping/boondocking situation (at this point).

If you have any experiences with keeping heat in the living area and dealing with the moisture, please feel free to share your experiences.

 

That is a great idea - thanks for putting in the work to not only keep things organized but also easily accessible for those just joining, likely to keep questions on point. Pictures are always awesome, nice to have those close at hand as well. looks fantastic.

 

HERE WE GO !

 

Great to hear you've got your first trip under your belt!!

Yeah, for LED's - I'm not terribly impressed with the power draw or the dependability, I need to pull the entire lot out and replace because I had a connector fail and melt (Kimbo sent me a new roll of LED's and connectors) but I just replaced the one connector and one section of LED's in a rush to get on to the next project. Trouble is that they still flicker and half is brighter than the other half so that's on my list of things to do this winter. Once the LED connector melted, I installed a fuse block right away and would recommend this to everyone that plans on adding anything to their solar charger.

I run the ETC button and also drop the trans into sport/4 mode (I think that's what it's called, basically just pulling the shifter to the drivers side from drive) to keep it off of the overdrive. Seems to work real well for me, can definitely tell when I forget to change over when I've got the Kimbo on and I'm loaded down.

 

I've been thinking...there seems to be a movement when going with solar to go full send (makes a ton of sense because there doesn't seem to be a decent way to just wade in with a fully functional system) but I'm considering utilizing what I have for the next season or two before diving into the deep end of the solar pool.

My thought is that the Tacoma has a 110v power supply in the bed - now it isn't terribly sophisticated but it should be enough to charge the goalzero or whatever you have while driving...it doesn't produce a pure sine wave but I would think that should be fine for just charging batteries that likely have to run through a converter to 12v anyway.

Any thoughts out there on this?