DIY Overland Camper: The Wakamper Walkaround

we came up here to the chiricahua mountains this weekend to escape the heat and we figured it's a perfect time to finally finally like two years late do the walkthrough of the camper so it's all set up let's go over there talk to alvaro aka waka and have him give us the tour hey waka mind giving us a little walk around of the camper oh sure yeah hold on give me one second the much anticipated the much anticipated walk around the masses have been requesting it for like two years let's put this in here maybe later i'm gonna take a shower i don't know okay so what do you want to know why don't you just give us the the nickel tour we can start why don't we start from uh we'll start from the battery box here and then just like work our way around all right um i do have a couple of six volt batteries you may want 12 volts and these are just kind of like golf cart the golf cart bags yeah those are just acid regular batteries in a solar charger there uh 1000 watt inverter and then i have shore power in case i want to hook it up to like an rb or even my house and there's a plug hidden under here to plug it in then you get the connector for the solar solar panel on top and what is that 100 watt 100 watts yes okay so we have a couple of containers for fuel water heater and uh so leaving i'm ready already because maybe you're gonna take a shower late and this is a six six liter on-demand water heater which means like it'll it's pretty much as soon as you turn the water heater on it's hot right yes you don't there's no way yeah you don't have to wait i mean you wait like for like five seconds and then you got hot water as long as it takes to get from here to whatever you're gonna be using it cool and then we have uh in here i have a y connector for the for the propane one for the water heater one for my stove and these are the cold and hot they go inside the belly of the trailer to this side and here we have a sink [Music] with uh i got 16 gallons 16 gallon tank underneath the trailer and it's protected with a metal plate then i have um uh usbs if i want to charge whatever i need to charge then i have the cigarette lighter thingy and then this is to turn up that water pump and i have a lightning here people are not going to see it during the day but there's a light in here storage i need to still need to organize a little more there but i may have missed it but where is the uh where how do you where's the filler for the water i forgot the feeler for the water is here on the side right here oh cool so it's this is just like a normal yeah pretty standard rv filler right it's got the vent hose and yeah perfect you know oh i forgot this down the propane tank it's actually frame uh there's actually balls welded inside that way it doesn't come apart because it's not just the wood it's actually attached to the frame i don't know if the camera picked that up but waka just pulled on this tank and it shook the whole trailer so it's that thing is sturdy this time you have stove more light you know it's not connected right now but it's pretty simple you know it goes in here yeah and that's the hose that was fed in through the other side there right so we got this right here is my uh diesel tank for my diesel heater which is inside the on the back of the trailer we won't be able to see it we will be able to see the vents in and out bins but uh that's all we're gonna be able to see today right now take a look inside more lights here's something kind of you don't typically see in a lot of trailers that go this far remote it's a tv with a dvd player dvd player and there's a hd antenna right yes so and i can hook up my phone to it and watch tv is that i already saved nice and then what do we have here what are these controls those are the the one on the right is the controller for the heater okay and then uh the one on the left is just you know more more uh uh usbs and if you actually push the switch it will tell you how many how many balls we have right now on that there we go nice there's also two big storage cupboards in here returns for the eighth for that oh yeah i'll show that so the water pump and the heater are behind this panel on the bottom here this actually is removable and we can see here these are the vents where the hot air comes out for the diesel heater and then there is also an optional electric heater here that runs off of the inverter and it will run if i do like 65 it will run for the whole night and that right there is to turn on and off the inverter then we got more light and then before you close it i know there's something unique about these this mattress right yes it actually uh it's three parts mattress so i can actually stack him underneath that cabinet and i could use the whole thing for a you know like a storage or like if i want to throw everything inside the trailer i can do it too so yeah these are individuals and i hope everybody appreciates the like the thickness of this mattress it's eight inches eight inches of memory foam i think right yes that's uh beats the crap out of my two inches in my rooftop tent [Music] then we got more water storage these are another 14 gallons so i got 14 here and then i got 16 underneath so that