Hiker Trailer Mid Range XL - New Camper Tour & Walkthrough!

hey everyone Brian here with DIY outdoor life today we're going to take you on a tour we're going to discuss some of the accessories that we chose to go with with our brand new hiker mid-range XL [Music] so I'll do my best today to go through all these little accessories and options that we had on this trailer but the truth is we've been planning this for three years we love our bushwhacker it's not going anywhere but every trip we go on it we start thinking about the things we'd like to see different on our next trailer so we put a lot of effort into this and this thing is custom from the bottom up now that's one of the neat features that hiker trailer offers we're going to talk about how you select different things when you're looking to build your trailer but at the head of this video I wanted to let you know how excited I was hiker trailer is offering a promo code DIY 250 to get $250 if you do want to buy a hiker trailer that's the best price in the industry and for a limited time uh I'll put the expiration date in the description it's going to be about 1 month from the release of this video they're letting you d double up DIY 500 gives you $500 off the price of a hiker trailer so we really want to thank those guys and I hope that some folks who watch this video will be able to take advantage of that but uh now I'm excited to show you uh the tour so let's get to it so to start this tour off we mentioned a couple times that we went with the mid-range XL if you're unfamiliar with hiker setup you can buy pre-built trailers they offer you a discount account they're ready you can go pick them up or they even have a process where they can deliver the trailer to your house but the bread and butter is going on their website and just doing the customizations and getting a trailer tailor made for you so the platform comes in the highway Deluxe the mid-range the mid-range XL like this one or the extreme off-road now besides the look of the trailer you would choose a platform that matches your off-road aspirations how off-road capable you want your trailer now the highway Deluxe that's a solid trailer and it can definitely get off the highway and into some back roads but the mid-range offers a beefier set of tires suspension the frame is heavier so there's a little bit more capability when you jump up to the E the extreme off-road that trailer was more than I needed but that thing is built to go anywhere the reason reason we went with the mid-range XL that was the platform we chose was because besides beefing up some of the components which I thought would be good for the value they lift the trailer up from the mid-range there's a spacer there that gives you more ground clearance but it also allows you to choose their reinforced underbelly water storage so this trailer has an ond demand hot water heater for washing dishes taking showers the ability to bring 20 gallons of water and it's stacked underneath near the axle it's a really cool feature a must have for us to be able to have that water supply so we chose to start our build off the midrange XL platform now after you choose your platform you're going to choose the size of the cabin that you want they have an 8 n 10t option they're all 5T wide you can fit an RV queen siiz mattress in any of them I felt like the 9- foot cabin was like a goldilock zone for us it seemed perfect for what we wanted the reason we went with the 10-footer is because of you guys people that watch the channel uh other hiker trailer owners that we've met Matt and Wendy's amazing YouTube channel they review a lot of trailers when you ask a hiker trailer owner what they're most happy about or what they would have liked to have done different the amount of times that we heard the 10-ft cabin made us go ahead and make that decision it's not that much more money it's not that much more weight but with these tiny trailers that extra foot of cabin space is a premium so we're happy that we made that upgrade the next option for us was choosing the doors our previous teardrop was a Ono teardrop and I Lov that I sleep up against the wall on the inside and I felt like the one door was fine after spending as much time as we have in the teardrop over the last 3 years having two doors is a premium I didn't make the bed the first option that we got that's kind of custom uh that we didn't see on the website is we went with a screen door on this side and we have a different setup for the other side so when you choose uh the one or twodo model on the hiker website they usually match the two doors they key them together it's really convenient we wanted to do something different and they were happy to accommodate this side has the solid door now Lucia when we're at the campsite whether it's raining or it's buggy she likes to work inside she works remotely she likes to work inside the camper and having the option of a screen door gave her uh you know something that she was looking for on my side I didn't want the screen door like I told you I sleep up against the wall so uh getting the twodo model I wanted to have some space on the bottom where the screen door wouldn't be leaning up next to me so I still have a screen I have a window that can open and close but with the two-door model we were able to get two different doors on this couldn't be happier so some of these accessories I'm going to have to move through a little bit more quickly I'll do detailed videos in the future subscribe to the channel if you care about this stuff and I'll do the deeper Dives but for the overview we have the articulating hitch this was one of the things that we were up in the air about 2-in couplers seem just fine for us this is a hitch that's much better for off-roading the trailer and the tow vehicle can move independent without exerting force on each other like with a standard ball hitch so this is definitely Superior for off-roading what's still up in the air for us is that people who own this claim it's better for everything it's just a nicer way to Hitch it's nicer when you're backing up there's a little Theft Protection because you'd imagine most people don't have the truck side of this more complicated hitch but so far we love it we'll give you a followup with time if you come around here we went with the off-road uh Arc Jack I absolutely love this Jack it has the two wheels fixed on the bottom and even though my trailer is heavier I'm still able to move it around by hand now with this Jack so the dual wheel Jack is nice super easy on grab travel or black top but I've actually been able to pull the trailer around on grass I love that feature it spins it shifts it locks in place you don't ever have to remove it but if you want to there's a simple pin that they set up that will take the whole jack off really cool feature uh we went with the mount here for the fullsize spare uh it's actually a matching wheel pattern to our vehicle so we feel like we have an extra spare on there but the number one mod I think my favorite mod on the whole trailer if you you are buying a hiker trailer my biggest advice for you just being a novice getting into this save your money if it doesn't fit in the budget until you can get the reinforced fridge box this thing is amazing it is super super heavy