Improving the RTT - mods / tricks

P

pray4surf

Adventurist
Because I can't spend as much time actually camping in my RTT, I spend a lot of time figuring out ways I can improve the experience.

So far, I've added some LED lighting to the sleeping area and an electric mattress heater. I also have a piece of astroturf to use as the annex floor

Turning my attention to the annex/changing room, I recently added some nylon webbing straps to tie the annex up against the 'bottom' of the RTT and reworked the cover straps so that I can roll/tie up the RTT cover - so it doesn't draped down the side of the truck. Before deciding on the nylon straps for tying the rolled up annex to the RTT base, I did experiment with a 'roman-shade' system for raising lowering the annex walls. While this worked quite well, it would have been much more complex than the simple ties I ended up employing. KISS

Planned: Some LED lights (stick-on puck lights) and some wire shelving that'll will hang and allow off-the-ground storage for toiletries and the like. I'd also like to add a more 'permanent' 12 volt lighter style outlet to the RTT and possibly adding a 12 volt fan.

I'm curious to see what others have done to improve their RTT / annex...
 
You know Rick I did add some led lights to the corner of the tent and put some leds in the center support of the tent itself.
 
Added some highly advanced tech should the weather get a little too cold or hot. :coffeedrink:



Also added some brackets to keep the ladder from shaking and creating more damage.

Added a shoe holder/net to help keep the dirt outside... No pics yet.
 
Zam15 said:
Added some highly advanced tech should the weather get a little too cold or hot. :coffeedrink:



Also added some brackets to keep the ladder from shaking and creating more damage.

Added a shoe holder/net to help keep the dirt outside... No pics yet.
Click to expand...

Having seen this climate control system in person, I have to say, it is pretty impressive
 
pray4surf said:
Because I can't spend as much time actually camping in my RTT, I spend a lot of time figuring out ways I can improve the experience.

So far, I've added some LED lighting to the sleeping area and an electric mattress heater. I also have a piece of astroturf to use as the annex floor

Turning my attention to the annex/changing room, I recently added some nylon webbing straps to tie the annex up against the 'bottom' of the RTT and reworked the cover straps so that I can roll/tie up the RTT cover - so it doesn't draped down the side of the truck. Before deciding on the nylon straps for tying the rolled up annex to the RTT base, I did experiment with a 'roman-shade' system for raising lowering the annex walls. While this worked quite well, it would have been much more complex than the simple ties I ended up employing. KISS

Planned: Some LED lights (stick-on puck lights) and some wire shelving that'll will hang and allow off-the-ground storage for toiletries and the like. I'd also like to add a more 'permanent' 12 volt lighter style outlet to the RTT and possibly adding a 12 volt fan.

I'm curious to see what others have done to improve their RTT / annex...
Click to expand...

Pics? More importantly - add what type of RTT you have.
 
Added snap-ring cables to all of the zipper pulls. Makes it much easier to open and close them. Especially in the middle of the night when youre nestled up in your roof-top tent with the heater going and its 0200, 34 degrees outside and you have to return all of those beers you drank around the campfire earlier..... pics to follow.
20130516_193552.jpg
oh and the prropex heater is worth its weight in gold. Not as crafty and compact as the car heater attachment but gets the job done.

20130516_193552.jpg
 
Yeah... I tried to be slick one time and use one of the cool relief bags with the gelling powder. I've used them in the field before and passed it along to unsuspecting fellow Jarheads as a handwarmer. Well lets just say karma showed up and I overfilled one.... not my finest moment. It was like in djmb and dummer when he kept filling up the beer bottles. ... lol
 
Yuman Desert Rat said:
Yeah... I tried to be slick one time and use one of the cool relief bags with the gelling powder. I've used them in the field before and passed it along to unsuspecting fellow Jarheads as a handwarmer. Well lets just say karma showed up and I overfilled one.... not my finest moment. It was like in djmb and dummer when he kept filling up the beer bottles. ... lol
Click to expand...

LMAO!
 
Yuman Desert Rat said:
Thought you'd find that amusing! Lol "cleanup aisle tent"
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No worries... tent floors are like showers - a good warm piss kills the fungus.

I can just picture a cluster of Lance Coconuts milling about, passing around your urine-filled hand-warmer packs, "dude, Gunny just gave me these; their sooo warm," and, "Gunny rocks! Put it 'em on your cheeks - it feels awesome!"
 
TangoBlue said:
No worries... tent floors are like showers - a good warm piss kills the fungus.

I can just picture a cluster of Lance Coconuts milling about, passing around your urine-filled hand-warmer packs, "dude, Gunny just gave me these; their sooo warm," and, "Gunny rocks! Put it 'em on your cheeks - it feels awesome!"
Click to expand...

