Doug,

Thank you, again for your amazing advice. Unfortunately, we are starting to approach the EcoRoamer’s GVWR with all of the beers that I think we are going to owe you!

Of course, I won’t put everyone through a detailed response to all of your great points, but here’s a couple of interesting updates that are relevant to your suggestions:

1 – PROPANE

One of our very early design decisions was to not carry propane at all. Largely for the hassle of the reasons you stated. We are purely diesel throughout. We were going to use a diesel stove, but it also had too many drawbacks (not controllable in separate burners, altitude issues, lack of responsiveness, after-sales support) and so we initially decided to go with an induction stove.

Then we realized the power on those was going to just kill our batteries, so we took the advice of EGN (owner of a very cool MAN KAT) and have gone with a 2 burner resistive stove. Time will tell how well it works, stay tuned…

2 – AWNINGS

Yes, we have two Fiamma awnings, which were finally installed about 10 days ago. Here they are:

What is really cool, is that when the rear deck is down, and the rear awning is out, we can attach the hanging side walls to it, and create a separate weather protected ‘family room’ for the kids to play in. It adds about an extra 100 sq ft to an otherwise small living quarters.

The rear deck was hung on the truck TODAY!  So, stay tuned for pictures this week.

3 – INTERIOR

Much of the work at the moment is all about the interior. I mentioned in a previous post that the guys at Michiana Laminate are working on the furniture pieces. Well, TODAY they finished the first one – the stairs unit.

Here it is:

This is the first piece made out of the Bamboo based Plyboo material, and I love how it looks. The drawer interiors are made out of fermaldahyde-free recycled wood fiber white masonite – to reduce weight & cost and make it easier to clean.

There are more pictures of the stairs in the Build Photos Section over at www.EcoRoamer.com if you’d like to see more.

To Doug’s point, there are going to be lot’s of small storage places to try and keep our somewhat chaotic 2-kids household in a religiously organized fashion. (and yes – I love my Brother label maker, too!)

PS – Before you ask, that weird pull-out board on the back of the stairs unit is a step to get back into the truck from the pop-out bed tent on the side of the truck. (it will make more sense once I have it installed in place)

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The Happijac Bed Lift was installed today too, as well as a few other internal goodies.

Stay tuned & thanks to Doug and everyone else who has given us all their great advice to make this the best Expedition Vehicle it can be. (…well, maybe second best to Soenke’s! 

Cheers guys!
A very Happy Jay.