Hondo Garage's New Thing

That’s an all time great gif.

 

I bought a Costway for $369. They're $380 now, delivered. Looks like a Indel B clone. I haven't used it much yet but so far, so good.
It brings down the temp fast and doesn't use that much juice.

COSTWAY Car Refrigerator, 55-Quart Dual-zone Electric Cooler with Shockproof, LCD Display, 12V/24V DC, 100-240V AC, -4°F to 50°F, Portable Car Fridge for RV Truck Travel Home Camping Vehicles, Gray

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CG4Q1YJ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

+1 for the fridge above, have had mine for a while

 

Hey, I was #3 off the line, so very early on. Live in Portland, wet as everyone could expect. I went through the summer with near zero dust intrusion, I was stoked. As fall and winter came, more rain. I got a lot of water in the bed from all places. But, I've been going back and forth with Graeme and Ross from GFC, they have been more than helpful. Actually just met with Ross last night on his way through Portland. He stopped and updated the seals for me, went through and adjusted all the bolts, and even updated me with a few parts that have been updated since mine came off the line. They have been nothing but great at taking care of everything they can. Next steps if this doesn't seal it all up, they offered to pick the camper up on another run, bring it back to the shop, fully disassemble and put it back together and deliver it back to me at no charge.

This although takes time and I hope it doesn't leak again, but they have and are continuing to go above and beyond taking care of us as owners.

 

Yes, it's killing me. I really want a lock.

 

This is why I decided to buy a GFC......at least a major reason. A company that takes care of you really means a lot to me. Now back to the lock issue.....

 

VW, the origin of the wedge poptop.

 

Did you seal up the side pockets in the bed? I'm mounting my exhaust and intake for my diesel heater in the passenger side one and potentially using the driver side one as a positive pressure vent when i'm driving over dirt.

 

Post some pics? I'm looking into heating options and curious how these things are mounted and vented

 

It's on the list of to-do. I have a couple of 5KW Diesel heaters. They're kinda inefficient compared to the Propex ones because they use a glowplug for 5 minutes at 80watts to start the burner. But if you keep them on for longer than 20 minutes, you can actually use the exhaust gasses to run a series of inline TEGs to generate like 10-15 watts to charge the battery for the power lost. You can also keep the fuel tank inside the vehicle without any danger of it exploding. At the same time, you could spill it and make a minor mess.

Propane doesn't work so well at high altitudes though.

But basically you mount them inside w/ up to a 90 degree cant as long as the glow plug is facing up. The cheap chinese ones have issues with QA so you have to really check the seals and retighten everything, but then again, $200 bucks vs $800 bucks. A little bit of elbow-grease is compulsory. The 5KW units have a fuel consumption rate of .5L/hr, but I'd run it before going to bed and when I wake up. So 20 minutes at full blast is good enough for me. If it ever really gets bad at night, I can just turn it on with the wireless remote hanging from my neck.

Just remember you want put the unit in a box so you can run a return and a hot air outlet. If you don't recirculate the air from your interior, it's basically wasting a whole lot of fuel trying to heat the wilderness which is supremely dumb.

Tacodoc had a propex heater mounted similarly except his exhaust and intake went straight through his Tacoma's bed in two holes he poked through.

The exhaust gets about 250F-275F, so just putting in an aluminum plate where the cubby is located would be enough to prevent the bed from heat issues. You could always seal around it with a cut out from a silicone cookie sheet.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll definitely have to do more research. Where do you plan to route your intake and exhaust? I'm wondering if propping a side panel on the GFC and fabbing up a pancake style pipe to fit the gap would work.

I live in NorCal, so we don't get extreme cold up here, but we're often in the mountains camping during the winter, so having a unit that could be temporarily mounted for the winter and removed for the summer without making permanent holes in the bed would be the preferred option.

