I built my dream machine home on wheels

I think Daniel was two owners ago . I bought it from Walt who worked with Daniel at TW Bikes in Boise. I was looking all over the U.S. for a low mileage, 4x4, manual, 2nd gen regular cab. Picked her up with 69k on the dash! Plan on joining the 300k+ club with this rig. Re-did the rear end with new leafs and shocks, but have some additional plans this summer for the camper set up and a potential re-gear.

I was planning on sticking with 33s and jumping up to 4.88s. I travel full time in the truck so do a good mix of highway and trail. Like to keep my MPGs as high as I can - don't like to be worried about missing a station and having 100 miles before the next one with half a tank like when I was hauling around my slide in in my access cab lol.

 

I'll calculate this weekend! About to make a 5 1/2 hour trip to vermont this weekend, so I can find out highway mileage

 

Good 'ol Vermont. If you're rolling along 89 you'll be thankful for those gears. My truck stock with only a camper shell on the back struggled to maintain speed on most of those climbs. I lived in Burlington for many years before heading west. You can take the truck outta Vermont, but you can't take the Vermont outta the truck... well, until you replace everything.

Is that the Iceco VL60 in your camper set up? Is it on a platform to go over your wheel well? I have the same fridge and am trying to figure out the best place to put it.

 

yes sir! and my drawers are over my wheel wells, and I put pieces on hinges on the sides to make everything level around the wheel wells. I'll see if i can pull up a picture of the early stages of setting that all up. and dangggg! I have a fresh set of JBA UCA's I still need to install. And I'm super pumped, it will be my first time in Vermont! meeting up with some epic friends there with some killer setups!

 

Any trail and hiking recommendations, please send my way!! camping with a crew for the weekend, then I think I'm solo until thursday

 

Yeah, the stock UCAs saw a few too many briny winters! Sweet rigs - looks like you're the odd one out without the Alu-Cab haha.

Would appreciate any early photos you have, yeah. The fridge is great and I needed a larger freezer for my dog's food, but it is a pain in the ass to fit into the interior other than as a bench, but I'd be interested in tucking it along the side if that works better.

Will send you a DM!

 

Appreciate it!! and yeah the alu cab fleet. I'm the poor mans taj mahal hahah. and here's the best I can do at the moment, I show an early iteration on slide 9 https://www.instagram.com/p/C0SSXY1O0PK/?img_index=8&igsh=MTVraGZmeTluaW80Ng==
Do you have a drawer setup or what's your interior looking like?

 

Cool! Here it is hanging out a few years ago with me!

 

Any thoughts/reviews on the bluetti setup? You've got me rethinking my dual battery install and going with one of these now that I see they have an in vehicle charger.

 

It has been great for me! I do find it dumb that I needed to get a the DC50s which is $200 just to be able to still charge with my solar and the car charger without constantly swapping them since they made it the same input port. Honestly it seems like ecoflow is the better way to go. their alternator charger does 800w vs bluettis 560w. and I don't think they made the same mistakes as bluetti that their solution is to sell you more products to eradicate their poor design and planning. The only issue I have ever had with the buetti is when it's super cold outside, it can require a little period of being warmed up before being able to accept a charge. but having the vehicle heat shot back briefly would get it to where it had to be. I would see about going the ecoflow route. If you're not running solar bluetti may be a bit more cost effective, and fine for what you need. My setup works great for me, most days I am topped off at 100%. If I were to do it again, I'd go ecoflow. delta 2 max or something equivalent/ slightly larger. That's their equivalent to the bluetti ac200p. it's slightly larger battery capacity

 

I also did an install video on the charger1 and a high output alternator if you're interested to see it. the bluetti charger1 install was super simple. the ecoflow alternator charger is the same process

 

Yeah I've been doing some reading and it seems a bunch of the bluetti stuff had less than great reviews. Glad to hear yours is working out for you. The more I look into it, the more I think this might be the better way to go if for no other reason than to get the versatility out of it.

 

I'll check it out later.

 

FWIW, I've used the Bluetti AC200L and their 200W panel pretty much full time since November to run my fridge, Starlink mini, charge my laptop, and even game on a monitor and my PS5 (Warzone from the woods is pretty sweet). I live and work full time out of the rig and my Bluetti has been an absolute work horse. Since I'm usually set up somewhere at least all day long, I just throw the solar panel out and am typically charged up to 100% by the end of the day. If I game for a few hours at night, I run down a bit, but nothing that isn't charged back up by the AM.

Since I jumped to a bigger fridge and also may be running some power tools in the near future, I snagged a Bluetti expansion battery, the B230, on their recent Earth day sale (was like 50% off). Only annoying thing about that is the expansion cable is freaking massive and sticks out the side of both the generator and the battery so kinda annoying for my build, but I doubled my battery size and am really happy with the set up.

I have dabbled with building my own systems in the past, but preferred the convenience and modularity of this set up since I change up my set up quite frequently lol.

 

Also, what a small world haha - that's sweet! It's such a great truck. I got lucky and found it on a FB Marketplace test run right before it got listed on BaT...

 

Sorry - spammed the thread. I got nada back there right now. Gonna check out how you set things up. Currently marinating on how I'd like to set everything up. Not really in love with the Go Fast so might be changing that out soon, too, so staying modular is advantageous!

 

5 hours to Vt... Are you in Pennsy? I'm about 6 hours from VT in SEPa.

 

hahah you're good, this is why tacomaworld is my favorite forum! and ahhhhh ok. turn it into a flippac hahah

 

Northern NJ! in the woods.... hahah
our home bases are probably pretty close! What setup do you have?

 

Also there charger1 was 50% for the longesttime too, def worth it for $250 incase you are out on some cloudy days!