New CVT Mt Hood First Impressions

What’s up TW,

Forgive me if there is already a thread on this and I could have added my 2¢ there, however, I searched and didn’t see anything.

I wanted to post up a review of my new Mt Hood aluminum hard-shell RTT from @Cascadia Tents .

I was lucky enough to be one of the first 100 to purchase the new Mt Hood platform, receiving a pretty large discount which basically paid for shipping plus. Shipping on these things as many of you know, is where a good chunk of your change will go, especially on this tent as it is mostly pre-assembled.

Once the tent arrived it was nice to work on a couple of sawhorses to assemble all of the bolt on items. This was a bit tricky as the tent comes with no instructions, and things need to be slid into the upper and lower channels on the sides and rear of the tent. The parts that come with it are mounting feet for the crossbars, the crossbars for on top (you can opt out of receiving these and save a $100 or so), clasps to open and close the tent, hole-fixtures for the poles which keep the rain fly up and the struts are already mounted to the sides and brackets to mount the ladder to. I also purchased brackets to mount my awning to the side. Needless to say, all of those parts can be a bit of a puzzle sliding in the channels without directions. Looking back it probably would have been more beneficial to have slid all parts into the channel before bolting anything down. Not a crazy hard job nevertheless.

My biggest issue came with mounting my tent to my prinsu rack. I wanted the low-profile look and that is what cost me some time. It’s extremely hard to get your arms in the rack and bolt down the tent to the crossbars. Once you figure it out tho, you can just unscrew the crossbars the tent is mounted to for easy removal and reinstallation. If you go this route, I recommend getting some foam to place between the tent rails and your additional crossbars in which the tent is NOT mounted to, as it can cause some rattling.

We have used the tents a handful of times now and absolutely love it. We went from a Mt. Shasta to this model and the setup is night and day. Literally takes less than two minutes to have ready to go. This to me is great since the Mt Shasta limited me to being located in once spot the duration of my camping trips.

Overall I would break down a review as follows:

Installation: 4/5 People more intelligent than me will probably give it a 5/5. If they ever provide some basic instructions I’m sure it will be 5/5.

Ease of Setup: 5/5 I mean it’s two clasps, a push and two rain fly poles

Looks: 5/5

Wind drag: 5/5 I’m actually getting better gas mileage with it on.

CVT customer service: 10/5 These guys go above and beyond. I had issues with my telescoping ladder and even though they don’t have spares laying around with it being a new tent, Bobby went the extra mile to make sure an existing customer was happy. I’ll be a CVT user for life.

Let me know if you guys have questions and I’ll do my best to answer. Anyone else with thoughts on having purchased one, please offer them up!

 

Can you store beding, sleeping bag and pillows in there

 

I think you could probably get a slim sleeping bag/bags in there, but I haven’t as our gear packs up pretty small.

 

Some pics of mine. I was also in the lucky first 100. I purchased the 1" tent risers from prinsu. Makes it 100 times easier to get on and off.

 

Did you notice a dip in the rake of your truck with the cap and the tent on? What is your rear suspension setup?

sweet truck duuude

 

I just parted and sold it. Butttttt

ADS 2.5 F+R with remotes and clickers
Icon single AAL in rear.

could have used a full leave in the rear but never pushed it hard enough for it to be an issue.

 

Anybody find a nut for the mt hood cross bars? You would think they would make it consistent with the rest of the tracks. Trying to bolt accessories to them

 

Sorry man, I have not.

 

What size tent did you have?

 

The old one I had was a mt Shasta 2-3 people.

mt hood is 56”

 

Gotcha, thanks!

Would you happen to have more photos of it closed, and how it attached it to the rack?

 

Don’t have pics of the attachment up close, but here’s one of it closed. You can kind of tell how it’s bolted to the rack on one of the cross bars here:

 

Great, thank you for those! Looks like a pain to install it.

 

I’m new to all of this and was wondering the risk of mounting the Mt Hood on my 10” high bed rack. The tent would overhang the tailgate end of the bed by about 10” since I don’t have a cab height bed rack... I won’t be doing any crazy off-roading. Will the overhanging part of the tent be okay?

 

unless you back it into something, I think you’d be fine.

 

Yeah, it was honestly a mf’er. Looking back, I prob would have purchased the tent mounts that prinsu sells. Good thing is that now I can just unscrew the crossbars that it’s mounted to, to take it off

 

What mounting hardware did you use to mount the RTT? I’ve been looking around but can’t find anything. Specifically looking for the bottom brackets to clamp on the Prinsu 2x1 Bed rails.

 

Hey Jeff, what kind of shell do you have? Is it a Leer? Any hesitation with throwing the Mt. Hood on there at all?

 

I have a 200lb Eezi Awn RTT on my Leer100XR no issues. I jus bought extra clamp brackets for the topper.

API Clamps (6 Pack) Silver.

API Clamps (6 Pack) Silver Compatible with Toyota Tacoma - 2005 & Newer - Mounting Channel Track Truck Topper Cap, Camper Shell

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2L6FYP?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share