Whitney's Weakender - Hatch / Galley Lid Redesign - Pg 11

[S. Heisley]

It looks like it turned out good, Whitney. Congratulations on your first trip!

[Alfred]

Great looking camper, Whitney! Congratulations on your first outing!

AL

[LDK]

Whitney

Congrats on your first outing. Your weekender looks great and maybe someday soon I'll get to see it up close for myself.
Oh yeah, nice embalming fluid crate that everyone seems to mention.

[WhitneyK]

Thanks everyone for your kind words!

Since our first trip I haven't really had a chance to work on the "final" details.
I'm now trying to play catch up from all the stuff I put on the back burner while working on our li'l camper.
Been trappin' 'coons and skunks and "relocating" them. So far I'm up to 3 skunks & 5 'coons!
Ain't he cute!!!


If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions on how to make the small changing room that attaches to the side let me know. I'm thinking along the lines of using a heavy shower curtain (that my wife's already purchased) on a loop, but the loop must be easily detachable / break down, and compact to store. I noticed Dan Sutton use a shower curtain type design on his at the last gathering but he has a roof rack to mount his to. Might even be able to use a golf umbrella for the roof. Must be economical, fast / easy assembly, yet able to withstand the occational wind without collapsing, is that asking too much?

[WhitneyK]

...and another reason why I built my own camper...

This was posted on MSN's home page this evening:

Sorry, Philly, you win 'Most Bedbugs' honor this year
Here's an East Coast honor that New York City will be happy to lose. After two years of being named the most bedbug-infested city in the U.S., the City That Never Sleeps can finally get some rest as Philadelphia nabs this year's creepy crown. Cincinnati scratches its way to second, while NYC drops to third. Newcomers to the top 15 include Cleveland, Miami, Houston, Indianapolis and New Haven, Conn. Pest-control company Terminix, which compiled this nightmare ranking, suggests travelers can avoid the bloodsucking parasites when visiting infested regions by inspecting mattresses, headboards and box springs for bugs and (shudder) "bug exoskeletons and dark blood spots."

I work for the Health Department and we get people bringing these things in for us to identify (then we SMASH 'EM!)
Ain't nuthin' sacred to these critters.

[VermonTear]

Whitney...
Nice Build. Hope you're enjoying it. Long time back you posted a question about what to use to polish/clean/wax your non-anodized aluminum. What did you end up finding out worked for you. I'm just about to finish my build (although my photos aren't up to date!) and am facing the same question. I have plain vanilla sheet aluminum (not anodized) from the local metal shop, and am about to dust the sawdust off and clean it up for show. It has kind of a matte finish -- not brushed, not shiny either. WD40 cleans up a sample nicely, so does car wax. But when I left water drops on it overnight, they left marks that don't want to budge.

What's been your experience?

[WhitneyK]

Ken,

Actually I haven't tried anything yet for several reasons.
1. I'm still not sure what to try yet, like you, made some sample pieces to try different things on
2. I've been to sorry to hit a lick in this 100+ weather we've been havin'
3. 2nd job's been keepin' me too busy.

Please post if you decide on something and I'll do the same. I'm sure time is going to be the best teacher whether it works or not, if I mess mine up, I'll just paint it I guess.

[WhitneyK]

Golly, where to start....

Haven't done much to our li'l camper lately, but I did make some changes last week. The Chinese black paint on the tongue box was really looking bad after just a few short months in the sun so I decided to paint it white to match the frame and reduce heat. The battery box should be vented but I couldn't ever come up with any vent grills / covers / louvers that I liked..... until now. Stopped by an "out-of-the-way" lumber yard to check out what kind of vent covers they had and came up with one that had 3 louvered sections, a 4 x 12", for $2. Made two vents out of the one piece. Cut up the center section, folded it over, poked some more holes, and here you have it.


Should give me some decent venting. I intalled one high and one low for 2 reasons: 1) I thought it would give better air movement with the hot air rising and going out the top vent will drawing in the cool air through the bottom one 2) It was easier to do it like that with all the stuff in the way

Istalled a little light for my license plate just to keep everything "legal"


As I walked out into the garage the other day, something was bouncing off of the ceiling (no the cat didn't drink my Mt. Dew). At first glance I thought "Wow, that's the biggest hornet I've every seen!" But then, realizing it was a humming bird that was "trapped" in the garage, I put my hands up under it a little and it landed in them. Must have been really tired. Hollered for my wife and she brought some of the sugar water we fill their feeders with and we got to hand feed her. (the humming bird, not my wife) It rested in my hands and drank for about 3 or 4 minutes until a loud atv came by and it flew off, all is well.


Folks have been real generous to me here lately, a lady I work with found out I was needing, not wanting folks, needing, a small coffee pot for the camper, so she gave me a 4 cup she had layin' around.


