Any GTAM'ers have a tiny/micro camper? | Page 13 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Any GTAM'ers have a tiny/micro camper?

On a sort of related note, I purchased one of the new fangled Curt “Rockerball” hitches for my setup. The design advertises that it absorbs a lot of the trailers bouncing and jerking action and prevents it from being transmitted to the car. Anyone whose ever towed a trailer that weighs over 1000# knows what I’m talking about.

Having towed with it now I can unequivocally say that it’s the best thing since sliced bread. It works. Awesome. Best part was I scored mine for $10 at Princess Auto - they’re regularly north of $80.
 
PrivatePilot said:
On a sort of related note, I purchased one of the new fangled Curt “Rockerball” hitches for my setup. The design advertises that it absorbs a lot of the trailers bouncing and jerking action and prevents it from being transmitted to the car. Anyone whose ever towed a trailer that weighs over 1000# knows what I’m talking about.

Having towed with it now I can unequivocally say that it’s the best thing since sliced bread. It works. Awesome. Best part was I scored mine for $10 at Princess Auto - they’re regularly north of $80.
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Quieter? More comfortable? Both? $10 is a shockingly good price. It's hard to get a normal ball that cheap. What happens when the rubber fails? Can it articulate enough to try to escape the trailer?
 
GreyGhost said:
Quieter? More comfortable? Both? $10 is a shockingly good price. It's hard to get a normal ball that cheap. What happens when the rubber fails? Can it articulate enough to try to escape the trailer?
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Quieter yes, seemed to take some of the slack banging that often happens on hitches out of the equation too. More comfortable, hands down - no more “herky jerkies”. Less stress on the tow vehicle as well.

They were $25 a few weeks ago on the “**** we can’t get rid of” rack at PA. Went down even more to $10 I noticed a few days ago, was still a few there at the Whitby location although a friend went and grabbed one yesterday after me telling him about them. They were the 7500# rated ones but I called Curt and they said the only difference was the shank size, the internal rubber mechanism was the same across all models.

The design is solid. Even if the internals completely fell out (which doesn’t seem possible, it’s all well encapsulated) it couldn’t shift far enough forward or back to cause issues. It also has a grease zerk on the bottom to lubricate things.

Even if I had to pay full price I’d buy one again in a heartbeat. I’ve pulled a lot of travel trailers a lot of miles and even when I had my 1-ton a big trailer would still herky-jerk over bumps. This would remove 90% of it.
 
Now trying to find somewhere to get out camping in April lol. We have a reservation for Presquille on the first weekend of May but that seems like forever away.

May end up just boondocking somewhere.
 
So aside from riding this weekend I brought the camper home and got busy on tinkering. And polishing.

I have to say, Meguiers Formula 67 one step fibreglass polish is f'n magic.

Like many things fibreglass the outside of the trailer in the areas that had clearly been exposed to the most sun were dull and chalky. Worse yet was the old logos that had peeled and been removed by the previous owner were very clearly still visible.

The Meguiers still was expensive at $30 a bottle (and it seemed like Amazon was the only place it's available, I couldn't find the Formula 67 anywhere else) but holy hell does it work. Literally one step with the power buffer and a wool pad (the 100% wool pad is important from what I gathered online - I tried a foamie and sure enough it didn't cut as well), a quick wipe down with a microfibre, and I could see myself in it. From chalky dull to "sitting on the showroom floor" in minutes.

Honestly I would have stopped at one shot but I went over it again on the back to get rid of the emblem shadow.
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The front is pretty dull as well but the sides are not anywhere near as bad. Will get the front done tomorrow night after work and the sides should just need a quick going over and it'll look like a million bucks. I'll give her a good solid coat of wax afterwards.

If anyone with their own RV or a boat with chalky dull fibreglass and has been looking for the magic elixir, well, I found it. Reading online and I'm not the only one with this experience...the stuff is good.
 
I've always used 3M one step wax/polish , but its still a ton of work . I'll try Maquires this week. Is it a CTC thing?
 
Couldn't find it at retail anywhere, including Canadian Tire. I looked.

Amazon was the only place I could find it at. It was next day delivery for me with prime.

I did try doing some by hand and it works, but needless to say the scrubbing could get tiring fast. The high speed polisher with the wool pad made short work of it. You buff it until the compound all but disappears and leaves just a haze and it's easily wiped away to a sheen with the microfibre. If it's hard to wipe off you didn't buff enough.

Took a little bit to get the hang of things - I was a bit freaked out in the beginning and worried I was going to burn through the gelcoat initially so I was being too gentle and not setting the polisher at a high enough RPM so it was leaving a lot of residue that was killer to remove. As I got higher to the roofline and got braver (less noticeable if I did goof was my thought) I added a little more pressure and higher RPM and that was the trick.

YMMV. Be careful.
 
ordering on Amazon now, have 4-500sq ft to do this week.
I have hundreds of hours of buffer time on my arms, 3M "finness it" has been my go to for years , but I'll try anything faster/cleaner.
 
crankcall said:
ordering on Amazon now, have 4-500sq ft to do this week.
I have hundreds of hours of buffer time on my arms, 3M "finness it" has been my go to for years , but I'll try anything faster/cleaner.
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Let me know how you think it compares.

If you want to come by and demonstrate your buffer skills on the roof of the camper (ugh, I didn't even touch it yet) let me know. There's cold beer in the fridge inside already. ;)
 
PrivatePilot said:
On a sort of related note, I purchased one of the new fangled Curt “Rockerball” hitches for my setup. The design advertises that it absorbs a lot of the trailers bouncing and jerking action and prevents it from being transmitted to the car. Anyone whose ever towed a trailer that weighs over 1000# knows what I’m talking about.

