What goes into a mini tent camper? A lot, actually.

As I’ve built each version of the Kampereen mini tent camper, I’ve tried to keep a running list of the parts I’ve used. I started that mostly because I thought I might build a few more of these over time, and if so, it would be handy to have a full bill of materials (BOM). That would make reordering more efficient and it would help me determine the real cost of parts.

I thought it would be a fairly short list because motorcycle campers are small, simple vehicles. Nope.

Tent camper costs

To illustrate, I took a screenshot of a simplified version of the BOM for the K3 design. There are 90 line items, so to fit them on the screen, I had to do some reformatting. As of this writing, the total cost for that BOM to build a K3 was just under $2,000.

A brief aside: I can hear some people right now saying “Hell, I built a camper just like that for $500.” (A: That’s bullshit. And B: Show me.) If I were building these in quantity I could realize some savings through bulk purchases, but scale production is not something I care to do.

More BOM benefits

Besides helping identify the true cost of parts, another good reason to do this is to help identify places where some things could be consolidated or simplified. My original BOM was about ten lines longer, but once I got a look at everything being used, I found I was using five different screw sizes, but I could just as easily use two different types. Same thing with bolts–I had three different lengths of 1/4″ bolts in the first camper and only really needed one.

Setasides

Another thing I did to simplify the build process was to start a bin containing only parts that I knew I would be using on the next camper. This included a lot of the small stuff: bolts, screws, nuts and washers, lights, trim, latches. As I gathered the pieces I needed, those went into the bin and I marked that line item on the BOM as complete.

For the most recent build I did, I think this cut about three months out of the time from project start to finish. Once I started, I knew I had everything on hand I needed to complete the project. The very few items I did not have, such as carpet, were readily available and close by.

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