Lmfao. No, I did that back when I was a Lance Coconut. I wish I had the opportunity to do it now. Although I probably would get chargex with hazing or sexual harassment or some B.S.
 
This summer, there were a couple things seriously bothering me about my CVT RTT. Primarily, it's the closure straps under the cover. When you close the tent, you use these Velcro straps to the top half of the tent to the bottom half.





You pull the long strap through the D-ring and then fold it back onto itself, then connect the two pieces of Velcro. Now, these do work, but they have a couple issues. Primarily, they don't hold that well. Try to cinch it too tight, and they simply pull apart and detach. This causes another issue...











As you can see, pulling it tight is causing the stitching on the Velcro to fail. It's pulling away from the strap quite badly, and I've not been actually pulling on the straps that hard or trying to cinch them overly tight. It's also causing the rough side of the Velcro to tear the threads out of the soft side, making the system work even worse. The system itself just isn't optimal. For a few weeks, I've been thinking about how to fix it. My fiancee is great with sewing, and she has one hell of a nice sewing machine, so my original thought was to get some extreme duty Velcro and have her sew it onto the original strap with better thread and better stitches. Then I told her about how Eezi-Awn uses a buckle closure, and she suggested getting buckles to sew on there. I really liked this idea. Then I saw a buckle in the local camping/hiking/backpacking shop that solved all my problems. They cost me a total of 11 bucks.


The buckle: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product//B00BTO3H42/ref=twister_dp_update?ie=UTF8&psc=1





This buckle has a little stainless steel screw that holds it to the strap on one side, which means you don't actually need to do any sewing to put it on. So, I grabbed a set of needle nose pliers and pried the old D-ring off the tent. It's not welded together, so all you have to do is put the tip of the pliers in there and use a little muscle.





Once that's out of the way, pull the screw out of the buckle.





The pop it back into place where the D-ring was. I then ripped the already loose Velcro bits off the other strap, pulling out all the loose threads I could. All the threads that wouldn't come out got melted down to the strap via a lighter. Pop the buckle apart and thread the long strap through the buckle. Then clip the two halves back together and voila! I now have a buckle closure holding the tent closed instead of that crappy Velcro!





It's a lot simpler to open and close the tent now, it looks cleaner, and it's much more solid.
 
WreckDiver1321 said:
This summer, there were a couple things seriously bothering me about my CVT RTT. Primarily, it's the closure straps under the cover. When you close the tent, you use these Velcro straps to the top half of the tent to the bottom half.





You pull the long strap through the D-ring and then fold it back onto itself, then connect the two pieces of Velcro. Now, these do work, but they have a couple issues. Primarily, they don't hold that well. Try to cinch it too tight, and they simply pull apart and detach. This causes another issue...











As you can see, pulling it tight is causing the stitching on the Velcro to fail. It's pulling away from the strap quite badly, and I've not been actually pulling on the straps that hard or trying to cinch them overly tight. It's also causing the rough side of the Velcro to tear the threads out of the soft side, making the system work even worse. The system itself just isn't optimal. For a few weeks, I've been thinking about how to fix it. My fiancee is great with sewing, and she has one hell of a nice sewing machine, so my original thought was to get some extreme duty Velcro and have her sew it onto the original strap with better thread and better stitches. Then I told her about how Eezi-Awn uses a buckle closure, and she suggested getting buckles to sew on there. I really liked this idea. Then I saw a buckle in the local camping/hiking/backpacking shop that solved all my problems. They cost me a total of 11 bucks.


The buckle: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product//B00BTO3H42/ref=twister_dp_update?ie=UTF8&psc=1





This buckle has a little stainless steel screw that holds it to the strap on one side, which means you don't actually need to do any sewing to put it on. So, I grabbed a set of needle nose pliers and pried the old D-ring off the tent. It's not welded together, so all you have to do is put the tip of the pliers in there and use a little muscle.





Once that's out of the way, pull the screw out of the buckle.





The pop it back into place where the D-ring was. I then ripped the already loose Velcro bits off the other strap, pulling out all the loose threads I could. All the threads that wouldn't come out got melted down to the strap via a lighter. Pop the buckle apart and thread the long strap through the buckle. Then clip the two halves back together and voila! I now have a buckle closure holding the tent closed instead of that crappy Velcro!





It's a lot simpler to open and close the tent now, it looks cleaner, and it's much more solid.
Click to expand...

Great write up, and welcome to AAV. I have not seen these buckles, but I like them. Think I might order up a couple just to throw in the repairs box
 
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