Wednesday 22 March 2017

New Boots for the Mog

After a long hesitation I finally decided to get  14.5-20 tires. The selection was Continental MPT 81, and they were not available from Finland at any sensible price. So I ordered them from "Rengas-Online", I guess tires were sent from Germany. The tire set was sent straight to a tire shop, where I drove the car and tires were changed. Now the ride is a bit smoother and rpms are a bit lower for a given speed. Now it looks more like an off-road vehicle. It remains to be seen how these tires can handle those sharp basalt rocks of Iceland highlands.



The spare tire is still 12.5R20, since the 14.5" is a bit tight in the place and can rub the bed when chassis moves.

Plan for test ride

Before starting to build a camper, the Mog needs a test ride. It should reveal if it can handle what it takes to be a expedition camper. Also it is a test for me, to see if the camper is the way to travel.

The destination is trip number 5 to Iceland. I need some basic equipment to have overnights out in wild. A bunk to sleep in, a cooker to cook and some camping stuff onboard. Of course there must be a place for a bike.

First thing was to make a bunk/box with plywood. It has 3 compartments and winch batteries are in the rear compartment. The rest is a storage space. Second thing was a table for cooking, again from plywood.

At rear I built a small crane with manual cable winch to lift bike up and down from the bed. The crane came from two circular tubes and some pipe and stuff to attach it into the bed.


So there is a sleeping room in the left, a kitchen is back there, the garage is in the right and a living room is everything outside to box.

Winch battieries are now charged by the car ganerator through original connector. I had to make a new connections soldering wires to original mil-connector, which can be found from the Glenair mil connectors catalog.
The logic of charging is that in the bed side connector, the ground pin is connected back to a feedback pin, which draws relay on. Also the relay connects only when engine is running. To be sure, there is a relay also in winch battery box, which connects only if there is a charging voltage present in input wires.

Two inverters are in standby waiting for installation. A small 180W inverter will be in the cabin to feed laptop PC. There is not many places behind instrument box where I can connect the feeding wires. In the Bed, there will be a 800W inverter, which can feed small tools and mainly it is for charging all sort of batteries for electronics.

A Mobicool FR 40 compressor cool box waits for installation. It can run with 12VDC, 24VDC and 220VAC with fairly low energy. Temp range is -10C to +10C and volume is about 38 litres.