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Princess Dorothy
A custom overlanding/#vanlife vehicle for expeditions and adventures. But mostly hauling plywood.
Having a box truck was a weird decade long dream of mine, and I finally accumulated enough reasons to justify getting one. The idea was to build something that could both maintain truck-ness (haul large quantities of things, full plywood sheets, etc), as well as serve as a long-duration expedition vehicle for doing dumb things in dumb places.
This page is mostly about the build-out process and some snippets of it in use.
Finished Tour
Why save the best for last?
RV windows, bailout board, roof ladder, external shower, pull-out toilet tank, and charging port
Comms mast and RV windows
How it started
Rear partially folded out. Couch folds down into a bed. Rear doors have folding rear tables.
Rear partially folded
Cargo mode. Rear fully tucked, with couch/bed folds flat against the wall
Cargo-mode full of cargo (batteries for another project)
900w of folding roof solar
Folding solar extended
Dismountable rooftop Starlink Gen3
Hot-water shower and flushing toilet
12v Air Conditioning
One of two 12v-450ah LiFePo4 (Lithium-Iron) battery packs
Hot water tank and water filtration system. 30+ gal potable tank.
Need to add back initial build photos -
Upgrade Package
Some hard lessons were learned from operating the first version, and so some upgrades were made:
- Wet wipes only get you so far, you need a real shower for any length of time,
- The less you have to do to clear a toilet, the better,
- Well-insulated boxes also get really hot really fast without good ventilation/air conditioning,
- Starlink was a game-changer, especially with the places Dorothy was going,
- Box trucks and their leaf springs are extra-wobbly. I needed to reduce the top weight by using lighter panels on the roof.
- With so many important systems on the roof, a service ladder was needed,
- Too many RV systems are 12v. I was going to need to move the batteries from 48v to to 12v (and all the copper that entailed).
- Minimize the amount of re-adjusting things you need to do while on the go.
- Less cabinet doors
- Fridges were permanent, and needed and permanent home
- Microwave was sorely missed. You can only stove-top so much. Turns out microwave/convection oven combos are a thing!
Running refrigerant lines
Drawing vacuum and adding refrigerant
Working air conditioning
Re-sized and re-welded folding couch-bed frame
Shower pan re-sized, base built, and mounted the flushing cassette toilet
My favorite metal supply shop refuses to do (even paid) cuts, and insists I "Use saw, save money!"
Flexible panels needed bracing/stiffening/wind-shielding. Even with the added aluminum, the panels were still 3x lighter than traditional panels.
Fully mounted
Had a visitor!
3D Printed Gen2 Starlink mount, fused with JB-Weld Plastic
Coated in bondo-acetone slurry: https://youtu.be/CxjqQLAy5TU
And then sanded down and painted
Threaded heat-set inserts for the...
... designed and printed spring-clips, so the Gen2 starlink could be popped in/out as needed.
Finished Gen2 Starlink mount
Ended up scraping it once Gen3 came out. 😭 The field-of-view upgrade really improved flat-mount use. It's already-flatness also let me quickly whip up a 2020 extrusion and laser-cut Delrin mount. I was at least able to reuse the aluminum roof-mount brackets.
Sharp cabinet corners proved a hazzard
Sliding front cabin doors, magnetically latched
Rear-view camera
Rear space heater
Alarm System
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