Building an expedition vehicle: Kitchen – Part 2
Grey water solution for expedition camper: A modified water canister underneath the kitchen sink and additional option to collect it in a bucket outside.
Expedition trucks
An expedition truck is not just a vehicle, it’s an all-weather, off-road, off-grid tiny house on wheels ready for some serious adventure.
You can build your own or have one build for you. To help you accomplish your dream, we started an article series about the different components (solar, heating, etc. …). (You can find the oldest posts at the bottom).
Password protected articles
We currently have four password protected articles:
- “Overland travel: A dark night in Scotland”
- “Cost distribution of Terratrotter’s expedition truck” (halfway the build)
- “How much does it cost to build your own expedition truck?”
- “Travel the world: Budgets revealed”
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Building an expedition vehicle: Kitchen – Part 1
Here are the first pictures of the interior of our expedition truck. We opted for a decent size indoor kitchen even though we prefer to cook/grill outside. Sometimes the weather will not allow outdoor cooking or sometimes is just nice to have breakfast in bed, right! We personally don’t like the compact sink-stove combinations with glass top […]
Building an Expedition Vehicle: Work in progress
We made progress on transforming our FM2 Zeppelin shelter into a off-grid camper unit. Double Blue U-11 water treatment system, searching for 24V Lighting, and further customizing our bed
Interior Layout of our Expedition truck
3D-sketches of the new interior layout of our expedition truck.
Installing a fan in an expedition vehicle
This week we have installed a roof fan in our expedition truck. Although the installation itself went smoothly we had some unexpected prepping to do. Why a fan? One person can generate up to 1.5 liter of extra moisture in the air. If you also cook, shower, dry wet clothes, … in your vehicle […]
We survived the holidays!
Wow. Time just accelerated the last few weeks. 2016 is already here when we are still processing what took place in 2015. Our new year’s resolution? Totally slipped our mind, EXCEPT making our dream come true. So with the little free time we had left these last few weeks we continued the work on the […]
Cost distribution of Terratrotter’s expedition truck
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Installing an Electrical System in your Expedition Vehicle
The extra technology for a balanced, well-functioning electrical system in your expedition vehicle (incl. some of the common mistakes). MPPT – AC Inverter & Charger – Battery Combiner – Battery Monitor
Video: Terratrotter in Croatia
Video of two expedition trucks, a STEYR 12M18 & DAF Leyland, on a road trip to Croatia; incl. some video footage of us snorkeling. Other posts about this overland journey: Road trip to Croatia: Overview Choose Your Own Overland Travel Adventure: Slovenian Alps By Night
How (not) to remove skids from Zeppelin-Shelter
The FM2 Zeppelin-shelters all come with 3 skids (German: “Kufen”). Each on weighs approximate 25kg (55lbs). If you don’t need them and/or they take up space you can’t miss on your truck, you will want to remove them. This turns out to be a hellish task. Trial 1: Heavy Duty Grinder and Crowbar The first […]
Solar panels on your expedition vehicle: The very basics
The basics of a solar system on expedition vehciles: why, calculating daily consumption, battery capacity, recharging batteries with solar panels.
Video: Building our expedition truck – The first 6 months
How to build a bed on rails?
Wondering about how to build a bed in your expedition vehicle (or other tiny house)? We will tell you everything about why we build our bed on rails and give you all the details to build one yourself. That we wanted a fixed bed in our truck, that we could just jump into when tired, was not up for discussion. […]
Sandblasting the chassis & choosing a new color
April was a slow month regarding the build of our expedition truck. Aside from work keeping us busy, everybody around us seem to be struggling with the flu or cold. So we could only wait until we got the green light to drop of the chassis to be sandblasted and the shelter for a new […]
Finishing the walls: Lining & Insulation
LINING THE WALLS OF THE SHELTER A major milestone has been reached in the “Old army shelter becomes our tiny house”-project. We lined the walls and ceiling with a white textured carbon fiber film, specially made to wrap vehicles. Expensive yes, but it makes a huge difference! White instead of mint green walls, makes the […]
Removing the back door of the Zeppelin shelter
BYE BYE BACK DOOR With the new side door installed, we were able to remove the back door of the FM2 Zeppelin-shelter. This door is too big and heavy, not insulated and badly located; thus needed to go. After getting rid of the boxes around the door, we closed off the entire back with […]
New door and windows for our tiny house
It took us a while to decide where to buy our windows and new side door. KCT windows did not fit our budget, but the affordable plastic Seitz windows on the other hand had several drawbacks that concerned us. Plastic scratches easily and thus not the best choice for 0ff-road adventures. We also heard from multiple travelers […]
Preparing the shelter walls
REMOVAL OF ALUMINUM RAILS – With the weather improving somewhat we took the chance to get some more work done in the shelter. We took out the aluminum rails by removing hundreds of rivets. A few metal drill bits (5mm) were sacrificed for this. In addition, most of the old, dirty, glued-on heater insulation has […]
First sketch of our tiny house
THE CREATIVE WORK – While we are waiting for some warmer weather, we continue planning the interior of the truck. We noticed we have been altering the layout multiple times (using SketchUp). Since we only have 8m2 to work with and it has to withstand the jolts during off-roading, everything needs to be carefully planned. […]
Protecting the engine oil and fuel
In the month of February we upgraded the truck a little more: We installed a new fuel cap. During the Christmas holidays someone tried to get access to the fuel. Luckily for us they failed but the fuel cap endured too much damage and needed to be replaced. This of course raises the question “Should you […]