QS 6 modification for more storage space and additional bed

Started by bambam, June 14, 2015, 06:24:11 AM

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bambam

You may have seen this on the Yahoo group but I thought I'll show it here as well. So I have the Jeep Extreme Trail edition with the Jack-knife sofa and that strange box in the corner. Now while the jack-knife sofa is really comfy it wastes endless amounts of space and the storage space under it is too segmented and hard to use. The electric installation at least in mine was mindboggling bad, so bad in fact that it was borderline sucidal to use it. The swiss garage that modified it used rigid cables for the 220V installation. I've spent over 20'000km of my travel so far in offroad-like and washboard conditions and I know what that does to cabling. At the same time I knew I'll have to ford many rivers that can easily be high enough to flood the interior of the camper so open electronic are a big nono. So the whole of the electronic interior had to go. I then removed the big rock-sliders that are mounted as bottom plates and checked the cabling there. Sure enough it was just as sloppy shouldered as was the rest of the cabling. I can only hope that this was the swiss garage that did this, not Livinlite.  But have a look yourself:





Now imaging driving this over washboard road. Washboard usuall consists of small little "waves" in the surface of the road, most of them are 2-3 Inches high. So its a constant rattling a constant up and down. One usually copes with it by driving arount 50 miles per hour or more because that smoothes the experience. Instead of jumping from ridge to ridge the tire flies over them, it still is a teeth shaking experience at best. Any cabling that is not properly supported (like fixed every 10 inces or so) will have enogh energy to swing and break the cables. So I spent a saturday afternoon lying under my camper, fixing up cabling.

Then I measured the interior and found a great opportunity for my go-to box solution which is called RaKo-Box. Rako stands for Ramen Konstruktion. A extremely durable, lightweight box that is used in cargo transport area. The plastic of the boxes are soft so you can throw them around even in deep winter, it will not break, never splitter. Its also very durable and able to carry extreme amounts of weight. And it comes in all kind of sizes and you can get internal dividers for them. They are not very pretty, but functionality always wins me over aesthetics. With the box-basis sorted I had two other things that needed solving to get my solution: I still wanted a cozy bench to sit on on both sides please, so comfy cushions for my boxes where a must. I ordered these made to my specs at roughly 250$ cost. These also must form a bed if the need arises (friend of mine will use the camper as well, he has 2 kids). So I needed a stable cover for the boxes and preferably some kind of mechanism that can hold the cover open when you need something from the box. The cover part was easy. I just had some multiplex boards cut to my measurements, the holding mechanism is a spring supported bench hinge that swings forward and thus you can leave the cushion in place when opening the box.

Last but not least of course I needed to use a system to fix all this in the camper but in a flexible way. Fixing is extremely important because it would move around in the camper and could create very dangerous situations when the weight in the camper for example switches the tongue weight from ok to way too light. So I needed something sturdy and flexible. At the same time I needed something to prevent the boxes from messing up the sidewalls by scratching them when on washboard. The solution was pretty clear for me right from the beginning: I needed airline-rails. These are mounted on all four sides so that the upper side of the boxes would fit perfectly with them. The pictures below only show them on one side, the other sites where fitted after the photos.

The original mattress was not really comfy for me, nor is it practical to have a mattress directly on a aluminium cover when camping in the north. I've made similar experiences with my former roof-tent. The thaw-point is in the mattress thus every little bit of humidity coming from your body will be soaked up by the mattress. Within a few days of sleeping on it, it will become damp and you have to dry it out, which can be a problem so high north. The solution is very easy: Buy a 3D Mesh in the size of rather bigger than your mattress and it will move the thaw-point outside the mattress and allow for air circulation. Did this with the roof tent and never had to worry about damp mattress again. This is how this 3D mesh looks. You can buy it from camper outlets.




So this is how looks when setup for camping (without table). All cushions in place. The thing near the door is a Waeco compressor fridge.



Here you see everything opened to get access to the stuff in the boxes, notice how the cushions can stay in place and the multiplex swing forward and hold the stuff open for easy access.



Here is the additional bed, the first 2 segments have a width of 80cm or 31.5 Inces, the last segment has a width of 23.6 inces. Its a very comfy bed. because the cushions have been ordered a little bit longer than the overall length of the trailer they will not move but block each other from moving. Works very well and sleeps 3 in the QS 6.



The Airline rails: There are tons of fittings for these



I'll give you some feedback what worked and what didn't once I'm back from my trip to Iceland. Any questions, just ask  :)

rideandfly

Excellent work, write up, and photos. Looks very functional and durable! Like the 3D mesh used to keep the mattress dry, too.
Bill

Paul

Really nice modification! I am curious, you are going to iceland, are you living in europe? You also said a swiss shop worked on your quicksilver. Do they sell quicksilver in Europe or you brought it there yourself?
2014 Ford Escape
2015 Camplite 13QBB
2016 Ford F150
2018 Ford F150
2018 Camplite 21BHS

bambam

Yes, I live in switzerland. It was imported by a swiss Jeep garage. I only know of some Livinlite Pickup campers that have been imported to Europe, apart from that they are very unknown around here. Everybody says that he has never seen anything like this here and even google searches run dry when searching in german language.

Paul

Quote from: bambam on June 15, 2015, 03:04:00 AM
Yes, I live in switzerland. It was imported by a swiss Jeep garage. I only know of some Livinlite Pickup campers that have been imported to Europe, apart from that they are very unknown around here. Everybody says that he has never seen anything like this here and even google searches run dry when searching in german language.

Ok so you are a Swiss that speak german? I was wondering if you were speaking French because there is some French speaking people in Switzerland. I am a French speaker from Canada
2014 Ford Escape
2015 Camplite 13QBB
2016 Ford F150
2018 Ford F150
2018 Camplite 21BHS

bambam

Yes thats right. Biggest part is German speaking, second biggest is French speaking, third Italian speaking and fourth Rumantsch speaking. The latter is a very, very small group thought. And each one has to learn at least one of the other languages. Mais je suis desolée, mon français est horrible :(   

Paul

Quote from: bambam on June 15, 2015, 12:08:56 PM
Yes thats right. Biggest part is German speaking, second biggest is French speaking, third Italian speaking and fourth Rumantsch speaking. The latter is a very, very small group thought. And each one has to learn at least one of the other languages. Mais je suis desolée, mon français est horrible :(

That is interesting  :) you French is not that bad ;) at least that sentence is good!  :)
2014 Ford Escape
2015 Camplite 13QBB
2016 Ford F150
2018 Ford F150
2018 Camplite 21BHS

bambam

So feedback from my friend with the 2 kids: Modified camper interior worked like a charm. Ample sleeping space for 3 and tons of space for storage. We used most of the box space to store the sleeping bags. The box storage also came in handy when fording rivers because sometimes the water was so high it would get in the camper but never so high that it would get into the boxes.