December 28, 2023. It's been quite a while - eight months to the day - since the last Rig Review, making this only the second review of 2023. That's just pure lazy on my part, but I'll plead "no way to work on the truck since it's been in Las…
6 CommentsTag: rtt
TL;DR - currently I have 12V LED strip lighting in my tent and it works great. However, I want to update the lighting to use 5v, so I can power it from a (more versatile) USB port, rather than using a 12v receptacle. One of the things that my newly…
Leave a CommentTL;DR - the aluminum plates that I installed to address the holes forming where the ladder standoffs were wearing through the floor skin have worked great. Highly recommend. With a 2x2.5" pad of aluminum, there's plenty of surface area to spread out the force of the ladder standoffs.
Leave a CommentApril 28, 2023. The big news on this Rig Review is that the Tacoma has been stored in Las Vegas, largely eliminating the long, 20+ hour slog to get from the PNW to the SW before a winter adventure. While this has definitely reduced the wear and tear on the…
5 CommentsTL;DR - The two spots where the ladder rests on the bottom of the tent have developed holes in the aluminum floor. My Mt. Shasta Pioneer roof top tent (RTT) from Cascadia Vehicle Tents (CVT) has been fantastic since I ordered and picked it up in 2016. Sure, I've had…
Leave a CommentTL;DR - The zipper finally failed catastrophically. Both CVT and YKK had amazing customer service and solved the problem in different ways. While exploring the backroads of Oregon's Hart Mountain, the zipper on the cover of the CVT tent finally failed. This has been an ongoing issue for the last…
Leave a CommentTwo of my favorite camping conveniences just got better. Ever since I modified my tire inflator to extend the hose on it - enabling me to inflate tires standing up rather than crouching down - I've been very happy. Old guys don't want to strain their knees when out camping.…
6 CommentsApril 14, 2021 When I started Rig Reviews several years ago, I quickly found that after addressing a few significant items, most trips seemed to go smoothly, with relatively few notable issues - good or bad - cropping up along the way. But, on my last trip to Utah, that…
2 CommentsMarch 8, 2021. Over the course of the winter, the truck has performed well. Four (!) trips down to the desert to stay warm have put a bunch of miles on the odometer and resulted in only a few little tweaks to the set up. But any tweak is worth…
11 CommentsTL;DR - Dropping poles into the RTT pole bag is asking for trouble. Nothing a little sewing can't fix, though. Not much to say here except that through normal use, the pole bag will wear out (or holes will be worn into the bottom of the bag as poles are…
Leave a CommentTL;DR - For the last several trips, I've had to lubricate the zipper on the @Cascadia Vehicle Tents tarp *every* time I close it up. That sucks. I mentioned in a previous rig review that I was having trouble with the zippers. For a trip or two, some lubricant (water)…
Leave a CommentAugust 29, 2020. Well, it's been a while since a rig review - things have been working reasonably well; a nice side effect of constantly evaluating and tweaking the setup of the truck to dial it in. Since last time, we've completed the following trips: Nevada Backcountry Discovery Route Bridge-to-Bridge…
Leave a CommentTL;DR - The tent is still great, but I've got some qualms with the tarp/cover - part of it is coming unstitched, and the zipper sucks whenever it gets dusty. I won't go into all the reasons I like my CVT Mt. Shasta tent - there are many. On this…
Leave a CommentTL;DR - After cinching down the cover for the tent a few hundred times, the stitching for one of the buckles on one of the cover straps ripped out. I sewed it back together and everything is good again. I think there was probably some very minor manufacturing defect in…
Leave a CommentBeing a heavy user of my Cascadia Tents (CVT) Mt. Shasta roof top tent (RTT), I get asked - somewhat infrequently - what I think about it after all those nights on the trail. And, I often find myself evaluating it against other RTT offerings that I see on other…
4 CommentsTL;DR - If you don't carry a small 2'x3' door mat for the bottom of your tent ladder, or in front of your tent, you should. Keeps the tent clean and is a great mat to work on when something goes wrong with the truck. The mat we have is…
Leave a CommentRig Review is a new type of post that I'm going to try to write up after most trips, where I'll note any things that worked really well, or could have been better. The idea has always been to optimize the Tacoma build and setup over time, so there's nothing…
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