Wackyhacky's 2013 TaCOmarado Build

This is just a maintenance tidbit, but as I am creeping close to 90k miles (purchased at 20k or so) I figured I should start doing fluid changes on my front/rear diffs, tranny, etc. I tackled the rear diff first and quickly realized the shitty hand pump I got from Harbor Freight didn't fit a normal quart top like it was supposed to. This resulted in having to drop the damn spare in the middle of everything to have enough room to get a bottle up & in there to refill it. After all that, I decided I needed a better method to do the front/tranny since space there is even tighter. Some YouTube searching pointed me in the direction of DIY fluid transfer pumps which I promptly made from a $10 gallon sprayer, some plastic tubing and ball valve.


I have to say, this thing worked like a charm. Not near as much pumping as using those hand jobs like I wasted my money on. I highly recommend crafting one of these if you do your own fluid maintenance.

 

Since I have decided to store our house battery and Redarc behind the rear seats, I recently removed everything to get an idea if it would be enough space, where to run the wires, etc. Once I determined I would gain plenty of space behind the seats by removing the plastic bins, I wanted to try & make up for increase in road noise. I am sure those bins didn't provide a ton of deadening, but they had some padding & so forth on the back that probably helped. Therefore I bought a box of that Noico "dynamat" and covered the back wall of the cab.



I have to say, this stuff was really easy to work with & way cheaper than the name brand stuff. It went on in a matter of an hour or so if that, even with measuring/cutting, etc. I need to take a spin to see how it sounds, but it can't hurt. I also think this 36 sq ft box of material would probably be enough to eventually do all my doors and even the floorboards if I thought it was needed.

 

Next on the list, I decided to coat my baseplate in Herculiner, which turned out really nice. It runs a couple bucks more, but I chose gray over black. I mainly wanted to do this to seal the wood from random moisture. I looked into just getting it shot w/ LineX, but even a gallon kit of Herculiner is still cheaper and it was very simple to do. It took 3 coats on each side total to get it covered to my liking on this 1/2" Baltic Birch and I used about 1/2 the gallon to do this.


Instructions require a minimum of two uniform coats, the first being very light as you can see the result of the first coat below. I let it sit overnight after the first coat since we had random wet day here in CO that day and it's supposed to dry to the point of not being tacky before the second.

Voila! The finished product..

I guess if I had a router I would have rounded the edges to make it look even more professional now that look over it the finished product, but overall I am happy with it. One thing to keep in mind with Herculiner, make sure you have enough of their blue foam rollers to do as many coats as you need to do. They say you can keep a roller alive (till the next coat) by using some special thinner (and the kit includes 2) but the trick of wrapping your roller cover in saran wrap overnight does not work and you need this kind of a roller so the rubber bits disperse evenly.

 

In between coats on the baseplate, I also worked to switch over my factory terminal connections to military style terminals for ease of making additional future connections for the dual battery system. I really didn't have any issues with this at all and the Harbor Freight hydraulic crimper (though a bit tough in a tight spot without a second set of hands due to it being pretty hefty) worked like a charm. It will definitely come in handy for electrical work in the future.

The negative side was definitely easier, b/c all I had to do was put a new ring terminal on the main cable (2 AWG) & make a new shorty ground (6 AWG) that is coupled w/ it from the factory.

Because the positive side uses a kind of funky proprietary connection, it's a little more difficult. You can just put a new ring terminal on the cable coming in from the fuse box (6 AWG), but you need to pull down the wire loom on the starter cable (2 AWG), cut it off under the factory connector, then strip it and splice on an extension to get the length you need. I used Grote crimp butt splices for this connection and a new ring terminal on the end of the extension.

 

That tailgate cover looks like it can fry an egg in the summer. What made you go with the rigid over the wilco? They're both unbelievably expensive. But I want one, so just curious.

 

Ha, yeah, I have thought about that, but usually there is so much shit sitting on my tailgate when I am camping I haven't had the issue of getting too hot.

