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Driving Away

I guess it’s time I posted this last major build post. I’ll probably end up renaming and/or relocating the blog and continue with updates as the trailer build progresses. (Done.) And there will be trips to document too … For now, here’s what happened.

When we last left off, we had primed and sealed the exterior with Kilz2 and it was glowing in the dark.

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The next morning, I did another coat of Kilz2 over everything glowing. And then my dad started on the exterior paint. Red! To match the Jeep!

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The first bit of color …

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From there, on a serious deadline to get the trailer road-worthy (aka legal DOT lights, securable and not glowing in the dark) I completely slacked off on photos. (Thanks to my stepmom Cindy for documenting some of the rest.) I did the rest of the trailer wiring – through the hatch while dad painted.

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Door painting while attempting to crawl inside and wire stuff.

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Door painting while attempting to crawl inside and wire stuff.

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Post hatch wiring when we found the hatch wouldn’t close. I rough cut the front of my counter off and dad made some serious dents with the sawz-all, a hammer and chisel on the 2×2 rails and the frame of the hatch. (It wasn’t fun to demo what we’d built but I had to get on the road and the hatch had to at least close for that.)

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The battery box and framing was complete. We wrapped up the wiring and packed it under the battery for transport. The trip home would be without 12v power.

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I also took advantage of the bed side storage and backed in parts yet to be used – rear stabilizers, wiring and sockets – as well as things I’d potentially use on the road like my backpacking stove and an inflator that doubles as a vacuum.

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Windows in, painted around and opening for some breeze.

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Since the real plate for Rolbak was somewhere on I-71, we added a sheet of paper to the license plate bracket to satisfy the police. Then we made some interesting work of rigging the hatch to close.

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Ready for take off!

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Dad helped be back the Jeep up to the trailer.

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Then he said good-bye to the cats (Statler, Simon and Izzy) and his grand-beagle Amos. (Tupelo was up front since she called shotgun.)

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Optimizr with her companion Rolbak. (#databasegeek)

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And we were off. (And praying it didn’t just fall apart completely.)

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On the road! (At 2+pm CT…)