Family Of 5 Joining The Fun!

Andrew Cushingham

Andrew Cushingham

Novice
Hello,

Just picked up number 996 and took her home to Tennessee! Our 560 has some special accessories for our family of 5 to enjoy outdoor adventures together. My kids are 13, 11, and 7. Our 7 year old still fits in the bunks but not for long! We had Cary and the Camp-Inn team install an iKamper roof top tent for the kids and a wrap around awning for sun and rain protection. Below are a few glam shots Cary sent us before we picked it up and some additional build details.

Roof top tent (RTT) is a Skycamp 2.0, adding a king size second room. 1 minute deployment and 2 minute take down. The ladder opens to the curb side and clears the 560 door to open. Very cool space.

Awning is a Bunduawn by Bundutec. Similar to a Batwing, this wraps around 4 sides of the camper and matches well with the RTT. It also deploys in literally a minute, providing TONS of shade and rain protection. My two favorite features are that the self supporting design does not require support poles, and it elevates the ceiling height when deployed, allowing an extra nearly 2’ of headroom! ( No plastic parts to break either.) Cary and Craig designed a slick and very sturdy mounting bracket for it and set the height an inch below my garage door opening height (83” opening).

Finally we added a bike rack on the rear hitch by 1UP-USA. It holds 2 bikes, folds up when unloaded to give decent galley access, and folds down when the bikes are on for emergency galley access. The rack gives great road clearance with the second bike tray higher than the first.

We love camping, but a weekend trip for our family of 5 felt like 80% setup and tear down and 20% camping. Our hope is to set this rig up for rapid deployment and flip those percentages so we can enjoy more outdoor adventures together.

Tow vehicle is a minivan and there might be a pickup truck in the future.

I’ve admired the teardrop camper for many years and am excited to finally have one to enjoy. We are having fun coming up with her nickname. So far the favorite is SMUDGE. I think you all know why that might be :)

Cary and Craig and the team at Camp-inn gave us that famous customer service and made us feel special. They did a fabulous job and we loved the factory tour.

I’ve been thankful for all the info on this forum and look forward to contributing.

Cheers.
 

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Andrew,

Awesome set-up - it actually mirrors what we want to do (tent and awning) in the next couple years (at least dreams are free :)), I hadn't seen that awning before and was wrestling with various concepts of how to get additional head-room; great to find out about this one. I was curious if you have put the tongue on a scale - I would be interested in knowing what the tongue weight is (and if the weight is with or w/out the bike rack on). It was interesting watching the weight come off when I put our bike rack and couple bikes on; loading some of the cargo forward "fixes" it.

Welcome a-board!
 
Jenn said:
Number 996!!! That in itself is very exciting!

You have just purchased the best teardrop camper on the market and in this time of rooftop tents and Batwing canopies you look like you have just stepped into the new era of Teardropping. I am very excited for you and look forward to hearing how this works. Can the canopy be staked down in wind? Does it have privacy walls? It looks like the bike rack swings to the side?

Welcome!

Jenn
Click to expand...

Thank you! We are excited to join in the fun. The awning indeed can be staked down in wind and comes with integrated guy lines and a set of substantial stakes with spring tension absorbers. Privacy walls are available as well as a corner extension which we did buy to increase coverage over the galley.

The bike rack can fold up or down but does not swing to the side. There is a side swing attachment which we considered for easy galley access but it had 3 problems: bumper interference, it would extend the bike rack back a foot, increasing leverage and force, and the bike rack manufacturer did not recommend it to be used with a camper.
 
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You sold us on the Bunduawn. We hope you get a spiff! Do you have a picture of the corner extension.? We think our number is 1010 which means a snowy trip from Seattle to Necedah in January. Yikes
 
Wondering what the exterior height of the camper is with the roof top tent on top? Are you still able to park in a standard 7ft garage?
 
Yeah man. One of the best parts is it fits in the garage! I’ve got 1-2” of clearance on a 7’ garage door.

Garage

Garage

Fits in the garage!

I gave Cary the max height measurement of my garage door and they made sure to mount the Bunduawn and iKamper RTT below that height.
 
Grant said:
Wondering what the exterior height of the camper is with the roof top tent on top? Are you still able to park in a standard 7ft garage?
Click to expand...

we also fit our 560 with a RTT into a standard garage space. However, there are some caveats to note:

not all RTTs are the same height or mounted the same way. It’s possible some can fit and some can’t

with our 560, we have to lower the tongue jack to its lowest setting to push the camper into the garage. We can NOT hitch the camper to the tow hitch and pull it out of the garage - the height of the camper when connected to our tow vehicles hitch is too high and the RTT would impact the garage door frame

while we have been able to get our 560 into a standard garage space, it seems like self-storage lots have slightly lower standard heights. We have not been able to get the camper with the RTT to fit into a self-storage space.
 
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