So, it's been awhile and I know the Wilco was the first swing out I really saw, but the main difference to me was the ability to have more than just a swing away bike rack. I think the Wilco products are either just a swing away receiver or just a tire carrier, and with the Rigd you get both. I agree, they are all overpriced, but in the end the Rigd gave me way more capability to swing the bikes out of the way while giving me a solid platform to mount a few more items to the rig without the weight of big heavy plate rear bumper. It is also legit tow rated the same as the truck's original tow rating so there isn't a need to remove it to hook on a trailer which I thought was nice. They have been a good company to deal with as well. I bought one last August and after this winter, the powdercoating was showing a bunch of rust in places it shouldn't have. I contacted them about it, supplied some pics and they replace it no questions and so far the coating has held up way better. That's my two cents on why I went with it anyway.

 

Awesome, thank you! If you didn't know (I'm sure you do) check out Mountain Hatch for the tailgate cover. It's a food grade cutting board tailgate insert. I have one and love it. Despite the price.

 

So, we're starting to get closer to camper delivery, so I need to get cranking on quite a few things, namely the dual battery system, first priority....



Let's get wiring!!!! Got most of my first shipment of stuff, but still waiting for another circuit breaker & the most important part, the house battery! Picked up great pricing on some of this stuff from Continuous Resources LLC and best pricing I have found on the Redarc is through 4WD Hardware with a 10% off code they have been running. My "amateur schematic" of the system is in the pdf attached below.

First up I decided to run the 6AWG + & - cables from the engine bay to the cab behind the rear seat where I plan on mounting the battery & Redarc. Overall, it went pretty smoothly. I screwed the ring terminal ends to a random bolt under the hood till I am ready to hook them up.





Got it all cinched up along the frame rails, through a cross member & into the rear of the cab:



I am using the big center hole that was 1.75" diameter. Found these sturdy grommets on Amazon and I think they will be perfect for the two coming in & two that will be going out.



Finished entry into the cab & ready for the next run of wire, but had to order more cable. Didn't plan for enough 6AWG!

 

Ran another wire Sunday, that I didn't really photograph well, but this is for an optional dash indicator light for the Redarc. Picked up the light off Amazon:

$9 Alpinetech PLB12MS 12mm 1/2" 12V LED Metal Signal Indicator Pilot Dash Light (Battery/Green)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SW8B3P6/ref=twister_B0716KCBGJ?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I ran the wires from the back of the cab along the passenger side threshold into the dash to one of the panel blanks in the console & mounted it there.

 

Just a little more low impact piddling around last night. After speaking w/ Redarc, I determined, that I probably do not have a VV alternator, but he said it's totally fine to hook up the blue wire to an ignition on circuit even if I don't, so went ahead & ran this wire from the fuse box along the driver's side threshold to the back. I need to tie it into fuse spot #1 w/ an adda-circuit but I had never looked at it before and it turns out is the little mini fuses, so I bought the wrong adda-circuit. Now I got wires coming in from multiple directions, but it's just way easier to run through the threshold than through the dash to the same side. I will find a way to tidy it up I guess on way or another.



While I am using the floor grommet shown above to run all the heavy 6 AWG cable, I still need to run a data cable to the back as well that hooks into the Victron Battery monitor that I am going to mount in one of the rear panels. Based on some YouTube videos I thought I could have the Shunt that speaks to the Victron back by the display, but it turns out it needs to be closer to the battery/Redarc, so I determined a path for this cable to run to the back as well through one of the rear wall grommets. More on that once I actually run the cable.

Then I just did some simple bolt on stuff that arrived including mounting a Front Runner table to the Rigd tire carrier as well as some hand pull strap to make closing the tailgate from the inside easier:




I never thought to measure it, but thankfully the Camp Chef Ranger stove I picked up off CL this winter fits perfectly. I do wish it was a little shorter, but it really doesn't weigh much more (if at all) then the Cook Partner stoves and those things are so FREAKING expensive and I frankly cannot understand why.

 

So, I had attempted an initial sealing off of the bed last summer, which has worked pretty well, but my Leer cap still leaks here & there in various places (around the rear window), so I can't be 100% it's still the bed or the cap. That being said, I was getting ready to make an egress for the power system into the passenger side cubby and realized I never sealed the top holes on either cubby like an idiot b/c I hadn't removed them to do sealing last time. Therefore, I removed both of them completely (along with the bed power outlet) and got to work.