makes 30 gallons and i like this i want to pick up these make sure the camera picks up these brackets down here so there's aluminum brackets that actually hold those things in place so they're not going to move around at all then we got like storage oh another thing is uh this plate right here is for my generator uh when i build a trailer um i frame in here with steel so if i want to open here i can do an ac so that way i can run it out of my uh generator i haven't done yet you know almost three years but eventually i will do it a little information about the frame i know this is another thing that people ask about all the time so we'll at some point i do i swear we'll go through and we'll get the dimensions for everybody but just to talk about the materials um so we'll start from the tongue is this is just uh two inches two and a half by two and a half okay about quarter quarter inch thick and then the main frame is made of what uh two by four it's actually overkill um if i ever build another one i will not go two by four i'll probably go two by two uh but i mean it works pretty good i know it's not gonna break do you remember what the thickness was uh it's pretty thick i mean it's it it's probably like a quarter of an inch too i mean i don't exactly remember but it's really really thick that's where all the weight goes on the frame because it's really heavy and then the materials i think we most people who've seen the videos probably have a good sense of of the general materials of the box part but just to go over that again um well i have a frame is it is a one inch square tubing underneath the plywood then i got half inch plywood with a clear coat finish and then i finished it out with the orange raptor liner and in the inside i have a one inch insulation and a quarter inch paneling and the insulation from what i hear is very effective right yes yes it works it stays nice and toasty warm in there it works really really good during the winter because that's when we actually do most of the company here in arizona during the winter so and then this is all so uh pretty much i mean i don't think there's anything on here that wasn't made by hand so this is aluminum right yes aluminum aluminum and then these are steel or those are these are these are this is still a steel plating with the uh one inch uh framing okay let's go through framing and last but not least this is maybe the weakest point the weakest point maybe the most interesting and maybe the most controversial point here the suspension uh those are actually made in canada the warranty they have great warranty because when i built it my first trip it actually broke so i call them and they send me another one within the week so these are um torsion axles and what's the weight rating uh 3500 3500 torsion axles is this sort of like the major part that you would change yes different system for the suspension if i ever build another one because this one is working good so far but i don't have a lot of flakes and it bounces a lot too so to remedy that i have to pull the air out of the tires i'm running like 10 pounds right now okay and uh but it i mean it works good but it was something i would definitely change yeah this was if if you haven't seen the video on the the maiden main voyage of this trailer we were in baja mexico and the roads were absolutely destroyed because of the bouncing and the rough roads and the in the nasty corrugation one of these actually failed so yeah the main problem was uh i had a crack that he went from here all the way to almost like here when it was broken so we got to a little town over there in baja and um i got those old threads with the metal plate and i put it underneath and those right through and through and that's how i make it back to to the to the stage i mean it was it was an okay fix we didn't have problem after that so i'm gonna still get him in there just in case i need him what's your ideas for modifying that suspension oh well i'm still thinking but uh i would do something like uh with the airbag and a uh shock and it'd be like like a long arm keeping the independent yeah set up it will still be independent yeah um there's been some alterations since the initial um the initial build so this this um what do you call it yeah the detail on the end here and this front plate and that was i think this was picking up rocks is that right yeah i'm always getting a bunch of dents in here so that's what i did the aluminum plate and now so far it's been good i mean i don't see any anymore of those dents in there and this is it's not purely cosmetic but i think most of it is cosmetic but it does yeah what happened is uh with the with the vibration of with the flex i was getting small cracks where the with a two ply was me and uh i mean they were minor but uh what i did i put a bunch of silicon and this um um angle aluminum aluminum angle whatever so and that will cut that covers them now at least they're there but i won't see them anymore and that makes it waterproof too because uh i put a bunch of silicon in there and in terms of sturdiness like we've taken this down i mean even just today to get here um we were down a pretty gnarly trail and there's been no there's essentially been no damage