all right our journey begins Bunnings' ute and Mog convoy
how did you go? Started to stutter i think
it's either running out of diesel or got some bad diesel all right let's fill up the beast
thank god for
i just did a little stop on the side of the road just to make sure that
aluminum is still in place everything is good the Mog is good now onto the highway
so
wow looks all right yeah you're good
oh my god you're on the roof hello hello
so
oh gosh it feels weird we're on the roof
got a good view i can imagine us having like a coffee from the roof
i think right there cheers facing the ocean we already envisioned it together
so that is the great news we want to stay mostly positive in this video
show you the camper and as well explain all of the specs but we also want to keep the channel
transparent and real so at the end of the video we'll kind of go over what exactly happened
and the reason why i was so ticked off in the last video that you guys saw
all right so first i just want to go over a little bit about the flooring now we've mentioned it
a little bit previously in some other videos uh but it is a really important aspect of the build
now we wanted to keep the outside or sort of external structuring shell
completely wood free so we've decided to go with this composite material called thermolite
now what it is is it's a whole bunch of fiberglass fibers i guess as well as some matting that goes
runs right through the actual substrate and it's kind of like a very very high density foam
the benefit of it is it sort of resembles wood structurally but it can't take on any water and it
doesn't warp so that was the main reason we went with it again when it was 19 millimeters thick
we supplied the thermolite sheets because we managed to track some down
in western australia the box supplier he was one who first suggested thermolite he actually
couldn't find any from his supplies so we found that and we provided four big sheets for him
and then he installed into the floor now the floor was an interesting one because because
we're building straight onto our existing tray that torsion free subframe that we wanted to keep
the floor is not perfectly level i mean the unimogs are famous for it they never had
to be perfectly level so he ended up cutting a bunch of strips out of it and using it as batons
underneath along the structural supports of the tray and then laid the main sheets
on top bolted it down as well as glued now i didn't want to at first go with bolts because
it creates what's called a thermal bridge or a cold bridge so that means if you show here edge
whatever touches steel outside and has steel on the inside this will be the temperature of outside
no matter how well insulated your box is so for instance if it's icy outside these will lights up
so that was what i wanted to avoid the only place we've got them is in the floor now i will
secure them all and make them basically break that thermal bridge so that's the only metal we've got
in the structuring but yeah that's the flooring 19mm thermal line for the cost for the floor the
materials itself the thermolite sheets 1960 australian dollars and for the labor and materials from the
supplier to install it it was 475 australian dollars all right so now on to the structure
itself this is what all the walls are made out of and the ceiling we went with this stuff
which is called xps foam and it is sandwiched between two sheets of two millimeter fiberglass
now there is no other steel or aluminium frame in this box it doesn't need to be this is
incredibly rigid and strong it can also flex so i can take heaps of punishment off-road as well
and it is what the majority of the european suppliers which have these like 300 000 euro
builds are building their trucks out of you can build a refrigeration truck out of it
because the insulation value is incredible and i didn't believe any of this at first nor did ange
on paper just doesn't sound like you can make something structural just out of this without
any sort of steel support but you can so i jumped up and down on a tire so i'll insert that clip
time for a stress test now this is 30 millimeter the box itself is 40 so it's quite a bit thicker
i'm just putting on the very edge of the tire just going to do a stress test see
that's impressive it doesn't even bend doesn't it's impressive bends a tiny bit but not much
that's cool that gives me the confidence that i can walk around up there
that's very true yeah it actually really shows just how strong this stuff is so
again 40 millimeters thick and that is the entire structure you can also have conduits put through
now this way you can run cabling we decided this caused me so many headaches because i've never
dealt with conduit before i've never built a house so what there is is there's eight conduits in
total a bunch of those are in this wall and they join up with the ceiling now that so that i can
drill a hole wherever there's a conduit and put a light in or for instance the fan but it really
took me a long time to get my head around it and i just couldn't really get any practical information
but the box supplier said you know it's pretty straightforward i'll run some string he didn't
run string but that's not the main reason why i'm so ticked off in that last video but i'll get to
that later on but yeah that's the stuff there pretty cool all right now to the dimension of
the box which was probably the trickiest part to get right starting with the width the width was
the easiest part it is 2.4 meter wide which is basically the width of the unimog tray so
this one was a no-brainer now the length the length is just above 4.5 meter long which is
great it's a bit longer than the tray because of that 45 degree angle departure which chris will
tell you about in a second and now for the height the height was the trickiest part so overall from
the exterior we are just under 2.06 meters because we've got a ceiling of 40 millimeter of flooring
of 90 millimeter that leaves us with the internal height of two meters the reason we came with that
number is so that Chris can be comfortable inside leaving full time you don't want to have to be
like that the whole time now with the external height we are just above 3.5 meter high which
for us was really important we want to obviously travel around australia but we want as well to go
internationally especially europe potentially in the coming years if Covid allows
in europe with a bridge clearance we definitely wanted to stay under the 3.7 meter mark which a
lot of expedition truck owners have told me it is basically the height you want to stay on there so
just when you design your box just keep in mind your overall height which is really important
so the total cost for the five panels the six cutouts the 8 conduits is 8187 australian dollars all
right so just to elaborate a little bit about this 45 degree angle at the rear here that we decided