I used the same method I used to seal most of the other holes last summer, which is the Gorilla tape I found. I guess it is kind of like butyl tape, but it has held up like a champ everywhere I stuck it, so I used it to seal off the upper cubby holes again and then decided to put it around the perimeter of the area each cubby seals to the bed side as well.



That done it was time to drill my egress hole for the wiring into the cubby.



The grommets I bought to stick in the existing hole in the cab floor (1.75" diameter hole) came as a pack of 4, so I used the same size for this and fit perfectly.



That done I then attempted to seal the myriad of small holes on the back of the power outlet w/ silicone. This probably will make ever taking this apart again a bitch, but you can easily unplug from under the bedside if you need to take the cubby out completely and I know I get water/dust coming through it so I did it.



That done & reassembled it is time to install this beast! I may need help getting this heavy SOB into the cab. It's a monster.



I was toying w/ the idea of using some ABS & mounting this stuff on top as I have seen others do, but I think since I currently want to be able to put my rear seat back in (I think...) that I am just going to mount them on the back cab wall since the storage bins are not going back in.

 

More wiring last night. I got the power cables run from the house battery in the cab (using same grommet in the cab floor) back along the frame rails and into the grommet I installed in the cubby earlier this week. I still have to run the Victron data cord from the Shunt that will be in the cab to the back as well. Since the grommet in the cab is now "full" with the four 6AWG cables and the fact it's basically a patch cord (aka not outdoor rated in my opinion) I decided I will send it through one of the rear cab holes & use a cable gland to protect it. I also will have it encased in plastic split loom as well. I bought these two Fastronix cable glands (

$13 Fastronix 2 Pack Weatherproof Grommets for Wire Bundle Diameter 0.27"-0.45" Size PG 13.5

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083S14V86/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), that while perfect for the OD of the cable encased in 1/4" split loom they require a thru hole that is 51/64". Therefore once I get this strange drill bit size, I will have to drill the hole in the cab a little larger to install, but it should work fine. Therefore, I also used the same gland on the other end in the cubby and got that done last night since it was easy to ream out a hole big enough w/ a 3/4 bit I had in that composite material.

All power wires coming into the cab



Cables run into the cubby along w/ the cable gland to run the Victron data cord into as well:



Cubby reinstalled... nice & tidy.



Route of the wires from the cab grommet back to the cubby




This weekend it is going to be all about final detail wiring in the cab. I threw the passenger side seat back in for a minute just to make sure my battery fit as I had planned it would and looked at my clearances:




I have a broad strokes plan on how I am going to do this, so more to come in terms of how I am going to secure the battery from moving as well as hold/wire the Redarc & everything into a panel in the back. Should be fun.

 

I am not sure I am going to have the power system done for a camping trip we have planned for this coming weekend (nor if my fridge will arrive to need it anyway), so I figured the first thing I should do is secure the battery whether I am using it or not. It's too damn heavy to be taking in & out all the time. As you know the floor of the cab is ridiculously uneven under the rear seats, between random bolt heads, that weird sound deadening stuff put in random places etc. Most of the battery trays I looked at seemed cheap or two big for the envelope of size I have once the seats are back in, so I decided to craft my own hold down.

The previous owner of the house left this huge rubber mat in our basement that turned out to be a bed mat for some big truck. It's tough stuff and thick enough to protect the base of the battery from the uneven floor of the cab so I cut a pc out of it to sit the battery on and used some pipe insulation to pad where it contacts some of the brackets on the rear of the cab. Then I secured two random L brackets from Home Despot to the floor of the cab w/ 1/4" self tappers.



With the brackets secured, I placed the battery back in it's spot and using the hold down hooks I secured from Amazon for $5-6 bucks, I needed to craft a hold down strap to work w/ the hooks. I planned on using a heavy aluminum flat bar, which of course Home Despot didn't have, so I had to go w/ steel. Cut it to length w/ a grinder, chamfered the sharp ends of the bar and then drilled the holes for the J Hooks to pass through.



Battery secure... I hope! Took a little test run over some bumpy roads headed to & from MTB on Sunday morning and seems to be holding firm.



I think I may wrap the hold down strap in some kind of insulating tape or similar depending on how close some of my terminal connections come to it. Might be prudent.

