It’s coming together…

We are counting the days until our cabin will be finished by KRUGXP. Our STEYR truck made the journey from EXCAP, Germany to KRUGXP, Ukraine in August 2016 ‘naked’ and is scheduled to be back in Germany with the new cabin attached in April this year. I will fly to Germany to do the official hand-over with KRUGXP and hopefully take the truck for a first ‘spin’ to test out the new cabin and equipment.

Although we agreed on a detailed plan for the cabin layout and accessories when signing the contract with KRUGXP back in July 2016, we had a lot of communication going on between then and now. Hundreds of e-mails, numerous phone calls and SKYPE sessions and an endless exchange of photos and 3D Cad drawings were needed to get us to this point. So far I am very impressed with the KRUGXP professionalism, responsiveness and information exchange. Not being able to monitor the cabin development  in person of course was challenging. Getting 3D CAD sketches and photos to illustrate certain issues helped to make quick decisions and avoid long project delays. Alltogether there were not too many issues – but we had some ‘booboo’s’ here and there that had to be overcome.

Here are some examples of changes / additions to our original design and areas that needed some ‘fine-tuning’ or adjustments:

• Cabin Dimensions and layout:

The initial design included an edge on the lower cabin back to optimize the departure angle. After we decided to add a motorcycle lift we had to revise this layout and eliminate the angle on the cabin back to allow proper attachment and optimal functioning of the motorcycle lift, that we added to our wish list later on.

• Electrical Equipment:

Initially we planned to get a combined MASTERVOLT battery inverter/charger  (MassCombi with 24V/3500W – 24V/40A) installed. We were later advised that the installation of two separate MASTERVOLT units – a battery Charger (ChargeMaster with 24V/100 A) plus an inverter (MassSine Ultra with 24V/4000W) was a better fit for our needs. Especially the inverter has a little more capacity and would not operate at peak for our 230V consumers.

During our project MASTERVOLT came out with a new color display version EasyView 5 and we decided to rather have this newest version installed. Unfortunately this required an adjustment to the already completed metal panel that will be housing all the switches and displays.

Below you can see the actual placement of the MASTERVOLT electrical equipment in the garage area. Inverter on the right, charger on the left and the latching relays in between. To the left of the the two MLI Ultra 24/5000 Lithium Ion batteries is the cabin air-condition. A removable metal plate will be installed in front of the equipment to protect it.

I was concerned with the heat generation of all these components and asked to have a vent installed to avoid overheating of this confined area. The vent will be placed in round hole that you can see in the left corner.

• Motorcycle Lift:

When finalizing our ‘deal’ I did not want to add any additonal cost items and stay within our initial budget. Having the luxury to carrying my motorbike was always a dream and a couple of months into the project I decided to add this to the list. KRUGXP came up with some CAD sketches that we revised over time and it was still early enough to make some adjustments to the cabin design – like add support metals in the rear cabin panel and eliminate the edge at the lower back.

Below are some sketches of the motorbike lift. It will be operated by a WARN RT30 24V winch and includes a spare tire holder with a manual winch and sand ladder holders. This way we do not have to carry the spare tire on the roof rack anymore. Besides getting rid of the +150KG weight from the drivers cabin roof, we can now install an air-condition. Since the standard STEYR does not have a drivers cabin air-condition, we plan to have this added by EXCAP.

• Cargo Boxes:

We decided to get three cargo boxes custom made by KRUGXP – two for the back left and right side, to be installed behind the rear wheels and one for the right side, to be installed behind the front wheel. The plan was to install the diesel heater in the front right box and equip the right rear box with and outdoor kitchen. I had to find out that KRUG had installed the diesel heater in the left rear cargo box. This was probably due to a communication gap, but I was initially not too happy about this decision, because I wanted to preserve the valued storage space of the bigger rear cargo box, plus I don’t believe that the location, far away from the diesel supply and heated diesel filter is optimal. I was also hoping to place the diesel heater as far away from the bed area as possible to avoid possible noise impact from the heater while sleeping.

On a positive note, the new heater location in the left back now allows us to get a new EXCAP diesel tank with integrated storage unit made from PVC on the right side. We had to already cut-off the tank filler on the right diesel tank since it would not allow fitting the cargo box. Since we now do not use this space for the diesel heater we will have EXCAP replace our existing EXCAP tank on the right side with a tank/cargo-box combination.

• Outdoor Kitchen:

Initially we thought to add a mobile gas cooker as an outdoor cooking option later. When researching this topic, I ran into PabstAirtec outdoor kitchen offerings and asked KRUGXP if they could build us a similar solution. Below is the design that they quickly created and we immediately loved this solution and agree to have it added to our left rear storage box.

• Heater:

We initially ordered a WEBASTO Heater which supposed to be equipped with an additional aftermarket altitude kit. Unfortunately it turned out to be difficult to find a matching altitude kit and therefore KRUGXP recommended to switch to an Eberspächer heater with included altitude kit. After reading a lot about different heater solutions I did not have a strong opinion one way or the other and think that Eberspächer, traditionally making truck heaters is (hopefully) as good as WEBASTO.

• Ladder:

A topic that I was undecided on for the longest time was the question of what kind of ladder to select. Besides the fridge to store your cold beer I believe a good ladder is essential to allow easy and safe entrance and exit (eventually even after a couple of drinks). The main options are:

• Pull-out ladder that resides between cabin and subframe
  • Pro’s: Simple, kept outside (especially when dirty)
  • Con’s: can not easily be pulled-in/out from inside the cabin
• Electric ladder (this was the proposed KRUGXP option)
  • Pro’s: Most convenient solution, does not touch the ground
  • Con’s: Takes up lot of space – which could be better used as storage
• Folding ladder (our custom choice)
  • Pro’s: Can be easily pulled in and out from inside the cabin, does not touch the ground
  • Con’s: Relatively complex design due to the included spring mechanism that makes folding/-unfolding easier, takes up space in the entrance area of the cabin when folded in

After a lot of debating we decided to have KRUGXP build us a custom aluminum folding ladder that will be installed on the cabin floor. They designed a mechanism that reliefs weight during folding/unfolding using a spring tension system in the cabin floor.

They literally tested the ladder on a dummy before installing it on our cabin.

Based on the latest pictures I saw, the custom ladder looks pretty impressive. I have tried a similar ladder at the BlissMobil cabin, where I ‘stole’ the idea from – and I hope this custom ladder holds up to my expectations…