วีดีโอ

Hey no problem at all! And I agree… Rubber strips would have been a cleaner option. The caulk does add some security in the event the bolts come loose, but that's probably the only advantage. Good luck in your install and let me know if you need anything else!

Great point on bolts coming loose with vibration at 70mph. Love caulk!

Hey, so the caulk is there to hold the aluminum bracket to the roof. You should be able to remove it without damaging the paint so I wouldn't worry too much about that. It's the same stuff that's on top of every RV. On the other side of that bracket is a piece of tape on the van roof to keep that little metal wedge from having direct contact with the paint. That's the only area that was a little questionable. You could also use some clear adhesive made for covering door edges or headlights, etc. Lots of manufactures of that if you didn't want to use take. There really isn't any place the awning has direct contact with the van if you use caulk on the one side of the bracket and some kind of tape on the other side. Of course the bracket sits on the factory rails, but that's intentional

Thank you. Yes I’m familiar with RV rooftops understanding we’re not actually making a hole in the roof here thankfully. The instructions sent to me by Flatline Van in 20 languages show an icon for a tube of something which I assume is the caulk, but I can’t find anything in writing about applying it. Nonetheless, I guess I’m wondering why caulk is needed at all if the awning is mounted to the roof rail? Maybe it’s to keep the awning from rotating forward as an extra measure if the roof rail itself is not enough. Overall, having had this awning for a while, are you happy with it? Is it holding up?

@@ronaldviola328 oh gotcha! Yeah, the caulk is really there I think as a way to pad the bracket from the roof. I've been really happy with the awning! It hasn't budged an inch after thousands of miles of driving. Works really well! My next step is to put mounting brackets on the van for the legs to attach to so they aren't on the ground/in the way.

Too late...where were you when I was shooting the video? :)

Kinda late now....hopefully it was helpful still....at least worth what you paid to watch it.

@@nomaddict5279 that's true.

You just go to their website and there is a link to reserve. www.bigsurcamp.com/rv-sites

Great question, and no, I've never had that issue.

And we live in Northwest Arkansas where the temperatures get up near 100° every summer

Thanks, the one I have does. May have to try the one you're using.

Hey! Northwest Arkansas - Bentonville is the center of all of the trails. Everything from flow trails to single track and everything in between! They have put tens of millions of dollars into the trails with four trail design companies having crews here. When you get close to downtown Bentonville, there are mountain bikers all over the place. Slaughter Pen and Coler are two of the major trail hubs. Both have some really nice downhill runs.

Also, the trails are collectively known as Oz Trails (reference to the Ozark mountains)

Hey thank you! I appreciate it! We actually started with the walls. I used 1/8" birch plywood and I inserted a few rivnuts into the walls. The panels just screw into them... very low-tech. We bought fabric from Joannes and I watched a couple of videos on how to cut it. Used 3M spray glue and it worked prettywell, but they look pretty rough right now from hauling lots of stuff in the van. Planning to re-cover them or have an upholstery shop do that. They sit just inside the Moab LT, so you can remove them without touching the LT. I had to split the job into upper and lower panels b/c of the plywood size. Let me know if you have any other questions! Good luck!

Thanks man!! Heck yeah - that would be awesome!! Give me a shout when you can get up this way! For anyone reading this, go check out @arkieoutdoors and sub! Joe is an awesome dude with great vids!

Hey, boy I'm not really sure. I may have missed it if you didn't see it in the video. We are traveling so I kind of threw that together really quickly. Hopefully it's in there somewhere!

I'm not sure. I would recommend just comparing the specs between the 6000 and 3000 to see how many amps/watts it can handle. Obviously you would have half the runtime, but if you use solar panels and alternator charging, you could probably get a few hours of run time per day while you're driving

Hey, that's odd! All I did was hold mine for eight seconds and it did the trick. I would recommend reaching out to the manufacturer and see what they say.

Thank you! Man that was an incredible thing to see!!

Awesome! Glad it was useful!

