The K2 tent camper offered me many new learning opportunities. Many, many. First, I knew the idea of this popup camper was going to be too long to go without some kind of support under the base of the cargo box. The footprint of the camper would equal the sleeping area and the sleeping area […]
This is a short video showing the first Kampereen K3 tent camper road test. It’s always an anxious moment when I take a new design out for the first time to see if it will behave well at speed. The first tow is done with an empty camper. Weight seems to hide some handling problems […]
When developing this folding teardrop camper prototype, I shot a quick phone video to show a friend how the fold/unfold action worked. I was handling this carefully because the plastic was held to the sides with thumbtacks and it wasn’t hard to pull through the material or pop a tack. Self-opening pop up teardrop camper […]
The idea for my next camper design came while I was sitting in camp, enjoying an afternoon with K1. I was intent on finding a way to overcome some of the limitations of the first prototype but the inability to do my own sewing was proving to be a big stumbling block. Every design I […]
Okay, let’s review the stated original goals for the camper and how this current tent camper design measured up: Light weight. Check. Safe towing dimensions. Check. Decent cargo capacity. Yes. Roadworthy. Yes. Fast, easy setup. Eh. Standing area for easy ingress/dressing. No. Easy access to cargo. No. I had a decent, working pop up camper […]
It took me about a year and a half to get from the start of Prototype Zero to the finish of Prototype One. What I got in the end was a usable motorcycle camper. The cargo box kept the same footprint as the old camper so I could reuse the tent, but it was more […]
After settling into our new place and spending about six months building out garage cabinets, I started looking again at the Kampereen prototype tent camper. I wanted to get this thing done. Requirement #1: Whatever I did would need to fit the footprint of the tent because I didn’t want to drop another $600 on […]
Maybe “camper prototype post mortem” is a better term. When I got the box done, I needed a frame and a tent. The frame on this prototype was done with electrical conduit. I didn’t like the outcome and I went through a few yards of tubing trying to get good bends for the corners using […]
Where to start on this tent trailer thing? After Rod dropped that PVC form on my desk, I really started thinking about this project. Over a week or two I’d roughed out some sketches of the camper I wanted to build and had some tentative dimensions in mind but nothing concrete. This was going to […]
So the first thing I learned about designing and prototyping a DIY motorcycle camper (I already knew this instinctively, but hadn’t experienced it firsthand), the first thing I learned is that you follow a lot of paths that lead to a lot of dead ends. Some quickly. Others, you follow for a long time, enduring […]
