M-214?

[Welder Sam]

What do you want pics of?

 

[Danger Ranger]

Just final pics of your setup would be cool I thought. Loaded and ready to roll...

 

[Welder Sam]

Fair nuff. Avatar is how i had it setup at the farm. I just rolled into the yard. Ill get an outside, road ready, as it sits shortly.

 

[Welder Sam]

heres a few. forgiveth me for playing with the camera effects

 

[helomedic1171]

pretty cool.

 

[Welder Sam]

Its usable but not final. So im using it thru deer season. Still have to add rhe racks, big lp bottle, heater, and rear deck

 

[Welder Sam]

So i bent the coupler mount portion of the tongue. It pulled about 12" to the drivers side. Not good. Figured itd be a simple trim, straighten, weld, and reinforce. Not so much. Ot tore the square tubing that the coupler/brake housing bolts to. Really not good. By the time i really saw what was there, it was after dark. Gotta love the wreckerflood lights! Anyway, i spent saturday washing all the thin "gusset-ry" off to get down to the nitty gritty. Torched out a wedge, beat it back straight, prepped the joint and welded it. As i looked at it, i wasnt sasified so i went after some 3/8 bar stock. Hmm... well... it may bend again but if/when it does, ill have to fab a whole new tongue. Needless to say, i didnt take it out this weekend. Maybe next weekend ill take my 6 year old daughter hunting/camping in it.

I also got a 12v winch for the mule. Should make loading/unloading both easier and safer.

 

[Welder Sam]

Got the 2nd spare carrier welded on tonight. Next i think ill start fabbing a rack for 3 water cans, 3-4 fuel cans, generator, and battery bank. I used to know where to get "blemish" batteries really cheap. Need to look back into that.

 

[helomedic1171]

please do, I know plenty of folks that would love to get in on that.

 

[Welder Sam]

Its not an online or mail order place. It was over 10yrs ago since i checked. Just a small town parts house.

I used to get big batteries for $30 out the door. Even if theyve gone up, its still better than $100+ per unit

 

[RAYZER]

Real nice setup! Very functional.

 

[Welder Sam]

Thanks Ray. Its not meant to be a traditional rv. Just a comfy, dry warm/cool place to sleep.

Im following "off grid" fairly closely. I really like alot of what he's done there. Im working on incorporating his 12vsystem into mine. So far, all ive done is gather a couple batteries and have a pair of 4" reverse led's on the way. Plan is to yank the incandescent dc fixtures, cap the one over the beds(or just leave it and snatch the bulb), replace the rear one and install the #2 opposite of the original for twice the light in the open rear area(back 1/2 by the doors).

Crap. Just realized i probably dont have any interior pics since i got the bunks built. Ill get on that when it dries up.

 

[Welder Sam]

I havent done much. Dont have pics of quite everything either. Added strobes on the rear. Added led floods on both sides and rear. On the front, i put a couple 4" round grommet mount leds facing down. The strobes, rear floods, and side floods will be controlled from the truck. The floods are dual voltage so theyll also run from onboard 12v.

Some interior pics for the guy that asked a while back. Sorry it took so long

 

[Welder Sam]

Will be starting on the deck when it dries up. Also will be adding hooks around the top on the sides and rear for tarp awnings. Running water is beginning to cross my mind too but..

The floods give 100'+ swath of light around this thing. Thats pretty sweet. Theyre 18w 6led 12/24v 1350(?) lumen lights. I ran 1 pair plus the interior lights(1157) for 18+hrs. When i hooked up the charger it said the batteries were at 50%. I think thats pretty fair for being old take off batteries that wouldnt start the wrecker and without any solar or wind chargers. Just straight battery.

Im curious and maybe someone knows, how many batteries and how large of an inverter would it take to run 12k btu ac thru the night? In this swamp, ac is a must in warm months.

 

[LowTech]

I think, from everything I've read and heard, it takes way to many to run an AC. Cheaper and easier to run a little genny :-/

Why hooks? Hooks "hook" on things and you live in the woods. Why not loops or rings? You can always use something like a caribiner to hook from rings, or grommets in a tarp, to rings on the rig.

 

[Welder Sam]

Ive got the gen covered but id really love to keep it cool during quiet hours. I dont see me taking it back to the petit jean rally(more like cf) but if im in the middle of no where, i really would like to be as quiet and cool as can be ya know.

 

[Triple Jim]

What's the current draw of the air conditioner at 120V? If you assume 10 Amps, running for 8 hours, that's 80 Ah at 120V = 9600 Watt-hours. If you use something like 200 A-h Trojans, which are 6V batteries, they'll give 1200 Watt-hours each, so 8 of them will barely make it with a perfect inverter. Since you'll have losses, and you'll probably want some extra run time occasionally, and it's not good to run deep cycle batteries all the way down, you can probably figure 16 batteries. You'll need a good inverter, like maybe a 2 kW Exeltech, for example. Those are sine wave inverters and will do double their rating for surges, so it would have a shot at handling the starting current of the compressor.

A Trojan T105 weighs 62 lbs, so 16 of them add up to 992 lbs. At 120 bucks each, not counting shipping, that's $1920. The inverter is probably around $1,000. The charger will add some more cost.

LowTech said it right, a quiet generator is cheaper and a lot lighter. Maybe start with a very quiet one and put it in a sound enclosure. Some of the new motor home generators are amazingly quiet.

 

[Welder Sam]

Yeah... hmmm... wow.. uh.. i know i can run everything off of a 3.5kw gen at once and its happy. A/c, lights, fan, microwave, various small household items..
May have to look at downgrading to a box fan at night..

 

[Welder Sam]

Need to clean it out but heres the bunks

 

[LowTech]

Very cool! How much have you used it?

Are you finding that the wood work is staying together? How did you construct it, screws, bolts?