Wow. Great thread. I also rehabbed a 21' Sunrader, taking it down to the bare skin inside. The Toy chassis is great, the clamshell is great, but the rest was a joke. A clean slate is the only way to go. I expect the word "absurd" to be used often here:
The goal was an inexpensive, effective boondocking/dry camping rig that would rarely, if ever see a civilized campground. That's opposed to the clumsily-executed attempt to recreate a suburban American house on the back of a 4-benger Toyota pickup I started with.
I removed the absurd, filthy, heavy, dust-grabbing carpet and padding, laid a double coat of premium epoxy on the plywood floor, and laid down lightweight, durable, insulating wood pattern interlocking foam tiles. It's great to wake up and take your first steps on a soft, warm floor.
The framing in the body, well, absurd. Cheap adhesive was coming loose and the "insulation" under the wall padding was this strange, amber-colored foam that disintegrates into choking, alien freak dust after a couple decades. I still cringe thinking about coughing that stuff up, digging it out of my eyes and nose. Mercy!
Replaced all that with cedar skeleton stuck to the interior shell with polyurethane. Light, strong, rigid, and smells nice. All windows removed and resealed with same polyurethane (black nozzle Loctite flashing sealant @ HD/Lowe's. MUCH better than that absurd silly-cone or putty, and when I had to change a window, a putty knife and rubber mallet broke the seal with ease. Gotta admit, I had my fingers crossed with that one.
The nasty plywood in the overhead cab was replaced with marine Corecell panels we fiberglassed in our home's kitchen while watching Judge Judy scream at stupid people. A layer of Reflectix insulation (works great to extend ice life in coolers, too) finished the job. Much lighter, warmer, and stronger. Reinforced the joint where overhead meets body after finding the construction cheap and flimsy.
I found Romex that had been crudely stapled to wood framing, with insulation breached and copper nicked. And, of course, Romex is SOLID STRAND wire, which has NO place in anything that drives down bumpy roads. The fire/electric hazard was extreme. Chilling, even.
Replaced that croaker power center with a PD 45 amp unit and added 125w solar panel, premium controller and monitor, and big AGM battery.
The upper cabinet weighed a ton and was ineffective and annoying. Replaced it with a wire shelf that weighs almost nothing, whips butt, and sports a smart rack underneath for 4 fishing rods. Added another wire shelf crossways at the rear. Great for towels and other light, bulky stuff. Shelves are brutally strong.
Lower cabinet replaced with tabletop and minimal, but strong cedar support.
The appliances were what you might call absurd. The loud, silly, heavy stove/oven combo was yanked out with extreme prejudice. What am I gonna do, cook a freakin' Butterball turkey while camping? A two burner propane stove with a single burner to supplement works great, takes up little room, and allows us to cook outside. A nice cedar bench that holds a bunch of cargo sits in place of the oven.
Fridge? Those things are worse than awful. I built cedar shelf on super-heavy drawer slides to hold a large, tall, Max-Life cooler, which works great and drains out the fridge hatch behind it with the aid of a PVC surf rod holder. It's served us very well, and draining the cooler water onto my feet on a hot day is always refreshing.
Above the fridge is a cedar shelf that pulls out on slides to reveal a locking secret compartment for valuables, contraband, or the freaky and embarrassing.
Water heater was a mess, so I tore it out and replaced with outside shower. Yeah, hot water is always nice, but those 6 gallon Attwoods are troublesome jokes and we get by fine without it. A solar shower, state parks, and some common sense camping tricks take care of things fine.
The forced air furnace is also quite the croaker, especially in a boondocking rig. Coleman catalytic heaters, plus good blue styrofoam in the walls amid the cedar skeleton (and finished in camo tarp) keep us plenty warm amid lots of high altitude camping.
Huge propane tank, heavy and disturbingly poorly-attached, was removed. 1 pound bottles tend to all our needs (lantern, stoves, heaters, and handy plumber's torch), and I think we used 6 on a monthlong Upper Rockies rampage.
Heavy air conditioner that barely worked was replaced with Fantastic Fan. Only once have we been too hot while journeying, in the Texas panhandle one August afternoon, and we live in Dallas (awful place, by the way)!
The alternator is a huge weak point - I've changed 3 roadside in 3 states before I put a stop to that issue. Never had trouble with my 22RE 4Runners, but that 65 amp pee wee has a dreadful time powering a truck and a house. Leaving camp with a discharged house battery puts too much strain on the alternator. More so if the battery is AGM, which charges at a higher rate and therefore pulls more amps. More so even, uh, more so if you like loud rock and roll. And if it's night, big trouble.......
See, just the 10 clearance lights pull over 10 amps. Add the rest and you're straining the system beyond the limit. I found a 150 amp alternator that solved the issue. For good measure, all lights were converted to LED. And, the atrocious quick splices the RV mfgr used for the rear lights, 25 years old, were painstakingly replaced with proper splices, solving a serious voltage drop and resistance issue.