Next I started mocking up where I want to mount the Redarc/breaker/Victron Shunt that all needs to go behind the seat as well. I decided to use a pc of 1/2" thick HDPE I had lying around instead of wood.



Once I knew the position of the panel on the cab wall would allow me plenty of wiring length for all the connections, I started mining for hardware to secure everything to the plastic panel and started crimping all the ring terminals onto to the Redarc outputs. At this point I don't think I will need to extend any of the Redarc wires, except the solar one, which I am not sure where I want to run it yet. When the time comes, I am going to go w/ a portable panel versus a permanently mounted one, so I need to decide where that wire is going to run to be easily plugged into.



Another test fit with the Redarc mounted to the panel...



With things getting close to hook up, and the Amazon man finally delivering my 51/64th drill bit, I wanted to get the last long cable run completed so all those spots where buttoned up. So after removing the passenger side rear trim panel for the umpteenth time (and the seat bracket) I popped the factory grommet out of the hole in the back of the cab, which is about 9/16 and drilled it out to the larger size so this cable gland pictured below would fit through.



With all the better you can hold either side at the same time, the fact they are plastic, it was kind of pain getting the nut which is outside the rear cab wall tightened, but I got it secured and put a little silicone around it for good measure. These cable glands sounded like a good idea, but they were a pain to deal with in my opinion. Then I ran the already split loomed data cord (for the Victron) through the gland and back along the frame rail w/ my other wiring and through the gland I also installed in the cubby in the back, then tightened down each gland around the cable.



Tonight I will start buttoning up the final connections on the back of the cab wall and securing that wiring in place as I go which will probably be the more tedious part of the job.

 

So, with everything oriented and mounted on the board, it was time to get it mounted on the rear of the cab wall and start routing the final wire placements.



As I expected this was a little tedious and some trial & error till I was happy w/ everything. With a bigger mounting board, I probably could have made things a little "fancier" but with the limited space I gave myself & wanting to be able to put the seats back in, I am pretty happy with where everything is routed. The board is secured w/ 4 screws through the back wall of the cab. Once I know the Drifter pick up day & can actually remove my Leer cap, I plan on replacing the screws w/ bolts & nuts since I will be able to get outside of the cab wall easier.

The finished product!!!.....



Well, almost finished I guess I should say. I didn't make any of the battery connections yet of course & tomorrow I plan on removing the flat steel hold down bar and coating it w/ heat shrink to insulate it from a possible mishap if it got touched w/ a hot connection. I also was able to put the driver's side rear storage panel back in, which is the plan for now since I like to keep some necessary things organized in there. It fit back in w/ all my new wiring no problem.



Then to top of the rest of the in cab connections that will just need plugged in when I am ready to go, I spliced the Add-A-Circuit into the blue wire coming out of the Redarc which I already ran to the fuse panel in the dash.



This will get plugged into position 1 on the fuse block below (the blue 15 Amp) which is ignition.



The last thing I did this evening was add my Anderson plug to the power cable coming into the bed in preparation for working on a temporary set up to power my fridge until I get the Drifter. I may still be tent camping on the ground for another month or so, but I am about to be done dealing w/ ice thank god. That other mess of cable in the pic is for the data cord to talk to the Victron battery monitor which will also go into my rear set up, both temporary as well as final once we get the Drifter.



I am leaving myself plenty of cable for now....

 

So, the flurry of recent activity had to take a backseat to some camping for a few days to celebrate our anniversary & get in some MTB'ing down in Buena Vista, CO. It was a well needed get away considering how 2020 has gone so far.



Anyway, that means I had to button things up a little to use the truck, so I did cover the steel battery hold down bar in heat shrink to insulate it from any possible future "shorts" which worked out really well.



I threw both of the seat backs in place as well as the smaller driver's side rear storage unit and packed it up for camping. I am happy to report that with lots road driving as well as about as much time spent on forest roads, including some that was more serious 4 wheeling back near the trail heads that everything held rock solid and didn't budge an inch, so I feel pretty confident now that it will all be safe once it's actually hooked up. The fridge & slides just showed up as we returned this week, so Saturday I hope to spend some time doing the final hook ups and see if it all works.