 

I was going to do something like this as a proof of concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaT2hqHgLdY

Entiffic Air already makes a commercial diesel heater that uses TEGs to charge the battery. There's even a youtube video here that shows it working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnfm-Mh--F8

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The way I'm planning to approach this is to use strips of stainless steel and tig weld them to the exhaust and fill it up with mineral oil. Then I'll just use heatsink epoxy to mount the TEGs and cheap vga heatsinks scavenged from a bunch of used parts. I figure that if I ever use the heater, it'll be in 30 degree weather or less, that'll give me a large enough delta to make decent power when the heater is running.

But of course, a way easier solution would be to just buy a 900w inverter generator w/ a 12v output to charge my battery. But what's the fun? We're on TW because we tinker.

 

Well, if you're near the southbay, I can show you my heaters. Unfortunately, you have 3rd gen taco. They modified the build and no longer have cubbies on the side.



These were originally used by the automated robots at the factory to pick beds from conveyers and place them on the truck frames during assembly. Somewhere down the line starting in 2014 or the 2015 model year, they retooled the assembly line to no longer need them.

So folks like me have this great hole that dust and water can come in from. Ofc, I have other plans for them.

 

I'd be down to take a look. What's this Chinese heater you're currently running, btw?

 

They're all made by the same Hong Kong Based heater Corporation. The actual manufacturing facilities are in Shenzhen China but they're resold everywhere by a variety vendors who put their own labels on them. I have the all in one unit and a bare unit. Nothing's installed yet since I'm waiting to order an Engel fridge and then order all the quickframe for my bed setup. But i've tested out the units and they work well. The AIW unit I use to heat my Cabela's Ice Shelter and run that off a Yeti 400.

In your situation, I would mount it on the side closest to the cab against the ceiling corner. Then you just weld in a bulkhead or rivet + silicone a bulkhead. Run the exhaust pipe to blow out sideways. You can hide it with a piece of painted L Bracket or get a press brake to make a custom Z shaped sheet metal and rivet that in place so you can hide the exhaust pipe along the overhang and not detract from the appearance.

Then just poke a hole in the bed and have the air inlet grab air from there and have the hot air go into the bed. Heat rises slowly and you warm everything up evenly.

By mounting the heater on the cab side, you have the added benefit of it being silenced.

you just need to put a hole in your sleeping platform for the heat to come up.

 

The propex heaters work great. Just a little pricy. They now have an externally mounted unit. Looks like it could fit in one of the left or right rear quarter panels.

I’ve used the hs2000 on small trailer before and only had one problem with it. The 12 volt voltage cut off was too low on the unit, like 13.6 or .8. When the Tristar solar charger would get up the 14.8 the control unit for the heater wouldn’t work. We had to pull the fuse to the propex to reset it. That unit is now wired to a switch to disconnect power during the day. We called them a year ago and now it’s nice to see there units have a 15 volt cut off. On a cold day you can see higher than 15 volts charging.

We wrapped the forced air hot side pipe with header heat tape. It was about two inches away from an ARB 80 quart fridge. Temps were 220 degrees on the outside of the heated air tube before, after the tape it was under 90 degrees.

https://www.propexheatsource.com/heaters/hs2211-furnace/

 

Yeah, the Propex heaters are pretty typical because people generally use propane for cooking. I've just had some pressure issues with propane at higher altitudes. You won't see any issues like that w/ liquid fuel powered stoves unless they're sooted up and the generator or fuel nozzles get clogged. Plus fuel oil isn't pressurized or easily combustible, so the containers can be something simple like lightweight pet bottles, abs containers, dromedary bags.

Plus for $225, I can get a heater w/ a remote control, ducting, a fuel tank, and all the accessories I need to mount/install/run the unit. I just need to provide power and fuel. I will need to baby the unit and run Kerosene every so often and run the unit at full blast to prevent carbon build up.

The HS2211 is sold by itself w/ a rudimentary controller for $825. But you can run it at a low setting and a low speed setting without any worries about stuff sooting up. That's a pretty good plus. But yeah, in <20F degree temps, you might find yourself in a bit of a situation w/ your tank freezing up.

 

Anyone selling there spot?

 

@rkam65 ?