Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Sleeping in your car part 3

Version 3.0 is at the time a work in progress, but it's more a work in progress in the electrical departments rather than the bed.
After finishing my 48 states tour, I still had some savings left after two amazing gap years and more traveling than I had done my entire adult life prior to it. I decided to work on my version 3.0.
In Version 3.0, I took out the entire back row seats and built wooden box across the back, I also took out all the door panels and replaced them with carpet to gain the pockets inside each door as storage and also allowing more shoulder space from side to side. I took out the center console with the cup holder and box storage for an expansion of the width of the bed, I used .75 ply for the bed and back row and made it so that part of the bed can be moved to the back as the back board of the back roll and there can be a wooden bench to sit on, Carpet is stapled to the ply and I am learning new tools.
I plan to add small solar panels to the moon roof, some mosquitoes nets to the windows, some curtains or maybe a inside tent for the sleeping area. Some engine off entertainment gadgets.
I also decided to abandon the 12v aux battery system people use. I will setup a hybrid solar system with only a very small 12v AGM 10ah or so battery from maybe an old UPS, and all the solar will be converted to USB power and fed into a monster lipo bank which can be used as a USB power bank for my phones and tablets or alternatively rewired to be used as a 4S battery for laptop charging.
Since all I plan to have running off of electric system is phone and laptop, this will suffice.
I also ran an extension cable from the front of the car in through the firewall to provide shore power via another extension cable when I am parked at home to charge my huge lipo bank. I have rough calculation of maybe 1 month to two of continuous power to my phone or about 1/8 that to my laptop.

I am still learning about cooking on the road, I plan to tap into the heating core of the car where you get engine heated water flowing into your cable when you turn on the heat, I was thinking of just tapping into that with a T pipe and have a slow cooker by wielding two containers together circulating this hot water. Alternatively I can modify the exhaust manifold on the engine to do pretty much the same thing, but I don't want my engine to overheat, in addition to having a thermal electric generator project pending for the exhaust manifold.

I feel more confident in the current setup compared to the previous ones.

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