 

With the wife working Sat/Sun, it was time to get back into finishing up the electrical system. All the wiring to the dash (indicator light & ignition tie in for the Redarc) was completed as well as where the house battery is located behind the seat, but I wanted to complete the circuits to the bed before testing the system. Obviously this is a temporary solution because the fuse block, rear breaker & the Victron battery monitor will eventually be permanently mounted in the Drifter, but I wanted to be able to actually start using the fridge as well as test everything out. Therefore, I just took a pc of 1/4" thick vinyl coated panel I had lying around and secured the bed electronics to it:



Then using a suggestion I recently saw from @joeydurango, I secured it to the bed tracks w/ a couple U Nuts which works pretty well.



Then it was time to do the final wiring of these items off the Anderson plug extension I made a week or so ago. The data cord plugs into the Victron, the positive into the rear circuit breaker & out to the fuse block, and the negative straight to the fuse block.



Finally, using ARB's wiring kit, I wired up a direct 12V port for the fridge to the fuse block. Next it was time to make the final hooks up on the house battery and then finally the hooks up to the starter battery under the hood & voila! It works.



Once the truck was running and there wasn't any indication of sparks or fire.....thank you!, I confirmed the Redarc was charging as it should via it's LED read out (and the indicator light I added to my dash), I entered some set up information into the Victron (amp hours for my battery and voltage charge to). I then went for a drive for about 20-30 minutes and soon after the Victron said I had 100% charge at 14.6V (while the truck was running). It seems to be floating at @ 13.2v at 100% charge once the engine is off, which from what I read is correct. Then I hooked up the new fridge and powered it up which also worked perfectly. I was able to confirm the fridge was getting it's full 12v via the ARB app and was also able to watch the Victron app as well to confirm what the fridge was drawing power wise, etc. This all made be extremely happy.. ha.

With that completed, I bolted my baseplate back into the bed to start working on building & mounting my fridge slide. The base plate still fit after months of sitting in the garage thankfully. I hadn't actually put it back in after coating it this spring, so all was good there.



I got a set of 28" Accuride slides from Bisco with the right hand one being a locking unit. In addition, after much deliberation, I also ordered two 28" Accuride mounting bracket kits from another online source as well, which are all pictured below:



I have always wanted to keep the width of this whole contraption/storage as narrow as I could to maintain a suitable width walkway in the camper. My original design like most was to mount the fridge slides to the frame of the storage build (80/20 rails etc.) and I really wanted a National Luna fridge b/c their 50L fridges have a nice narrow 15" width compared to Dometics and others that seem to run 17-18" or so. That unfortunately went out the window when it came time to buy the fridge since National Luna's models are in short availability due to a fire they had at their plant over the winter. Therefore, I decided on a much bigger ARB Zero unit in the end b/c I realized I could use the above mentioned Accuride mounting brackets to keep the overall width of the slide itself close to the 18" width of fridge. More to come on that as I get it put together.

 

So, much like 2020, the build has started to have some ups & downs. Friday I got the word that we most likely will not get our Drifter until mid September (hopefully!), so I think it deflated my motivation for a bit, plus we had some guests for the wkd as well, but I did make some progress on the fridge slide construction before they arrived. I grabbed a small pc of 1/2" Baltic birch and some 1 1/2" aluminum angle (1/8" thick) to create a tray for my fridge slide. You can see the assembled slides (assembled w/ the accuride mounting brackets I mentioned above) to the left of wood for the tray. The tray is going to mount to the top of those brackets.



I don't have a table saw, so after getting sick of using clamps & levels to attempt to make straight, square cuts in plywood sheeting, I also bought a Kreg RipCut to cut the wood for the tray out of a 2'x4' pc of birch & I have to say it worked pretty good. It can be a little awkward to get until you get it into position, but not bad for a $40 table saw substitute. Then I set to work with the mitre saw cutting the aluminum angle to surround the tray, which since I am a perfectionist and (matching angles SUCKS) was a little more time consuming then I would have liked.




It came out "close enough for government work" I suppose, but I am still not sure how I want to button up the outside of the metal corners yet. It really makes me wish I was a better fabricator or had the tools b/c I would have loved to made the tray just once solid pc of formed metal. Anyway, after testing the fit of the corners w/ my make shift ratchet strap clamp, I did a final size check w/ the fridge and it fit quite nicely.