duty you can store things on top of it and we went with the dedic slider and the truma refrigerator it can be used as a freezer it's got lots of space inside there's a light this thing sips power um and is one of the highest quality refrigerators that I've ever seen they have other options as well but the main thing is getting this box and having the fridge up front I mean it's been the best mod on this trailer so far so we have some similar features that are on both sides of the trailer we have two 230 awnings this one is the 270 batwing awning Lucia calls it the Batman awning I'm Batman but it does come back and goes over the galley we have gas tanks on both sides of the trailer you can use these for anything you can use them for cooking we have a table attachment that comes off of this but it will uh come over with a small whip with the regulator to this nozzle here that goes to our truma furnace you can choose between a truma or a propex furnace both of those are top-of-the-line tiny camper furnaces so if you have not experienced against a tiny camper with a quality furnace this thing runs consistently has variable fan speeds it doesn't wake you up when it goes off and it is sized to run on a trailer like this it'll dry the trailer out so unlik a Mr Buddy Heater or something that creates moisture or like a ceramic or infrared heater that just gobbles down the wat hours this thing just sips gas sips power and is the most comfortable heat we can't wait to start some winter camping again with the new hiker on this side of the trailer the driver's side we have our battery setup inside here I'm going to review this whole thing I mean this thing is state-of-the-art this is a complete off-grid trailer it's got solar and enough battery Reserve it's also integrated with power stations so that you never run out of power there's always enough if you need to add portable solar it's set up to be really easy uh runs the refrigerator and even the outlets work in the trailer when you're off grid uh we have the 230 straight pull on this side and we'll have a video coming out on this soon we've already modified this room with some help from a special guest but uh this is the straight style awning that has a room attachment to gives you some place to change or a little bit of privacy keep out of the bugs this is the other gas tank I was talking about and the on demand hot water heater so uh washing dishes taking showers definitely a nice feature I like how they set this up on the trailer but I already have a couple mods on this that I want to show you guys we're just using quick connects and making things a little bit easier so another option with the hiker is choosing between an 18 or 24in Galley for us the 24in galley was a must um if you spend any time in a tiny camper they're really comfortable one of the issues that comes up with the limited space usually isn't sleeping it's having enough space to put all of your stuff so we stuff our you know gear in the tow vehicle having the extra space back here is really really nice now there's a few things here that I could spend videos talking about but I know if I don't address some of them I'm going to get a lot of comments I am a huge fan of this style of Galley when we got our teardrop I thought that lift gate style opening on the teardrop that little clamshell opening was going to to be so nice it provides like a little free awning there that you can do things my experience has been the opposite when it's raining it leaks around the corner and the water gets inside some of those issues are specific to the bushwhacker some of them are not if it's windy water gets inside those spaces it's it was a romantic idea that really didn't come into fruition so this liftgate design wasn't really helping me with a square te drop there's so much more room because the radius isn't removed for that teardrop shape so there's a lot more storage back here and with the gutter over the top and the awning that comes over top of this flat top if you you could put a canopy over this as well it actually has proven to be a much smarter space for us I know there's going to be a lot of preference there but for those of you who are going to ask I absolutely love this design so far I will probably change this um I got the drawers from hiker you definitely need drawers it's a great way for space uh to save space but in this case it's a little awkward so I think I'll try to make some modification that slides this around if not three screws take this out and I'll find something else to do with it besides this nice like Baltic Birch style finish probably my favorite feature is the pass through so there's lots of uh Cubbies on the inside but I'm able to pass coffee from the inside to the outside pretty nice feature um we also have a Goal Zero built into this um I'm going to be playing around with this you can use other brands of a affordable Power Station as well but this trailer can run on that as a battery it can charge it the solar can charge it it can run the DC side the AC side but it also has an onboard battery in the front so really cool features that will require uh future videos to talk about those but big fan of our Galley so far we definitely love the inside again everything is this birs finish nice hinges and CNC pass through you can get into the galley from inside the cabin really nice you got Cubbies to store things we have uh reading lights on all four corners they turn blue to not attract the bugs or affect your night vision or they can be white if uh again you're looking to spot some light on some things we love our teardrop but the square drops score some points when it has this spacious feel you know the flat ceiling and taking advantage of these spots that were normally cut off by the teardrop we got windows on the door on both sides everything is nicely lit this is where the furnace comes in the controls are behind me um if we can see that uh I would say the biggest takeaway after spending about 10 nights in this trailer the max air fan uh is much much nicer than than what we're used to it's quiet it moves a lot of air makes a huge difference um I'm thinking that I will probably get that exact same fan and add it to my bushwhacker because of what a what a nice Improvement that was so I think that's enough for the tour uh I will do breakdown videos for the batteries the solar the power station integration um I've already added new solar with an instructional for the trailer and a whole bunch of mods and uh breakdowns on things to come so big day for us uh thank you for sharing the excitement with us we really appreciate you guys watching hope you'll continue to tune in feel free to ask questions I skipped a bunch of stuff I know it but I will cover in future videos so thank you guys use DIY 500 if you see this video within a month and uh if you're watching this video and it's already old DIY 250 or check the description because I will always update that with the new promo codes thank you hiker for sharing those promo codes with the community we'll see you guys next time [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: DIY Outdoor Life

Views: 5,894

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Id: Ox1c2W1lScY

Length: 16min 47sec (1007 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2024