Last time I left you with the newly installed walls and ceiling of the cargo trailer painted a nice clean, warm white.
Which meant I was then free to hide all the drips and slop of my less than stellar painting skills by painting the floor and ramp/deck with a hard-wearing porch-paint.
Once that was done and cured I finally had a clean slate to work with and could start actually building my new RV!
But to be honest it had been slow going to this point with far too many recovery-breaks and not enough working hours and now it was already late February. Way longer than something like this would have taken me BC (Before Cancer, which is, second to Mom's death, the newest bookmark in my life.) Given my health and other physical challenges I was trying not to have expectaions, but I couldn't escape the nagging pressure to have the trailer finished so I could get up to Michigan to see Mom. I had been sidelined from any and all visiting in 2023 and Mom wasn't getting any younger.
So now it was time to kick things into a new gear. Which, in reality, was akin to shifting from little-sprocket first gear to little-sprocket second gear. Not much of a jump. But at least I was shifting!
I started out this phase by fabricating and installing the mildly complicated right-wall assembly.
It has a 4-slot battery-box (currently two used and two spares) and 12V electrical distribution space on the bottom, cubbies for dirty-clothes hamper, magazines, and toiletries/first-aid stuff up the forward end with a spot on top of that for solar intake and distrubution, cubbies for clothes across the top, and a space between them and the battery box for the folding bed platform with a sliding pivot system so I can tuck it close to the wall when down but still have the necessary clearance to fold it up.
Next up (literally) was the overhead cubbies down the left side and across the V-shaped front.
With that out of the way I turned to fabricating
and installing the lower cabinets
that would make up the kitchen. (The handweights are there to hold the sink down while the caulk cures)
It was mid-May by the time I actually got to the point of installing the bed platform
and cabinet doors. (The handweights are still there because I just haven't moved them yet)
We were well into June by now but at last it was time to put down the tool-belt and don my sewing apron to get some curtains on those windows as one of the final touches.
Actually I had the curtain fabric laying around for quite a while by this point since I bought it early on so I could color-match for the blue accent paint used on the interior. (It's a hell of a lot easier to match paint to fabric than it is fabric to paint!)
With about a month and a half to go before heading off to visit Mom and family, the cargo trailer was, other than a short shake-down trip and some fine tuning, finished!
When I started this project I wasn't sure I would finish it in time for the Michigan trip, but I made it, and probably sped my recovery from the surgeries and chemo along while doing so. (I finished the second, and so far final, round of chemo shortly after finishing the trailer.)
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| Yes, the spare tire lives up against the front wall where it is secure, clean, and easy to get at. |
I've skipped a lot of the build details here, but in terms of equipment the trailer has 200ah of LiFePO4 battery with room for another 200ah. There was enough space on the roof for 400w of solar. I initially bought 200w but the cost to add the second 200w while I was already up there was too good to pass up. About 10% of the cost of adding two more batteries.
Although both the trailer and The Van have about 12 feet of inside living-space length the trailer has significantly more moving-around space.
With the bed down I have about as much aisle-space between bed and counter as The Van but the trailer
still has a huge "dressing room" left over up front that I never had in The Van. And with the bed stowed I have a full 36" of aisle-space to cavort around in. (not that I actually cavort, but - well - never mind.)
I have a very efficient chest-style fridge with seperate freezer that easily holds at least as much as the front-opening 4.0 cf Norcold in The Van. I made a couple of stacking acrylic bins for the deeper fridge side to make getting at things easier.
My portable toilet lives under the fridge.
There are two colapsable/freezable water jugs (2.5 gals each) under the sink.
One is for wastewater (with a second waste-water jug folded up next to it, on standby) and the other is for potable water and plumbed to a rechargable pump on the counter by the sink.
There are two more full potable-water jugs stored in a bin nearby. (You can buy an 8-pack of these jugs on Amazon for less than $30)
My portable stove lives on a custom shelf under the only drawer (used for utensils), the pans have their own shelf under that, and I have a few one gallon jugs of filtered rainwater (for drinking) tucked down there on the floor next to the enclosure for the 120v distribution box.
There's no micro, no oven, no stove-top, no shower, no bathroom, no running hot water (that's what kettles on the stove are for!), no TV, no propane, no furnace, no fancy coffeemaker, and uses a folding table and camp chair for furniture.
Many turn their nose up at it because it's not McMansion-on-wheels enough (I had a hell of a time selling The Van for that very reason.), but it's pretty damn luxurious to me. Everything a home needs. And for that reason I threw an AC unit on the roof while doing the build, because the climate is not going to get any cooler in my lifetime and I'm pretty close to being past young-n-tough now!
When parked at home it's an extension of our living space and I've spent many a sweltering summer afternoon out there with my watercolors.
On the road there's some give and take when comparing it to The Van.
Obviously the truck-trailer combo won't fit into the single parking spot The Van could. On the other hand I don't have to break camp just to drive to a trailhead or restock supplies like I did with The Van.
When stopping for the night after a long day of driving I can't just turn around and be in my living space like with The Van, I have to get out, lock up, and move around to the trailer,
but the trailer is a lot closer to the ground, making it easier to get in and out of than The Van.
The Van, using relativly expensive diesel, got a couple hundredths less than 20 MPG over the nearly 100k miles I drove it (never over 65) and I have the spreadsheet to prove it! The Ranger on it's own gets 24 MPG at 75mph with less expensive gas, but does so with a relatively small engine (the literature says the 2024 Ranger could be bought with a 2.3 inline-4 or a 2.7 v-6. The literature is wrong. The only engine actually available when I ordered mine was the 2.3). So when pulling the trailer it feels it and gets anywhere from 11 (when I was skirting around the remnants of a huricane into a headwind) to 15 mpg. (I tow at 65 mph) But that little turbo'ed engine is strong! If I need to hustle up to speed when merging with the trailer that engine will shove me into the back of the seat, and I've dragged the trailer over mountain passes at a steady 65 with no problem, the coolant and trans (10 speed trans) temps holding steady the whole way.
I didn't t skimp when building this thing (over-sized wiring, robust systems - mostly electrical - top-of-the line paints luxurious fabric, wireless backup and rear-view cameras), and not counting the $3k or so we paid for the cargo trailer many years ago, the all-up, equiped for camping, cost of the convertion was $8872. $2000 of that was the batteries and another $1400 for the rooftop AC, actually a heat-pump, unit.
According to the Ranger, which keeps track of this stuff, since converting it, I've hauled this trailer 8311 miles and I don't know how many nights I've spent in it (the Ranger doesn't keep track of that), and it suits me just fine. - well, mostly, but more about that later.
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