Star Dreamer

When we had our trailer built, we did not want the fold in steps due to the water and dirt issue and the space they take up inside in our walkway to the bedroom. We went with the Aluminum TorkLift glowsteps that fold up up but have a adjustable feet to securely land on the ground. For our rear door, we wanted electric RV steps but the space required was more than what was available (motorhome frames are set farther back from the outside than 5th wheel frames) so we went with the standard outside fold up steps in that location. We use that door when we spending the night at a truck stop or rest area where I do not want the steps sticking out as I can just fold them out partially so they don't stick out to far.

I don't think Mr Chips follows the forum much as they have sold the truck and moved into a Class A and he tows the jeep on a trailer behind the class A now. I believe the bed shown in these pictures is the first bed he built and later extended the wheel base on the truck to not have that much overhang which can cause handling issues. If you want to carry a vehicle long ways on the truck and still pull a 5th wheel, you will want to consider having a long wheelbase on the truck and do some very good weight calculations. But then your manueverability will suffer with the longer wheelbase but the ride may be better.

We changed out our triple 8k axles with leaf springs and drum brakes to the Morryde IS suspension and disc brakes after our one year warranty on our trailer was up. We had a leaf spring shackle tear thru on our trip back to the factory for our one year warranty items and we were down on the side of the road for 5 hours due to a $10 part. All three axles had shifted at different angles because of that one shackle failure and no way to re- position them correctly. The factory took care of the costs and getting a mobile tech out but I was glad I had already made an appointment at Morryde. We had also had a drum brake failure on that same trip. The new discs brakes work so much better than the drums and the suspension seems to float much better over bumps. Plus the peace of mind if we have an issue with one, we can remove that tire and strap it up to get to a safe location if needed. I have reserve weight capacity on my axles as I do not get close to my 24k axle weight capacity (I am around 20k on my axles at fully loaded weight). It was well worth the extra money to change it out to the IS suspension. Dave

We have to run through Atlanta on occasion and I hate every time I have to do it. They need a bypass around the bypass!

Make sure you understand and have a good way to price all the materials. Also the Foundation and flooring requirements. You may find it hard to get a building permit and you will want to verify when the building inspector needs to come out at what stages of the build. They will probably need a good set of plans which includes all interior walls so verify who will provide those.

Find a campground nearby and rent a car for the days you want to go siteseeing. I think Enterprise will still pick you up but not sure with the Virus if they are still doing that. Or stop at a rental car place before going to the campground, one of you drives the van the other the rental car to the campground and do the reverse when leaving the area.

What about water pump, awnings, propane furnace fan (you may not have one now that you have mini splits), leveling system, slide outs, stereo, 12v TV if you have one, etc...? What 12 volt fuses to you have in your fuse panel? Obviously many of those loads are only when needed.

We have a 90 amp converter in our trailer. I think you are misreading what it does. The larger converters allow more 12 volt circuits, or larger amp circuits, to be handled by the converter similar to how a larger alternator (or multiple alternators) are used for vehicles with large stereo systems. When you are plugged into shore power, your converter then provides more amperage to power the 12v accessories and provides enough power to charge to batteries with the maximum they will take. You might notice that when you are not connected to shore power and running off of battery power that lights dim when using high power items like the water pump or inverter but didn't do it when hooked to shore power. If you have a smaller converter and are powering 12 volt items in your RV, you may not be able to have enough amperage to recharge the batteries at their maximum thus taking longer to recharge them.

Do you have the air ride front suspension or just leaf springs? I have heard that the airride front gives a floating feeling.

Most likely the side panels are a solar hot water heater. Especially if it looks like there are water lines going into them.

Most likely the wall between the passenger compartment and the luggage compartment is not structural so should be able to be opened up to access the area from inside. It would be fairly easy to build a wall behind the roll up doors if you wanted to use them for a smaller storage area. You could remove the rear door and easily build a new rear exterior wall but I think the side one would be more difficult to seal up due to the curve. It should be fairly easy to add a locking hasp to secure the doors, either from inside or outside depending on what you want to use the area for. You would want to get some measurements to see if you can make a floor plan work for what you want. Hopefully you are aware that there are some campgrounds that will not allow that type of conversion but there are many that don't care either.

We are in New Mexico for the next 2 weeks. We are in Tucumcari today and will be at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta tomorrow for 10 days before heading to Arizona for a couple of weeks.

Thanks Kirk, I thought it was the same for them but it has been 5 years since I got my Class F.