to this ever with the exception of the one part that failed which was oddly enough the only part that that wasn't made by hand by you which was the suspension yeah so everything else has been rock solid and this is the this is the new the only damage from today the tiniest little dent yeah this trailer has been on its side as well it flopped once uh and it it held together because it just it leaned on this rail oh all this is actually uh uh inch and a quarter by a quarter of an inch and this right here is two inches by a quarter of an inch so even if i get all the weight in here it will still support the weight of the trailer i mean it's really it's it's it's welded all the way to the frame and what are the what are some of the things that you want to add or tweak still i know there's i still want to do on uh like 270 on it that is one of my things that i want to do um the suspension eventually i will replace it and uh that's pretty much it i mean uh i don't really maybe the ac but you know i don't know maybe the table in the back yeah well yeah another thing i want to do is you know back i want to do a uh holding down cable it'll be with a piano hinge it'll fall down like that so i had another trailer and that's what i did on my other trailer and it worked pretty good so that is something i going to do to get rid of that table yes have some nice built-in prep space and then you can not have to always be forced to carry the extra table around cool and then let's see the last maybe the last little thing is the rack up here oh yeah yep that one is built it's just uh one inch square tubing and it's actually attached to the frame i weld a knot inside drilled through and then it's this is actually attached to the frame so it's really really really strong let's get it get a good good shake of that again solid i think we've seen everything but a question people might be having is uh where do you put your food oh so it's over here i'll actually build this one too i was going to buy it but i was like if i build a trailer i think i can build my own uh fridge trail tray so nice so this is aluminum angle with uh hd sliders inside there and then some nice paracord straps to hold it secure and then this runs off of this power that runs uh all the way up to the front battery system right yes and then additionally if you're hooked to the trailer here it has this umbilical so actually this is this is actually to charge the batteries of the trailer what i'm driving okay if i'm driving the batteries are getting charged they're getting charged at the same time i'm driving so that and the solar it'll keep the batteries full cool and what was the what was the choice i know um this comes up a lot people recommending this setup or asking you know if it's worth it or so what's the what's the decision what's the benefits of having the two six volts versus one 12 volt well um i just watch a bunch a bunch of videos and that's what they say you know that is better because you got more capacity because you pretty much it's one battery actually it's a 112 volt batteries because you got two six bolts so it's just to get more capacity i can remember how many ampere hours i have on it but uh the capacity is double so something like that and i think there's a little bit of a a cost is there a cost savings i forget yeah because it might be a little bit more efficient to go this route if you have if you're able to do it yeah i got those from bodyplaza and i think almost a couple years ago i paid 114 dollars each so it was only the taxes a little less than 250 and it's been working fine for almost two years so sweet all right thank you i think that about wraps it up thanks for the walk through all right uh i'm gonna leave his details if you want to follow him on instagram what's your how can people find you what's your instagram uh well actually if you search for the walk camper basically anywhere you'll find him yeah uh as waka adventures on instagram and uh just just google for white camper you will find it you will find on youtube you will find it on instagram and if you're uh if you're watching this and you're thinking about building a trailer please reach out to us leave a comment we uh we do a pretty good job at answering questions i know this this trailer has has uh a lot of people interested and a lot of people building similar designs cool i think i think we'll wrap it up there we're going to set up camp maybe go shoot some guns and uh eat some food all right thanks wakka we'll let you get back to finishing your camp preps all right and i'll see you guys on the next video bye

Channel: Brien Wankel | Sonoran Space Program

Views: 91,777

Keywords: Wakamper, overlanding, off road trailer, diy, built not bought, overland, camping, camper, diy camper, teardrop trailer, off-road, 4x4, 4x4 trailer, overlanding trailer, diy trailer, overland adventure, overlandbound, expedition portal, off-road tucson, expedition, expedition trailer, handsomeanchor, waka, overland trailer, offroad, sonoran expedition collective, wakadventures, teardrdop, squaredrop, squaredrop trailer, squaredrop camper, offroad squaredrop, offroad teardrop, tear jerker

Id: oECQTEuXDu4

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020