Cargo Trailer Camper Conversion. Cabin, Tiny house

well hi everybody this is Explorer 867 today is the first day of the rest of your life so get out and enjoy it today I thought I'd give you a tour of our converted cargo trailer uh it's a six by twelve and we have turned it into a camper on the inside a camper that fits Helen's in my needs we've kept it simple practical and very functional so come on along I'll give you a tour of the outside and then I'll take you on the inside and kind of show you what we've done there too just as well okay and then this is an RV style door uh this was this is a must you know if you're going to convert your cargo trailer you want to have a good side door this is a great side door uh has a deadbolt lock and then a lock for the paddle mechanism that opens the door up but anyway this is a radius window uh they're tinted so it's hard to see in which is nice and yet we get plenty of light through these during the day and we can see out quite well but it's hard to see and unless it's uh nighttime and then we have the lights on on the inside and then you can see through but during the daytime these pretty much shroud the inside of the trailer so it's not easy to see the tires we swap the tires out like so many of these uh RVs or these trailers they come with what we call China bombs Chinese tires and I'm uncomfortable running down the road with those I've seen so many of those blow up on the highway especially when it gets hot so what we ended up doing is we swapped these out so these tires are the Goodyear endurance tires they have a reinforced sidewall so we do a lot of gravel roads in moderate Overland with this very moderate Overland with this trailer so an occasional rocks that we go through that could be problematic if you brush the side of an inexpensive Tire with the with the rock here it'll cut the sidewall these being reinforced these will stand to stand the test you can see up here put in a outdoor light that's really nice to have it at night when you're out boondocking I apologize for the lighting it's not ideal uh today but anyhow I want to show you we've got back here got a spare tire and anyhow this is really nice to have back here at stows keeps the tire out of the way we put a cover on it so that the Sun Won't deteriorate the Rubber and the tire so readily uh the covers are easy to replace the tires are expensive so when the covers are not very expensive uh so anyhow this stores stows the tire very well it's down low enough on the rear gate this is a gate that lays down uh it's down low enough on the gate that when we put the door down it does not interfere all the lights on the trailer are LED okay so this is a Shore power access on the side of the trailer this is on the driver's side of the trailer left side of the trailer and what this will do this gives us the ability to plug in if we're at a a park where there's a Shore power and then also we have a generator I've got a little Yamaha generator that we bring with us that we can plug in here uh once again we've got power outlets in the inside 120 power or household power on the inside and okay this is the diesel fuel tank for the diesel heater inside the trailer and this here is the this is the pump that pumps the fuel from the tank into the heater metering pump and uh this does a really good job we put this out here so that we can eliminate the smell of diesel on the inside of the trailer and it's done a great job the only thing is and if if any of you guys watching this video have some suggestions on how to insulate these little pumps to quiet them down we've got a rubber Mount here that comes with this and it's mounted to the box but if you have any suggestions on how to quiet these pumps down leave your suggestion down below the video in the comments down there I'd be interested to see what some of you guys have done to quiet these diesel pumps down but I'm very happy with the diesel heater it's it works terrifically this holds this holds uh two and a half gallons of diesel so on top of the trailer here uh you can see that we have uh solar we've got three 100 watt renergy panels up on the top um I mounted those with vantec roof mounts and it it works has worked out very well for us uh over on this side here um you can see that we've got a antenna mounted on that side that's for our gmrs radio that we have inside the trailer for communications so I like to go hiking during the day quite often and Helen doesn't typically uh well she doesn't always go with me so I've got a a 50 watt gmrs radio inside the RV here and then I have a portable unit that I carry with me so we can keep Communications while I'm out and about another feature we have on the roof here is called a max air fan and these work very well okay so you're inside the trailer now like I said we've kept this Spartan so that it's modular we can move things around inside the trailer as we need to for room for space and you'll see that with how we set up our bunks in here in just a minute but first of all this is the cabinet that I built for the nose of the trailer it's very functional what we've done in here is we have everything stored in in plastic containers it just helps to keep everything very organized you can see what's in each container you can just grab it and uh and get what you need very easily and it keeps things dry in high humidity situations I've got our propane bottles of propane down here for running the stove if we want to use the 16 ounce containers of propane we can or we've got the covia as well for the stove keep some water in here and yellow jacket spray for the summer time and over on this side over here uh we just have uh like our coats our blankets uh smaller blankets for the the to throw over us uh for night time we've got a cooler we set in here we can put ice in this and keep things cool in here just for a quick grab and goes for the day like uh pop in here or brewski for the night or if we're going to make lunch we can put our our fixings in here and it's easy to grab them and then cook them this is our stove right here we have an O2 cool fan that we can set up in here and plug it into the 12 volt outlets right up here and get some air circulation for the day I'll show you a better picture of this but in here is where uh all of the electrical is located and I'll show you a close-up on that here in just a second so you should have a fire