Hey thank you! The brackets for the actual RTT are the ones that came with the RTT. They simply clamp onto the Alucab crossbars. You can see it briefly at the 0:44 mark in the video. It really worked great! I only clamped the front and rear crossbars and the middle two crossbars are there just for support

I've not used that product so I don't have any comparison

Thanks for the feedback! Oh man, yeah poles were falling out of it (and falling completely out of the van onto the driveway) and with the belts that got twisted it was a total disaster at first! I was pretty frustrated!

Sorry about that! I didn't have much time to shoot the video and didn't have a tripod handy. Also, it's only intended for my son to lay on it and I didn't want him in the video. That said, if you search TH-cam for Cabbunk you can see some different sized people lay on them for references.

I wondered about that also, but since the weight is distributed across four different points (2 headrests and the two poles), and we're not going to be putting much weight on it, I think it'll be fine.

Yes, I did have to take it to the shop to get them to enable the light that I installed.

@@nomaddict5279 Thanks for the reply. Thinking more about this, I think I will go with the separate battery version, less confusing, wiring, and its brighter as you say.

It did great all last year. I took out the battery for the fall and winter and just the other day put it back in the van. Air conditioner fired up like it should. I’m still planning to add solar on top of the roof to augment the charging of the battery. So far, I’m really glad I went with this set up. There have been a handful of times where the inverter overloaded when the air conditioner started up, but not frequently enough to be a big deal. For about $300 I could solve for that with a soft start device in line, which would probably be more of a necessity if you had pets in there and had to make sure the air conditioner always started up if you weren’t there.

@@nomaddict5279 your a/c runs off ac and plugs into the inverter side of the goal zero? Did you look at those 12v dc rooftop a/cs?

@@mershanks that is correct! I did look into the 12V systems, but there was so much debate around how effective they are, and the cost was also substantially more for the units I was looking at. Finally just decided to go the AC route and I'm happy with it.

Hey Grant! Thanks so much for the feedback! Glad it was helpful. We made wall panels out of 1/8 inch birch and cover them in fabric. Totally DIY, but it worked pretty well and saved a ton of money. Basically used cardboard to make templates around the wheel well and then traced that onto the birch wood. Total cost was around $300 I think. We went over the top of the orange metal. The only wires I have behind the panels are for some reading lights/USB ports… Very minimal. My Instagram has pictures of the wall panels. @nomaddict_sprinter. Let me know if you have any other questions!

@@nomaddict5279 Sweet, thanks for answering! Noticed this was posted a year ago so I had small hope for a reply lol!

@@user-lw9nu4dm6o no problem at all! I only have a few videos so I try to reply to any comments. 😀

Thanks man! Super low tech but it worked well and held up for thousands of miles! Some people may not like drilling a hole in their table, but ours was a cheap $30 table so I didn't bother me. :)

I think it's just to reinforce the surface in which the inserts are installed so it's sturdier, given how much weight is going to potentially be on the bed platform. It also provides a template of sorts for the L track to lineup to you so you don't have to measure every single hole that you would bolt the old track into.

I don't recall at this point… We sold the Jeep a while back

I have a shore power connector that is wired to a regular 110 outlet on the wall of the van. If we are plugged into shore power, I just plug the air conditioner cord into that outlet (instead of plugging it into the Yeti). It's really low tech but works great. A fancier method is to get an automatic transfer switch (ATS) that would automatically switch between the battery and shore power (the ATS automatically switches to shore power when detected). RVs have those built-in. Since we don't camp super often, it's just simpler and cheaper to just plug the air conditioner power cord into whichever power source we are using at the time.

Thank you!

It does recommend it, and without something like it, the metal plates might rub the paint off of the roof. It's been a while since I installed it and I can't remember how much space there was between the metal plates and the roof

Hey, so there were already some sound deadening panels from the factory on the walls so I didn’t add any other ones. It’s quite enough for us, but I’m not sure how much quieter it would have been with additional panels.

Thank you! Here was the cost breakdown: JMG Dual Captain Chairs: $3795.00 Shipping / Handling (ESTIMATE): $447.00 Tax if Nexus in IL: 318.15

That’s correct! The bolt heads slide into the factory rails.