Background
Having made the decision that a 5th wheeler was the correct option for us (see The vision…), we starting looking into specifics. Online advice suggests settling on the van first, then finding a vehicle to tow it. I don’t think we had actually read this, but kinda fell into doing it this way.
Van
Our first thoughts and plans were to buy a second-hand outfit, preferably complete with tow-vehicle. We spent countless hours surfing online classifieds and comparing offerings. At some point we realised that while we had a bit of an idea what we liked we didn’t really know *exactly* what we wanted, so we agreed we should look at a few new ones and chat to a few manufacturers to help us understand more.
We went to a few exhibitions/shows, without really resolving much of our confusion. Newcastle seemed to have a little cluster of vendors, so we planned a day-trip. Then we found Jim at Summer Life RV! After some time at the factory, he generously invited us to look at his own 5th wheeler in a van park down the road.
We were absolutely blown away!
Not only was the same attention to build detail and carefully thought-through design that had been evident in the smaller off-road vans on his lot, but his van had everything we had ever considered as necessary/useful in a truly beautiful package. The trip home saw some hard thinking about $$, but in the end we came to the point that this was going to be our home for the next number of years and we needed it to be somewhere that we enjoyed being. The comfort of the risk-mitigation of buying new with a manufacturer’s warranty and ongoing support was also a key contributing factor.
When our house sold we signed up for the “Summer Life Drifter 29 Off Grid” and it’s currently under construction.
Update 2023:
We took delivery of the van in late May 2023, see below for more detail.
Truck
Choosing the right vehicle became an exercise (in frustration) in itself!
The frustration starts with the regulations—there aren’t any specific to 5th wheelers 🙁
[this in itself warrants a separate post, which I’ll get around to one day]
OK, only about 12 months after I wrote that, see Regulatory, legal and engineering shenanigans for a story about what we found.
Our first option was a Toyota Hilux with a (relatively common) GVM upgrade. To be clear, there’s nothing especially magic about the Toyota, all of the others in that class are essentially equivalent. However, they all have the same issue of load capacity—see that separate post mentioned above—which would leave basically no “headroom” whatsoever for carrying anything in the truck.
Second option was to go to a larger American “pickup” e.g. the Chev Silverado or Dodge Ram. Unfortunately as well as being horrendously expensive, their overall load capacity (in the tray) is less than that of a Hilux.
The third option we considered was to take the Hilux and do a 6-wheel conversion on it. This would address the load capacity, and is what Jim from Summer Life does himself (albeit with the equivalent Ford vehicle). The mental hurdle here was the idea of taking a brand-new ~$70k vehicle and “cutting it up” 🙁
We finally landed on going with a light truck, with the Iveco Daily being well-regarded in online forums (?fora?). Ours is currently being finalised for the tray fitting, etc.
Progress pics as we build…
Progress pictures of the truck build
Progress pictures of the van build
Pics of the rig as delivered
(some pro shots courtesy Travelhome plus some from our initial “shakedown” run—May 2023)
We were still waiting on decals; the bloke that does them for Travelhome was on a very inconveniently timed holiday 🙁