to go with now in australia you can have 60 of the total wheel base hanging off the rear axle
so you can have 60 of that total wheelbase hanging off the back of the truck otherwise it's illegal
so this is not quite our maximum but that is why we can legally have some more living space off
the back now if the box was out here not only do i think it would look a bit strange but we would
massively lose our departure angle going off road so that was the reason we went with that 45 degree
angle and we're going to make it so that it kind of works with our design as well but yeah that was
an interesting one to kind of work out for ange and i so then we've also got an angle at the top
right up there so main reason for that was purely just looks we didn't want to have a really
square shape i mean obviously it's pretty square but we wanted to be
able to cut down that as much as possible not to mention you've got the bonus of having a
little bit of aerodynamics in the front there because we've got such an aerodynamic vehicle
all right now just to briefly talk about how the structure was actually put together
so the panels have been glued together what the supplier has done is he's chopped away the foam
for instance on this wall panel and he's overlaid the fiberglass so that it sandwiches into the rear
wall now the actual finish itself is really really poor um i'm we're not impressed about that at all
mostly because the thing's not watertight so there will be aluminium that caps it but the whole box
should have been made watertight uh so we've got we've got like eight leaks in the vehicle already
so i'm gonna have to go around and silicon up absolutely everything or seal everything up
and then put the capping over the top the alloy capping but um but yeah that's one of
our biggest disappointments so far total cost for the construction of the box including materials
such as glue was 5 000 australian dollars which we felt was a very reasonable quote in fact
most of the quotes we received we felt were very reasonable we are not so sure about that now after
finally having the box back now there's a bunch of aluminium trim to go around all external edges
of the box as well as there's some aluminium for the construction of the build inside that
came to a total cost of 1 128 now something really tricky that we found with the build
was finding aluminium extrusion to fit 40 millimeter panel in australia most manufacturers
of the fiberglass panel or or making caravans for instance that utilize this panel got a 30 mil so
that was something we found really tricky the panel spire himself didn't really have anything
that that looked good or looked very appropriate so we ended up purchasing some alloy extrusion
from a company called styromax in queensland we measured it all up and had it sent over
and the supplier started to fit that but that meant we had to get two 30 millimeter panels
for each hatch and another 30 millimeter panel for the front door so it is a slightly thinner
thickness i guess and that total price was 250 dollars for the panel itself so the total cost for
habitation box at the back of the mug is 17 000 australian dollars all right so since we picked up
the mark we've cooled down quite a bit we've got no interest into frying the company under the bus
or even mentioned the name of the supplier in this video we've tried filming this this is now six
times and every time we look back at it it's either too long or it sounds like we're having
a bit of a moan uh because it's so personal to us what happened and it spanned like literally months
we reached out to this guy in january trying to get a quote so just you guys don't need to know
the full story it's long and drawn out just to summarize we're just very disappointed in
basically the communication with the supplier very disappointed in how long any of the construction
time took or even getting the panels cut in the first place that took months on end and mostly
towards the end communication completely broke down we just couldn't get a definitive answer
for when even an eta on completion date would be we were first quoted it could be next year we were
first quoted two weeks and then five weeks later i sort of was like enough's enough we need to start
pinning this guy down working out what's going on so the reason you saw i was so ticked off in
that previous video is wasn't about the conduit that was pretty annoying because he was meant to
run he told me he'd run string right through all the conduits but i could rectify that that's not
a huge issue the issue was the really poor finish quality and the fact that he had given us health
reasons for why it was becoming so delayed one of those reasons being vertigo and previous sort of
like a previous brain injury now we i was ticked off because we got there to try and install the
windows because we said oh can we please just do something on the mark just so that we can try and
catch up on the amount of work that we've missed out on sort of thing and uh he's gone around
having a great time with his colleagues working heavy machinery and working on everyone else's
project apart from our one which was not the reason we were given for why it was taking so long
so that was when yeah it just became too much so we went went away couple days later nothing had
changed and we just said can we please have a definitive completion date no more eta no
more stringing us on kind of thing and they basically him and his wife said no we can't
we can't give you a definitive completion date if you want the unimog i suggest you come and take it
back unfinished so that's exactly what we did the next day and that was i think the day after that
previous video you saw we finalized payment and basically went away with a semi-completed project
and yeah we're super disappointed because we dropped quite a lot of money as you know it
took ages to get to this huge climax yeah just a really big desponding anti-comics and it is a very
long story that we're not going to go into never mind we've got it back so that's the good news
we've already in the last i think four days of good weather we've managed to
learn a lot uh get acquainted with aluminium extrusions cutting doors making hatches we've
never done that before we're wrapped with how it's coming so far and uh we just need
to basically complete all that and at least the exterior of the box will be
home and hose yeah so it's all coming up in the coming episodes we've got as well the main mission
of making the mug waterproof which is definitely not at the moment unfortunately so yeah stay tuned
a lot coming yeah we literally had i think eight major leagues inside the box on that last big
heavy rainstorm that was for about four days the rains are coming back tomorrow so we've managed
to complete heat it'll be interesting to see what still leaks and then we can fix that from there
so that'll be in the next video thank you so much for watching guys we'll see on the next one