Today turned out to be a day of repairs, or is it breakages. Continuing from last nights camping spot the road into Cascade continued to be rough (lots of traffic and little maintenance of the road seems like the cause) and so we bumped over rocks and wash-boards for many hours. We visited the old mining ghost town of Deadwood, (the old hotel and a couple of other buildings are still evident),bumped into a number of groups of riders, and generally enjoyed the spectacular scenery and wonderfully sunny day.

Along the way we had a big surprise and an amazingly coincidental meeting with our friends Rick and Kathy of travelin-tortuga.com fame. We had not seen these guys since Overland Expo in May and boy were we surprised when we saw a Tiger (make of their camper) coming towards us.

The bad news of the day was that the rough roads were not without their cost. The first and most obvious problem was found when we stopped to visit the hotel building in Deadhorse. The lock that holds our camper's electrical panel closed had simply broken under the strain. As you can see from the first few pictures I found a novel and elegant way of fixing it. This is not the first time this particular lock has broken, and it seems pretty clear that the lock is not up to the task for which it is being used. Thus a new design for closing the panel is required. I think we can mark this one down as an Earthroamer design flaw.

Problem number two, the tea-towel rack on the front of the kitchen cabinet came loose. This is also not the first time. Guess I will be putting some lock-tite on this.

Problem number three was with the new counter top we had installed in Phoenix. Simply bad workmanship by the kitchen company that did the installation. But there is a general theme behind this issue which I will comment on below.

Problem number four, tail light wiring. This is actually a long standing problem. Over a year ago one of the taillights on the ER came loose and in the process severed the wiring harness that fed the light. This meant that the entire light fitting had to be replaced. At the time I replaced the light fitting and rewired it but left a large bundle of surplus wire. That bundle of wire keeps falling down on rough roads, so today seemed like the right time to finally shorten the wire and solve that problem. However it is worth commenting on the original causes of this problem.

  • The light came loose in the first place because it is fastened to the vehicles rear bumper with a bolt that screws into a threaded hole in the aluminum bumper. Over time and with vibration, the threads in that hole had worn away and the bolt simply pulled out. My fix for this aspect of the problem was to put in a longer bolt and put a ny-lock nut on the end of the bolt. I would also mark this one down to Earthroamer and poor implementation.

  • The second part of this issues relates to why a loose tail light assembly severed the wiring harness. The wiring to the tail light is fed through a tight fitting hole, the sharp edges of the hole had not been rounded, so that when the taillight came loose at one end, it and the hole, combined to be a perfect guillotine to sever the wire within 1/4 inch of where it enters the light fitting. This left the light fitting with only 1/4inch of wire which is too short to reconnect, thus making it necessary to replace the fitting. Again I would mark this as an error prone design.

Finally the toilet tank. The tank has a hatch on the top which is opened when one uses the toilet and closes after use to ensure that the contents stay in the tank rather than splash all over the toilet seat. Well the rough roads of today (and presumably previous days) caused the hatch opening mechanism to break. Attempting to diagnose and fix this problem was not a pleasant exercise, nor was it successful. A new tank is required.

General observation about camper construction

Long term readers of our blog will remember that back in 2012/13 while we were ironing out the bugs in our GXV/Unimog camper we often commented on the design and workmanship of that vehicle. So far the ER has escaped that kind of attention not because there is nothing to comment upon but rather because up until now we have not really undertaken any extended travel in the ER that would focus out attention on its weaknesses. I suspect this current mini-adventure will change that.

We have now owned and used three so called "off road campers", a Provan Tiger, the ER, and our GXV/Unimog and moreover we have used these vehicles extensively on rough roads, and as a result things have broken. These experiences have left me disappointed with the design and construction of such vehicles in two regards

  • The construction techniques used in these vehicles, particularly the internal cabinets and fittings, are not up to the rigors of the type of roads/tracks these vehicles are supposed to be able to travel. For example the electrical panel latch in the above discussion. More generally the use of wood screws to fasten composite board cabinets.

  • The need to fix things "in the field". In all of our vehicles we have been faced with trying to fix something that is inaccessible, or turn off something that is not isolatable. For example both the ER and GXV have a hydronic heating system, that allows the engine coolant to provide hot fresh water or to heat the engine coolant for cold weather starting. What happens if a leak develops in the coolant circuit of the hot fresh water tank. One needs to be able to isolate the engine coolant system from the hot water coolant circuit. Our GXV now has such isolation, the ER does not. For all of these vehicles more thought needs to be give to the question - if system XXX breaks/leaks/stops how will I continue to drive the vehicle

    • Camping

    We stayed at Rainbow Point Campground near the town of Donnelly at the northern end of a pleasant little lake.