In South Carolina there are actually two types of driver's license that may be required. A Class E is required if the motorhome is over 26000#. A Class F is required if the motorhome is pulling a trailer where the combined weight is over 26000#. I can't remember how it is worded for a pickup pulling a trailer. In our case the wife can drive our HDT on her regular car license because it is titled as a motorhome and is under 26k#. But as soon as I hook up our trailer, I have to have my class F license as we are over 40k# Combined Weight. Many locals are not aware of these license requirements. I researched it because we were moving from MN where we could drive our setup with our regular car license (states all RVs are Ok) but knew that all states were not the same.

I like our GM mini van seats, 2nd row seats. Mounted them to our standard air ride bases. Driver's side even has a drink holder.

Our trailer has a battery compartment that is not heated. I have looked at putting lithium batteries in our heated basement but the space that would be available would make it difficult to get to the batteries and would require rewiring a lot of items that currently go to the battery compartment, possibly having to increase wire size due to the longer runs. If we change to lithium, I will have to calculate the price difference between non heated and heated vs changing the wiring and coming by up with a way to access the space in the basement. We were is Southern Texas last Feb so cold temps can hit anywhere. I would like to know how much the heated batteries use in power to keep them above the temperature to charge them.

Welcome to thinking about going to the Dark Side! I don't think there are any worse hair brain schemes in this group! Just look at all the different configurations that people come up for their HDTs and campers. The one item that you may want to watch is insurance on your HDT, some companies may want to insure the RV too and if you do not have it at the same time or close to the same time, you might have an issue with insurance. We bought our HDT about 8 years before I retired, we already had a trailer we pulled with a dually, so it gave us time to get it and a trailer we wanted for retirement. We did not go full time but more like long time 2-3 months out, then back home for stuff like Drs appointments and restocking.

We have a residential fridge also and it is powered by the batteries with an inverter while going down the road. Our truck has a 12 volt feed wire but doesn't recharge the batteries very well probably do to the wire size and distance from truck alternator to trailer batteries. We do have 400 watts of solar that keeps the batteries charged up while driving as long as the sun is out. We did a few tests at home with a battery state of charge (SOC) meter to see how long we could last. We have AGM batteries that you should not go below 50% SOC. With (2) 100 amp hour batteries, I could not last thru a night without going below 50%. We increased our batteries to (4) 100 amp hour batteries and now can last through the night without being plugged in. Now our next issue was the next day, our 400 watts of solar, while enough to maintain what the fridge was using, would not recharge the batteries back up to 100% by the end of sunlight so I needed to plug in and run our generator to make thru another night without power. Try doing tests at home to see how long yours will last, just watch what type of batteries you have to make sure you do not discharge them too far to hurt their lifespan. Lithium batteries can go farther than the lead acid batteries 50% like deep cycle and AGM.

Check the connection for the switch to be sure it is wired correctly and then check for power to it and from it.

I think it would be possible but it depends on what experience they have camping and what they are going to use to pull it. If they will have a van, that can be additional space for storage or sleeping of needed. A pickup with a cap would give them extra storage. They should take the time before buying to mock up the space indicated on the floor plans to see if they can survive doing the happy dance in the aisle. They probably should try to mock up the head room at the same time. Use that mock up to see how much stuff they can carry. It may give them some inside before buying.

Great to hear.

Interesting concept but I think you would have to go with a cellular solar powered camera something like this. I would imagine you have to pay for a cellular device to use it. Obviously not stick on but you may want to come up with a good secure mount as you would not want it easily removed anyway. https://www.amazon.com/Outdoor-Solar-Powered-Security-Wirefree-Go/dp/B07TKKPTL3

If you want to control the propane side of the hot water heater, you will have to put the timer on the 12 volt side. Actually on our hot water heater both are controlled by a 12 volt switch. As an alternative, you could do what I recently did which was adding LED indicator lights to our switch panel so that I can see which one is on easier. We accidentally left our electric switch on while we were running off the inverter and about 4am the inverter kicked out on its low voltage setting. Heard it alarm and noticed the switch still on. Still had enough voltage to fire the generator and recharge to batteries.

I just got done replacing our tank monitor system with the Seelevel system. It was pretty easy as out tanks are exposed underneath the trailer. They do recommend if they are exposed that you spray undercoating on them after you have tested to make sure they are working ok and the sensors have been permanently mounted (you test them first by just having them taped in place). I did use my old wiring for the new system. Our water pump switch was on our old monitor panel so I had to use theirs but it was not rated enough for our pump. There instructions said to use a relay which I got at a local auto parts store and wired it in. So far has been working good. Our old monitor always showed the back tank full and the grey tank about 2/3s. New system when installed showed them at 0% and then to test we ran water in them untill they read 10-20%.

Then in that case most of us would consider them Rats since "everything is bigger in Texas".