Water pump was too big, power-hungry, and loud. A smaller one was a great upgrade, but not as great as one thing that should be added to all RV's - an accumulator/expansion tank. It charges the water system to give constant flow, and allows one to use the restroom at night without tripping the water pump and waking up everyone. The RV types are overpriced junk with low capacity - a 5 gallon Watts or equivalent is the way to go.
That stupid PEX tubing was replaced with food-grade factory tubing, very resistant to all conditions that ruin RV plumbing and easy to install with barbed fittings. High dollar stuff I got for a song on
eBay - $20 for enough to do 5 RV's.
Toilet was raised several inches to accommodate people who aren't Danny DeVito. No plumbing to throne - I've seen that fail far too much - bathroom water is supplied with sink-style spray head lovingly known as the Kentucky Bidet. Works perfectly, and keeps ya fresher than Barbara Eden, during the Genie days, laid out in a field of tiger lilies.
The bathroom shower, which used to drain into the black tank (what psycho thought of that one?) has been eliminated - the floor drain was a major source of stink infiltration. An electric dump valve, with switch in bathroom, ended the woe of wrestling with a T-handle under a low-slung rig, Best money I ever spent. Circular marine hatch added to wall for easy deployment of hose at dump station. Our dumps are fast and minimally unpleasant.
Black tank was attached to underside in a most disgraceful manner and sat way too low, an accident waiting to happen. Raised tank a couple of inches, added padding at stress points, and greatly improved strength and accessibility of retention system.
Exhaust, and absurd school bus lookin' muffler, ripped out and replaced with system designed for best 22RE performance under heavy load and higher positioning for protection. All held together by stainless lap clamps - no welding - and I can change the catalytic converter or muffler in a few minutes for a few bucks using a ratchet and one socket. The first thing I do with any 22RE vehicle is gut the exhaust and vastly improve for surprisingly low cost.
The huge weight reduction and improved exhaust greatly improved performance. Once I drove from Houston to Dallas in a helluva and was only passed by 2 cars on I-45. Many times I've passed other Toyhouses, many of which looked like they were about to stop and begin rolling backward, as if they were standing still. One fellow Sunrader-er chased me down to ask what was under the hood and was stunned to learn it was the same 22RE the Jap-o-neez done throwed in there. When you're not trying to haul June Cleaver's kitchen around, which is especially troublesome uphill at high altitude, it makes things a lot easier.
Camped deep in the Rio Grande NF, Colorado, at 11,700 feet.
This is far from the whole story - other upgrades have been made and such things are a perpetual work in progress anyhow. It's a mean, dependable, comfortable, low cost traveling/camping machine that can tackle terrain and conditions that may surprise some of you. We were slobberingly hellbent on keeping this rig forever.
But, the lack of ground clearance and limited back country capabilities nagged at us. We seek solitude and love to catch fish, and towing our rare and superb 1957 Crestliner 16' V-hull (the "Ward Cleaver Wet Dream"....there....that's both Cleaver parents mentioned) behind a Sunrader is a poor idea at best. Highway safety aside, there's so little low-end torque that getting stuck on the boat ramp is possible. Otherwise, it's not much of an issue.
We hoped EarthRoamers would be much less expensive someday, threw a Sea Eagle inflatable boat and 2.5 hp outboard in the Sunrader for the time being, and, well, had a blast. Sometimes low-tech works best, and after 6 years of excellent travel and tons of hard work with the Sunrader, we prepared for the 7th, and beyond. My long-held conviction that nothing other than Toyota/Lexus would grace my driveway remained firm.
A couple months ago I was researching this summer's rampage in the mountainous northwest, focusing on eastern Montana, when I tired of looking at maps. But, I still had about 15 minutes of reading in me before I became clinically insane, so I went to Google and entered "4x4 RV that doesn't cost $100,000".
The first hit was technically correct - it was $260K. Friggin' EarthRoamer. The second was 96K, a Chinook with disappointing ground clearance. The third was this:
Blinked my eyes and next thing I knew I was in Arizona, shellshocked like a mofo, handing a cool dude a wad 'o dough in line with what a nice guitar costs. Later that night I got attacked by a pit bull inside a Walmart as I bought gear for the drive home. It's funny how a simple Google search can suddenly change one's life, it seems.
I beat the tar out of the thing on the way home - lots of 4X4 roads in AZ. Note the grille askew in the photo. It smiled and begged for more. The quality of the 4x4 conversion is superb, and a 1998 Vortec 454 was daringly hacked into the clean, straight, 1979 GMC 3500 chassis. Say hello to "Billy".
The interior was actually pretty decent, but I've ripped it out like I did before and am building it into an unstoppable, ruthless, onroad/offroad psycho rampage road tripper with the greatest level of comfort and sophistication I've ever attempted on a build. I think it'll outdo the ER at about 5% of the cost. Yowza! That'll help me get over the shock of standing in a GM parts department
And, I'll be selling a one-of-a-kind Sunrader that I was quite certain we'd keep for decades. Billy just kicks butt so hard that keeping the dear ol' Sunrader is plain silly
