Modding Our R-Pod

In my last post you heard about the purchase of our R-Pod travel trailer and the need to modify it to fit our needs.  Some things we changed/added right away, some things were added more recently.  This post is a collection of all of the things we have done so far to modify our R-Pod, in no particular order.

We wanted to have a way to show off all of the states we visited with our trailer, and of course Amazon had us covered with this vinyl decal.  Every time we visit a new state, we add a sticker.

California isn’t too bad when it comes to bugs, but we do have a lot of spiders by us.  We knew we would be visiting a lot of states with far worse bug issues, and had heard how they can get inside openings in your camper and wreak havoc.  This was an easy fix, and once again Amazon had us covered.

 

Now we all know that “everybody poops”, but not everyone does in their RV/trailer.  Once we got over the idea of it, we had to get some high quality hoses and then we needed somewhere to store them.  After some minor modifications, these sewer hose holders from Camping World did the trick.

It’s nice to know what the temperature is outside and with this unit from our friends at Amazon not only do we know the temperature outside (thanks to a sensor mounted under the trailer) but we also added an additional sensor inside our refrigerator to make sure it is cooling properly.

When cooking, it’s nice to have your knifes nearby.  We have a magnetic knife bar on the wall of our kitchen and we love it. It made perfect sense to put something similar in the trailer.  So far, the magnet has been strong enough that no knifes have gone flying while traveling down the road.

Similar to the knifes, we needed somewhere to keep the spices and other small containers.  These just use 3M tape to hold them up to the wall and keep everything upright and out of our limited cabinet space.

Speaking of cabinets, we found these sweet bins at our local Bed, Bath and Beyond and they fit perfectly.  There are actually four in this cabinet (you can only see two), which helps keep everything from sliding around and tipping over.

Our dinette table originally had these fancy, spring-loaded, folding table legs.  They were pretty nice, but took up so much room underneath the table, that anyone with long legs (me), couldn’t slide into the dinette very easily.  We fixed that by replacing the whole unit with this pedestal mount.  The leg just pulls out and the table can still move down to become the support for the bed.  The table has a little more wobble to it than before, but this is worth it for the ability for 4 adults to now sit around it.

Our bathroom is a “wet bath” which means the toilet and shower are the same room.  It’s kind of like showering in a phone booth, though I doubt anyone younger than us even knows what that means.  Space was at a premium and originally our bathroom had a small corner sink.  The sink was small enough to not really be much use, but large enough to be a real nuisance when showering.  It is actually quite a common mod to remove these.  We did just that, and upgraded the shower head/fixture to one designed to give maximum pressure/flow from an RV system.  It has made a huge difference in our shower experience.

One of the first changes we made, was the mattress.  Our trailer has what they call a “RV Queen”, which is shorter than an actual Queen bed.  As someone who is 6 feet tall, this is already not comfortable.  The original mattress with our trailer was maybe 4 inches thick and useless.  Found this one online and it is more than double the thickness of the original.  It also has real springs and padding in it and is quite comfortable.

Our trailer came with a 19″ LCD TV.  Now normally when camping, we don’t really spend any time inside watching tv.  Our last trip to Lake Del Valle, it rained for two of the four days we were there.  After being thankful for having a trailer to go inside, we did partake in a little TV.  We quickly realized that the tv mount that came with our trailer was terrible.  Not only could we not position the tv properly for view from the bed or the dinette, it was also tilted at an angle up.  A quick and cheap fix from Amazon made watching tv in the R-Pod easier and no longer hurt our necks.

Our trailer sleeps “four”.  Two in the queen bed and two in the dinette bed.  Being that our trailer is only 20 feet long, the two beds are not very far apart.  We were getting ready to go camping with my mother and Andi pointed out that it might be nice to have at least a little privacy in our beds.  Some tension curtain rods, curtains, and a little sewing help from my sister and we had privacy curtains for both of the sleeping areas that slid out-of-the-way during the day.

Even when camping, you want to make sure you don’t look like a complete hot mess.  Some 3M tape and a cheap mirror and we had ourselves a mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

We have a great little exhaust fan in the bathroom, that can really move air.  It’s great for pulling in fresh air and cooling down the trailer.  This little add-on enables us to leave the vent cover open all the time, even when traveling.  It keeps bugs and water out and lets the air in.  A must have, in my opinion.

All of our outside storage compartments had key locks before, and it was a pain.  Also, every other camper had the same locks with the same keys.  These were easy to swap out and now we don’t need to carry keys around.

Our trailer came with dual batteries, which is very nice.  We did upgrade a little though, by adding on a battery cutoff switch.  In addition to this, we added an external battery charger/maintainer.  With the batteries disconnected via the cutoff, this will do a better job keeping the batteries at full charge long-term than the onboard charger.

Spinning those manual jacks up and down are a real pain.  With this electric one, all we have to do is hold a switch.  It’s great for making sure we get the trailer perfectly level.

 

So those are all the mods we have done so far.  Check back, as we have more planned before we head out on our trip.