extinguisher handy in all of your camping rigs just a good idea to have a the ability to knock down a small fire obviously I'm saying big we're getting out of here this is the 50 watt gmrs radio I was I had mentioned earlier when we were looking at the antenna on the roof uh this is set up here as a base station so Helen can talk to me I'll pack this is my radio my portable and we can talk back and forth if I'm out on a hike during the day because a lot of times I go for a hike and she'll like to stay here and camp and just mess around and and uh you know maybe get the evening meal ready or whatever I'm out and about you know just looking at stuff so we can keep in con contact uh with these these gmrs radios are really good these are these are it's they're Chinese which most all your radio equipment is going to be Chinese most of it uh this is a wooks on or they pronounce it in China it's called ocean this one here will broadcast with the the radio antenna on the roof we can talk reasonably 20 miles uh if we're out of the open desert if we've got clear line of sight we could talk 60 miles with this unit here these handhelds we've talked uh about five miles six miles of these and probably once again out in the open territory further than that let me show you the electrical down here in this cabinet I'll open it back up we'll take a look at that okay this is our Power Center uh in the cabinet uh in the front of the trailer and you can see this this is our circuit uh breaker box here for the 110 Shore power comes in here we have two uh Breakers one of them runs the outlet in the back of the trailer I'll show you in a minute that is for the air conditioner and the other one runs the outlet up on the top of the cabinet um also it runs this Outlet the same breaker is the one that runs the outlet up on the top of the cabinet uh it it runs this one just as well and they're all they're gfci'd okay so that's kind of the shore power setup we've got the renegie Rover here which is a charge controller uh then we have our fuse box here and I installed down here I installed a shut off so if I want to work on the system I can kill the power from the solar panels on the roof right there before it enters the renegie Rover and that's good also if you want to remove the battery here if you want to remove this battery you need to kill the power power coming in before you disconnect the battery otherwise you'll burn up your destroy your charge controller this is a little Bluetooth it's a bt1 I think they have a bt2 now I think they call it anyhow it's just a Bluetooth Communicator so yourself to your cell phone so you can check and see what the battery condition is and how much charge you're getting in from your panels this down here that is a uh just a little circuit breaker it's an auto reset circuit breaker and I also have another shut off here this is for the house 12 volt power so this will shut the power off before it enters the fuse panel here and so I can shut the house power down like when we're traveling down the road I don't usually like to leave power on in here 12 volt power and but I do like to be able to go down the road and charge the the battery with the solar this is a sok battery that I just picked up uh it's a 12.8 volt 206 amp hour uh lithium ion uh battery uh so far I've been very pleased with it we've used it here for about um well I guess we've got really in real use we've been using it for about two months I also have a spot right here and I have a uh another lithium battery it's a battleborn that fits in there and and then these these wires here go to it and that's what fires the uh the radio the gmrs radio and then everybody needs to have a multimeter and they're really handy for just checking out your electrical so that's kind of what we've done for electrical here in the in the trailer okay let's talk about the diesel heater now this is a 5K unit underneath um it's uh it Heats this trailer up perfectly I mean it really does a good job so it's mounted in the front V nose in the cabinet underneath he has his own compartment down here and let me show you where it connects and you can see where it Feeds out the face of the cabinet you can see here this this vent right here that recirculates the cool air back in underneath the into the compartment where the heater is and then it recycles it through and then blows it out as hot air so in the face of the cabinet down towards the floor here I mounted a intake grate that recirculates the cool air here the white great recirculates the cool air back in to where the diesel heater is and then it blows the hot air right out this port here does a real good job this is the electronic controller that controls the diesel heater these things work very well I've been quite happy with it if you're interested in how to program these or how they function I have a video that I recorded so just go down into my playlists and it'll explain everything about these uh and including how to to program them so anyway this is underneath the trailer and this is the bottom of where the diesel heater is mounted inside the trailer this is where it comes out through the bottom of the trailer this is the exhaust line here this is the fresh air intake here for the combustion process and this is the fuel Inlet into the heater itself I pick up picked up this shroud uh on Amazon and it's just a heat shroud to help protect the decking from the heat from the exhaust it does a real good job at that I I over cut the opening just for safety's sake to keep the wood back away from the uh the exhaust I laid in a metal plate over the top of that and then red ran a bead of silicone or high temperature silicone and then set this plate down onto it and then screwed it to the decking mounted the heater to this and and then sealed up the outside here with more of that silicone sealant high temperature silicone sealant so let's follow the fuel line the fuel line fuel line is here it's got the protective conduit over the top of it flexible conduit and it runs this way this is the power feed that goes up to the heater and to the controller up on the wall the electronic controller the brain and then it runs along the bottom of the trailer here and then comes up and this is this is the box that we looked at on the tongue of the trailer earlier in the video this is where the fuel line goes through this is the power line that goes