Having towed with it now I can unequivocally say that it’s the best thing since sliced bread. It works. Awesome. Best part was I scored mine for $10 at Princess Auto - they’re regularly north of $80.
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I picked one up this week at the Scarboro Princess Auto for $40. I wanted something to quieten the slap, towed the trailer a couple of days ago and it was night and day difference. Thanks for the recommendation.
 
I currently have our new/used camper in the driveway here at home and am slowly poking away at minor things, changes, repairs. One biggie was the black water holding tank was leaking. When I crawled under there today and started taking it apart this is what I found on the leaky valve, courtesy of the previous owner.

Evidently it'd been leaking for a while and this was the attempted "Fix". Caulking...EVERYWHERE.

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It was evident they tried to remove the nuts to actually remove the leaky valve at some point but the rust (from the constant water seepage/leakage - the top nuts and bolts were beautifully clean) had corroded them all to ****. When they started spinning inside the tank instead of loosening any further they just gave up, drove some wood screws through the valve (into nothing except the valve itself, one was only 1/4" long, the second only went in about 1/2 an inch and stopped and they left the head hanging out), caulked the ever loving bejesus out of it, and did a hail mary.

It leaked...a lot.

I took the cut off saw to the 4 bolts, yanked the old junk off and rebuilt it all today. I already had one poo-apocalypse disaster in my past (oh boy, that's a long "beers around a campfire" story), I really do not want another.
 
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If you think there are some kooky threads in the Tech sections on a motorcycle site, go hang out on some RV sites for a while.

"the slide valve on my RV crapper has let go, I got it off sort of, well just loose. Which caulking is the best to glue it back on and make it water tite?"

"oh 3M 5200, it the best adhesive sealant on the market , and its $21.00 a tube??? , I'll just use silicone"

" How did the fix work?? , I'm selling it to some guy in Ontario.... so it worked well enough"
 
crankcall said:
If you think there are some kooky threads in the Tech sections on a motorcycle site, go hang out on some RV sites for a while.

"the slide valve on my RV crapper has let go, I got it off sort of, well just loose. Which caulking is the best to glue it back on and make it water tite?"

"oh 3M 5200, it the best adhesive sealant on the market , and its $21.00 a tube??? , I'll just use silicone"

" How did the fix work?? , I'm selling it to some guy in Ontario.... so it worked well enough"
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LOL.

To be fair he did tell me when I bought the trailer that the valve "needed to be replaced" so it wasn't exactly hidden. I crawled around under the trailer the day we bought it and saw the issue.

Getting the tank clean and flushed in preparation to do the job was the biggest issue - needed a water source to fill the tank and then take it for a drive before dumping, fill, repeat...2 or 3 times. There was a lot of, uh..."residue" in there. I ended up having to do it at home with the help of the wife - pull up in front of the house, stuff the garden hose down the toilet to fill the tank as quickly as possible, and then peel out with the trailer to go dump. Repeat a few times. Used the old ice-cubes and borax method - works miracles in holding tanks.

On the topic of RV forums, I used to hang out at RV.net and was actually very active there for years, but there was a few moderators who had power trip issues, and the forum software was stuck somewhere circa 2003...and still is, ugh. It became more frustration than enjoyment, so I for the most part ditched. I pop in every now and then but the vintage forum software drives me bonkers....even phpBB would be an upgrade from the (basically glorified HTML) nonsense they're still using.
 
Where did you go dump? Some townships have places available
 
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Last night I effectively "finished" the trailer. I actually really enjoyed doing all the little repairs and modifications to make it ours as well as cleaning up the stuff from the previous owners that wasn't really done properly. There were electrical squirrels nests, the crappy (pardon the pun) holding tank valve repair, the hoses on the fresh water tank were all loose and would have flooded the trailer had they been left as is, it needed curtains (daughter made them up for $40 in material plus her time), had the dining table reworked and refinished, etc.....it needed a lot of TLC...but I knew that going in.

Took it out today for some glamour shots for the rental websites.

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I've got about $2500 in bookings already, and that's despite having 6 weeks of the peak summer blocked off (at the moment) for personal use in line with my work vacation. If I unblock a few of those once we figure out what we want to do with the motorcycle getaways as well I'm confident those will fill up - As I suspected the ultra lightweight nature of the trailer along with the fact it has an actual bathroom with a shower has put it in the very high demand category as people can pull it with small vehicles.

I also had it out on the 401 for the first time today with the Volt. I was pleasantly surprised.

I'm still not 100% enamored with the yellow and woodgrain thing going on with the cabinetry, but it's growing on me. It's unique at least, and I'm not changing it this year, that's for sure. Maybe next year. I just want to camp now.
 
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That trailer looks a lot more roomier on the inside than it does from the out

It’s a great looking unit congrats on the purchase
 
ToSlow said:
That trailer looks a lot more roomier on the inside than it does from the out

It’s a great looking unit congrats on the purchase
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Oh, it's compact all around, but the iPhone wide angle lens does help when it comes to photos. It just allows a better perspective in the end - traditional photos can't really capture the interior properly due to the fact the aspect ratio is pretty small comparatively.

It's really a 2 person trailer. I've had rental inquiries for 2 adults plus a kid and their dog and have been pretty upfront about the fact....it won't work. My wife and I inside, all good, even if we're both standing. Yeah, there's not a ton of space for us to dance or anything LOL, but compact is the nature of the game here. You don't get that much trailer in a 1000 pound package any other way. ;)
 
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