From there I started making some measurements on what hardware I need to put the tray together (countersunk screws) and then for securing the tray to the brackets/slides as well as finally the whole slide to the baseplate. I will be using 1/4-20 grade 8 bolt for the latter and Tee Nuts through the baseplate. Hopefully, all those material will be here tomorrow so I can get to work on that.

 

Thanks for sharing! I will use some of your ideas for my wiring.

 

So back to work this week after waiting on some hardware from McMaster and then another trip to Fastenal. I always seem to need lengths that no local hardware store carries, which is frustrating since McMaster or Fastenal usually mean buying larger quantities, but oh well. First I finished assembly of slide out tray. I spaced out the slide rails to hold the tray to the dimension I want to hold (19" outside)




The mounting holes (to secure the tray to the slide rails) are actually inboard of the angle I used to make the tray, therefore I decided to reinforce those areas w/ some flat bar the same thickness as the angle.



The underside of my tray is not as "pretty" as I had hoped to make it. Securing the angle to the wood, was a bit of a tedious process with the countersinking and only having a 1/2 thickness to screw into, but I wanted to secure the hell out of it b/c the fridge tie down straps will secure to the edge of the tray as well. If it ever falls apart, I may just have a metal tray fabricated some day. With the reinforcement pcs secured I proceeded to align and clamp the tray to the sides and make sure it was all square before drilling the holes in the tray for the mounting bolts.



Using the mounting holes as my drill template, this actually went very smoothly & it was not hard to keep to the correct width or squareness. I need to be better about doing things to avoid the splintering you get from drilling plywood like this, because of course it did as you can see below. I secured the tray to the slides using some Grade 8 bolts & lock washers. Thankfully due to the fact that the fridge actually only has 4 small pedestal areas that touch the tray surface on it's underside, I didn't have to worry about countersinking the bolt heads into the tray which would have been another process. Nice design ARB!




One more check of the fridge sitting in the tray to make sure though! I kept these dimensions pretty tight since the fridge we selected is much bigger than originally planned, but I am happy w/ the fit and access it is allows to all the ports and controls.



Next step was to drill holes in the front & rear of the tray to mount the hold down strap buckles. This went smoothly though the hole in the buckle is actually 21/64ths which is not a common drill bit size of course. Must be an Australian thing! Anyway, just took a little reaming w/ a 5/16 bit to allow the bolts to go through.



Final test & strap down to make sure its all holding tight:



With that complete it was time to work on mounting it all to the baseplate. I am planning on 12" wide for the storage unit on the driver's side (represented by the pc of plywood) so I made one more check. Positioning the fridge as shown will allow me a little over 16" walkway which hopefully won't be too cramped. Honestly, it's more than I thought I would have when I did my original planning. I left about 5 1/2" to the right of the fridge as that may be where we stash the camp stove. Not sure what I might end up doing for the space under the slide, but I am sure it will be kitchen stuff.




Once positive about the mounting location, I once used again the holes in the brackets holding the slides as a drilling template. I started all the holes with the slide sitting in position in the truck so they were perfectly aligned and then took the base plate out to the sawhorses to do the final drilling. I also made a template of the exact hole spacing with a scrap pc of aluminum flat bar just to make sure the final drilling didn't wander. That done I flipped over the base plate & inserted all the 1/4-20 Tee-Nuts before hammering them into the baseplate securely.



Then all I had to do was put the base plate back, secure the slide with more grade 8 bolts to the new threaded holes in the base plate. I have a tendency to over tighten things and was hoping to find some sort of torque recommendation for Tee Nuts, but couldn't really find anything so I was real cautious about the tightening of these 8 bolts. Seems secure enough though and I will just have to keep an eye on them as I put miles on the truck.



It works!!!! There is a little flex in the end of the base plate against the floor of the bed with the slide extended b/c I didn't secure the baseplate using all six bed bolts (only used the 4 to the front) but I doubt that will cause any issues.



With this part done, I think the only prep I have remaining before we get the camper is installing the new suspension. We are getting close. Hopefully CV19 doesn't screw us anymore in that department.

 

And we’re chilling beers!!!

80 to 40 in like 30 mins. Not bad at all!