to the uh the little diesel pump inside there so the black line there that as I've pointed out earlier that is the fresh air intake for the combustion process and it runs it routes underneath the trailer here and I've kind of got it protected back in here I built this aluminum shroud around our housing around it and there's a filter on the end of it dust filter and that's been working out real well just have to clean that periodically so you can get maximum airflow into the uh the heater this is where the exhaust is routed down underneath the trailer follows the tongue support underneath the trailer and then comes out all the way down here on the side of the trailer and that's the that's the little Muffler and this is where the exhaust comes out the side of the trailer okay this is a carbon monoxide alarm so running the diesel heater like we do or if you have a buddy heater or any sort of heat that you'd have inside your your camper RV trailer like this it's a good idea to have one of these so if you're for some reason there's a fault in the exhaust port on the heater on our diesel heater in our case and as kicking any carbon monoxide out into the the living space in here this alarm will go off in warn us of that we just to give you some input we don't sleep with the diesel heater on we heat the heat the trailer up before we go to bed and then if it gets really cold at night I'll get up and I'll turn the diesel heater on warm the place up and then shut it back down again so we don't sleep with a diesel heater on okay so up on top of the cabinet here I've got these are um 12 volt Outlets here there we go I'll show you USB ports or USB access the center one here is um just a a uh like a cigarette lighter uh receptacle and this one on this side is another USB and then next to it here this is the um this is the 110 outlet for Shore power comes out here and we can also when we're hooked on Shore power we can also charge the USBs here as well which is kind of Handy because so for the door uh we have a one of these magnetic screens which is really nice so during the summer time when it's hot or if you just want to have some more light in the trailer you can open the door uh and then just have a a screen door here it's easy to go in and out of and it keeps the flies out and the yellow jackets out during the summer so this is really kind of cool so uh yeah there you go okay these are the light switches in the trailer this controls the front two lights over the cabinet in the ceiling and those are LEDs I'll show you those in a second and then uh this is a rheostat here that controls are six other LED lights in the ceiling and you can run them all the way up to like a football stadium bright or you can dial them clear back to just the bare minimum which is kind of nice if you want just some you know light in the evening but you don't want to be sitting in the middle of a football stadium because they those LEDs are really bright I'll show them to you like I said in a second here so I'm not sure how these LEDs are going to come across on the camera you may see some flicker you don't see flicker with the naked eye but in the camera you quite possibly do so anyhow there's the two that are above the cabinet in the front and those are controlled on and off by the switch here on the wall that I showed you there okay this is the ceiling in the trailer looking to the back or after the trailer you can see the LED lights there and then I can turn them I can turn them down to bare minimum or back up to full bright which is kind of Handy with that rheostat um then in the center here is a Max fan and then there's a smoky a smoke detector in front of that with so up on the wall here we've got two 12 volt Outlets they're just uh open power ports cigarette lighter power ports receptacles so you can plug in what we do is we plug in our cell phones and uh back here while we're uh while we're sleeping and we just have them charging up here okay this is our one of our bunks we have two of these but this is one of the bugs uh just for just so I can show you what we have here and let me set it up for you foreign [Music] these are our sleeping bags that's how we store our bags okay this just folds out this and there we go so we've got our cot here like I said we've got two of these um underneath the cots we have storage for uh pots pans in here paper plates just a kitchen kind of stuff that we want to Stow back uh here out of the way and there's two bins underneath here containing this kind of stuff we also have a table that we can set up in here that's what this is over here so back on the this is the rear door this rear door lays down so we have at night when we're sleeping we have the latches that are on the outside that are lockable we have those open and the locks latch in in those so that they nobody can lock Us in here which is nice I put in these gate latches up here one on either side and then there's the chain here so if if there's an emergency we need to get out of here if there's a fire uh or something such as that all you have to do is reach up here grab the chains one on either side and pull down on those that pulls the pins on either side in and then the door will go down so it's a real fast way of getting out of here if we needed to this is an explore 867 thanks for watching the video today I hope you got some good ideas on just what you can do with your enclosed cargo trailer to turn it into a camper that meets your needs whatever that might be the nice thing about this you got the flexibility to make it just what you want just as Helen and I have done so if you liked the video give me a thumbs up subscribe to the channel ring the bell you get the latest content from the channel as I release it put us out on your social media let others know that we're out here make a comment down below the video and I'll get back to you I'll write you back and and if you have questions about anything that we've done here I'd love to talk to you it helps push that algorithm that you YouTube uses so go ahead and make those comments uh and then as always I look forward to seeing you in The Great Outdoors you guys take care [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Explorer 867

Views: 32,026

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Id: x8wR7AOlrF8

Length: 27min 52sec (1672 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 26 2022