My Chinese tent set up made easier.

[jclures]

First of, I hope I am posting this in the right palace.

I am starting this thread for those that find setting there camper up difficult to do, either with age or a handy cap, so I hope this might help. I think I will break it down into a series of posts, and I hope my photos work.

Camping at Old Cork Station



All the canvas up at Cowley Beach



I have been working with my Chinese made camper tent for some time, and in my opinion it is now not to bad for me to use

[jclures]

It started as a standard 12 foot Chinese made tent with 4 bows. I first shifted what I call the third bow onto the pivot point of the tent. I have now shifted the forth bow to pivot of the top of the third arm to make it a swing arm.

[jclures]

I then use three pairs of c clip poles to go to the floor.







With the use of these I am able to overnight stop and not peg the floor down at all.

[jclures]

But I think the the best set up saver for me, is the linear actuators that I have also fitted to the tent.

I have fitted two actuators to the second bow, these are 90kg actuators with 12” of lift.





They lift the tent to the upright position with ease, and also pull it back down to fold away.

[jclures]

The second set push the third bow out to tension the tent.







This is what I wanted, as with only one arm it is impossible to hold tension and adjust the tensioner screw on my own.

[jclures]

Now to see how it all works, you have to ignore the ugly bloke setting it up but here is a video of the actuators working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgadrk_-eFg

The controller is a home made job, the grey plug is power and the yellow is for the actuators.



I change the yellow plug to use the different actuators.

It only then takes me a couple of minutes to set the other poles up from the inside, as I have these stored under the bed of easy access.

The costs of doing this conversion has not been great, the actuators cost me $115au a pair, and just a little of Bonnies and my time.

[robcaz]

Great work there John. Now if you put a pair of actuators on your trailer rack, you could lift the canvas on top of the trailer when packing up too.

[cubbers]

Great work, it's great to see people finding ways to enhance the camper trailer experience. The easier it can be the better!!

Cheers Carol & John

[jclures]

robcaz I have a few more plans for actuators yet, and cubbers anything to make camping easy.

[jclures]

Now onto the bed base,

I have always used gas struts to lift the bed base, and I have it hinging in what I would call reverse to standard trailer design so I cannot us the tent to help lift or I cannot lift the bed base once the tent is erected.
I did this as I wanted a hinging boat rack on the trailer. The boat rack and bed lift on the same side, this way I have easier access to the trailer for packing and unpacking.

I have now added a single 350kg 14” lift actuator to help, actually it needs no help it can lift the bed base on it own, I have left the gas struts in place incast the actuator gives me troubel.
The other good bit is I don't trust gas struts, the actuator being what it is, it is safer to work under.



I have boxed it in to protect it when the trailer is packed.



The bottom mounts can be undone from out side of the trailer if it ever fails to lift.

A video showing how easy it lifts, the groaning is actually the gas struts, I removed them and it was quite quiet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FdRuahWOFY

and down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usybb44g5kY