My favorite neighbor gave me some cute little porch light bling in case we ever decide to go to another gathering, along with a 10 x 20 screen tent to cut up for a side tent and a 8x8? sun shade (not an easy-up, like one, but a little harder to put up)


...and last but hopefully not least, while draining an old fuel oil tank in my sister-in-law's basement (used to be my brothers basement ) she offered me a choice between 2 camp stoves. Both were old, but new and had never been fired! She said which ever one I didn't want she would give to my brother (he doesn't have a use for it so hoping I'll end up with both of them ) One was a Berzomatic single burner (missing the grate) with the Seymour Hardware price sticker still on it for $16.75 and had been discounted down to $8.


The other one was a Coleman 425E two burner with the original packing. According to the "net", this one was made from '67-'70 or so it was listed. You CAN believe everything you read on the internet, right? Anyway.....


We (she) decided the 2 burner Coleman may be of better use to us than the single, so we now own our first coleman stove (Doug is gonna be so proud) I'm gonna get one of those propane converters for it and put the liquid fuel tank in storage. This will allow us to camp more "off grid" in the less expensive "primitive" sites and save some $$$.
WooHoo!!! We can eat hot food on our next vacation!!!!

Gotta get goin' on finishing up the galley area to accomadate better storage and get to workin' on my side tent(s). Gonna take off a couple days next week but probably won't get to work on it.... need to finish pressure washin' A & U's house.....festival inspections Saturday.....

[pappaw]

I like your ideas and trailer

Sweet old stoves too.

Cheers

[High Desert]

Great work on those vents Whitney. Good choice on the new/old Coleman too, I'm sure you'll be pleased with it. All great additions to a great build

[WhitneyK]

Gettin' down to the wire Crunch time is upon me!

Got a 2 wk vacation scheduled and need to get everything wrapped up for our trip.
First off, my neighbor stopped by a couple of Saturdays ago and gave me THIS!

...and it's just big enough to run our MW. If need be, we can save some $$$ and stay in primitive. Cleaned out the carb, put in fresh gas, 2nd pull and the little bugger ran for over 2 hrs while I had a fan blowin' on me workin' on the camper when it was so hot. Say's it'll run 5 hrs on a gallon of fuel.

Progress on the galley so far consisted of adding a pull out drawer for our wooden food crate and coffee maker leaving enough space for our electric griddle. A drawer for utensils or whatever's.


Hind site's 20/20, didn't think to measure everything, just thought it would all fit Missed it by that much

May have to "notch" the side board or re-configure my arrangements.

Needs and timing are a little out of sinc, wanted to make my own, but time did not allow that so I ordered one of these "ez up" style 4' x 4' cabana tents to attach to the side of our trailer. $70

So I can get dressed standing up (I'm 6'4"+, try gettin' dressed in bed, ya right) and my wife can,... uh, well,... you know,... in the middle of the night,... uh, Ya, that's it!

I'll report more on the tent when it gets here Thursday and hopefully by then I'll have pics of my other drawer / counter top under the MW.
Also workin' on getting the compact spare tire mounted underneath. More on that later......

[WhitneyK]

Greeting everyone!

Went down to the local salvage yard a found me one of them compact spares to fit my li'l camper. It's the same height as my tires (24") so should work out just fine. Had a dilema on where to put it and how am I gonna hang it though. So,..... I called up my friend and former neighbor to see if he had any spare tire carrier's left over from when he was rebuildin' wrecked S-10's, sure enough, once again, he came through!

Wollered it around for 2 days trying to figure out HOW I was gonna use it and finally decided on a location. Would have preferred centered, but can't always have what we want.


I mounted it to a piece of 1/4" thick angle iron I had around, figured that would be enough to support it. The origianl lowering method was the tapered end of the tire tool that looked like a screw driver. I "altered" that a bit, pressed a 1/2" bolt with 2 nuts into the pipe (after I rounded the nuts down of course), drilled a hole and inserted a roll pin through the pipe where the 2 nuts join inside (I know, could / should have been welded but I didn't have one handy and the other parts were). With the 1/2" bolt it gives it a 3/4" head for the socket which is the same size as the lug nuts. Didn't want the end of the pipe floppin' around so I supported it with an eye bolt up through the bottom of my battery box. Now the spare can be easily raised and lowered on a cable. (Hope I never get to find out if it works or not)


I've got the galley finished up but haven't got the final pics yet, so that will have to wait until next week.
...and I've just about completed my side tent,.....which I need to get pictures of also. (you can see what I've done so far in this post: http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=51157&start=30 along with ideas others have had)

Decided to convert the 4 prong flat trailer plug over to the 7 prong RV type so I can hook up the "charge while towing" set up. Shucks, had a left over plug anyway, why not?

Headin' out West in a few weeks so gotta get goin'

[bobhenry]

SO what are you doing with all your spare time ?

[WhitneyK]

SO what are you doing with all your spare time ?

Spare time? No, I'm just sssslllloooowwwww

[bigblockbarry]

I like the spare tire mount. I have a donut spare for mine too but I carried it in the trunk on vacation. I'll camp in the fall and figure out the mounting this winter. Enjoy your trip,the weather should be about right.

Barry