Vagabond Drifter Camper Buildout and Mods

Curious why you went on the hood vs roof of drifter?

I have a victron controller with Bluetooth, its fun & handy to have numbers to look at for sure. Fridge stays plugged in and topped off, nice when I have extra beers/food left over I don't have to worry about.

 

Partly cause I'm a bit lazy, partly cause my Drifter is not prewired for solar and I would likely make a total hash of drilling through the roof. This was a simple fix with not too complicated wiring with a short distance from panel to battery, cost me a decent amount of money - I dont love having a thing on the hood, I had spent some time 'flat clear coating' my hood for way less glare (the panel has no glare) - but having it there doesn't bother me as much as I thought it might. The Dometic app has battery level, so when the fridge is on it's easy to monitor.

 

That makes sense. I also think that dometic has a built in feature that stops drawing power at some point. Solar is nice to keep things topped and not having to worry about running the truck.

 

I've never seen these hood panels before and this makes me want one. My 170watt panel up top is great when I'm in the desert and by noon every day I'm back up to 100% charge on my battery, but when I camp in the northwest I end up having a net loss of like 10-15% every day, and eventually I need to stop somewhere and charge my battery. So having a few extra watts for those trips would be nice

 

Would you be so kind as to send me a pin or some info for this spot or any like it? I suck at finding elevated spots in the PNW because you cant tell whats down any road for more than like 100 feet haha

 

Should throw a blue sea acr to charge while driving, that with my panel I never had issues.

 

Maybe I just missed it. I know @JLee has been posting a bunch of stories on social so that’s definitely a possibility but does anybody know what a BAMF access store looks like.



Asking for a friend

 

I have the same question about the doors. I have tried calling over the last 3 weeks and get "the party is busy" announcement.

 

Well, they have been packing up for a move...

 

Our doors are still in the design phase. We have yet to sell a single camper i won't be making any doors until we have a unit on order. A few of the existing customers will have one on there's but that process is just getting started once we get settled in the new shop.

We have no phones right now. Email is the only form of contact until we get our new phones set up on the new shop.

 

The seal where the top of the camper and bottom of shell meet deteriorated. I scraped it out and replaced with black silicone. The silicone attracted dust. Anyone have a better option?

 

I don't have any suggestions but definitely interested in seeing what others suggest. I need to scrape mine out soon. I was going to try some black RTV but ill wait to see what others suggests.

 

I used black Sikaflex to replace mine and seemed to work well.

 

You talking about the black weather stripping that is attached to the roof? The corners of those are starting to lose their grip for me so was wondering if that is what you were looking for.

 

Any drifter updates for those of us that got VagaBONED?

 

Reposting from a thread I contributed to on the FB Vagabond Outdoors Camper Owners page. I hope this doesn’t get flagged by the TW moderators.

I am one of the customers that lost a deposit to Phil and have now paid a (much smaller) deposit to Jerry at BAMF. I reached out to Jerry via email last Friday, the 27th, to check on the status and progress of my order and the campers and I have yet to hear back from him.

I have purchased bumpers and other BAMF made Toyota related components from Jerry and I know he makes a great product. And from my former purchases I have come to recognize patterns of quick & clear communication from Jerry until recently.

I reached out to him in late June to see how things were going and he was short & indirect with his response. He told me he was moving his shop and he hasn’t begun development on the campers. I gave it three months and haven’t heard anything so I decided to reach out again and I’m finding myself experiencing silence from the other end. Giving him the benefit of the doubt I did send him an email on Friday early morning and I didn’t expect a response from him over the weekend but he has had three full days to get to the email. Hopefully it was just overlooked and all is ok.

With the lack of communication It’s hard to not feel like things are turning south again.

 

Hi Dillon

I'm getting to emails as quickly as I can, I thought I replied to the email you sent Friday, Not sure how missing one email is a lack of communication but emails do tend to fall behind. I can see me Being short with you late June seeing how that was a most stressful month of my entire life my wife didn't even want to be around me in June.

Production on the campers wont be able t start until I have enough room in the new shop to work on them I'm packed in like sardines right now. I'm a one man show making these for you guys this is the only way to make them and me not have to come out of my pocket to make them so if there are volunteers to help it would speed up the process as I'm already working 12 to 16 hours a day 7 days a week on BAMF orders. There is a cupule dozen for me to make so once I have the room all the campers are being cut and formed at once Then assembled in the order the deposits were received..

 

Jerry,

Thank you for your response. I'll be in touch via email.

 

I only have one instance working with Jerry and it was seemless, but I think the concensus is he will get the job done. Can only imagine the stress of taking on the shit show that VB left.

Mike