Wisconsin Tacomas and bad financial advice

Yeah Perfect

 

We were watching from the camper, drinkin beer and a good fire until the downpour.

 

Got a bunch done on the shelf, not enough...measure about 100 times, cut once. Too worried I'm going to cut something wrong when I don't have plastic to spare.

Did get the stripes done. Driver side came out just about perfect. Passenger side, I had a bit of a problem. I'll let it sit for a couple of days to see how it settles down, I may have to replace the red stripe...impatience got the best of me. It may turn out OK but I'm not holding my breath at this point.

 

Did the stripes have to be installed one color at a time?

 

The fender stripes were ganged on backing paper, the door stripes were singles. The passenger side had double paper on half of it, which kept pulling the red stripe up and eventually wrinkling it. Then I tried to pull some more of it up to re-adjust but it was getting too dry and stuck down, which stretched it.

 

Interesting. I guess if I was making those decals, I’d have it all on one backer that would do both the door and fender all in one application. I wonder why they did it the way they did.

 

I was wondering the same when they arrived. Would've been easier to keep it all aligned. I ended up using masking tape to give me a reference line.

 

Looks good! Like that a lot.

 

Thanks. It does look good on silver, nice contrast. Now we'll be waiting on yours...

 

I’m tempted to order some vinyl and see what I can come up with. Hmmm

 

Cool pic.

 

Question for anyone with a fridge: I'm about to buy one, concerned about running it while offroading. What's the way to do this? Ultimately I'd probably put a dash switch in and run to relay to cut the 12V. I have notes on this somewhere but can't find it, too much other crap going on. Not a big deal, just planning ahead so I don't instantly kill a new toy.

Stripes look good! I'm not a fan of stickers much but those are pretty sweet.

Also looking very nice!

 

just get one of the hardwire kits

https://www.dometic.com/en-us/outdoor/food-and-beverage/coolers/accessories/dometic-hwk-dc-222471

or build your own with a blue sea panel

$40 Blue Sea Systems 4363 Water-Resistant Accessory Panels, 15A Circuit Breaker, 12V Socket, 2.1A Dual USB Charger

https://www.amazon.com/Exterior-Panel-12VDC-Socket-USB/dp/B07PP1TML3

I ran mine direct to the battery (with a fuse in the kit) and its been that way for years now. pretty much all the fridges have a low voltage cut off so they'll shut down before they drain your battery down too far to start your truck.

with the stock battery you can get like 12-24 hours of run time.. with an 27f AGM its like 48+ (all pending temperature)

I was usually moving every day, so I wasn't parked more than like 12 hours most of the time. I did eventually add a hood mounted solar panel (cascadia4x4) so I could stay parked for extended period and not worry about it

also fwiw - don't cheap out on a fridge. get a dometic / arb / snow master / engel / national luna. The compressors are much more efficient and they do a better job regulating temperature. some of the cheap ones will consume 2x the power or more.

 

Also not sure what size fridge you are thinking.. but I typically use a cfx35. Plenty of space for a couple people for nearly a week. More people or longer trip, I’d goto a 45-50. Anything bigger than that is unnecessary unless you have a huge group or it’s like half beverages

 

Thanks for the info but I'm good on the wiring/power aspect. Just curious about the tilting factor from offroading. Some have ratings of how much they can tilt but I don't trust any of that marketing wank. Thinking if you are going to do some crazy offroad obstacle it's probably best to temporarily shut it off to avoid damaging the compressor. But like everything else I'm probably overthinking things. I like bombproof whenever it's attainable.

I am going with an Iceco VL45ProS and time will tell if that's a good idea or not, but I did tons of research and it seems like the best choice for my application (all of them have compromises in one way or another). Starting with the Tigerton event I'll be wandering for 3+ weeks straight and I'm tired of dealing with a cooler/ice. It will be replacing a 30qt Engel rotomold. Should be plenty for just me.

12V power I'm not going to get into right now but suffice to say my setup is going to be far beyond most people's needs. Unreasonable is probably the best word. I'll share more on that later but I have to go abuse my credit card first.

 

Depends on the compressor. Most of the higher end ones are danfoss compressors (if I remember right) and totally fine with angle/vibration/etc. i just plug it in and it doesn’t get shut off til I get back home.

really no reason to cycle it on off.. and about the first time I did I would forget to turn it back on..

 

That makes sense too. Mine will have a Secop compressor with I think 40° tilt rating and I don't expect to get that nuts (Secop now owns Danfoss, both good). Meh, I'll worry about getting fancy with switches later.

 

Hey there!! Nice to meet you!

 

Thinking about maybe doing the stripes but using the dark shades.
My truck needs something to break up all the Silver Sky.