Bottle Hook

I sometimes need to get a drink in the middle of the night, but I sleep near the back door, and there's no good place to store my water bottle. I decided to repurpose one of the snap screws as a way to anchor a hook for my water bottle. 

I used a 'rope hook' and a #8 1 1/2" self-drilling screw, costing about $2.00.

Update 2020:

This was a big success, so my wife wanted one on her side. I used a slightly smaller hook (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BQMUJ2/) and reused one of the holes from the 'bed seat belt' that I had removed.  Works great.

Dec-19-2019

Disassembling the Garage

One member of the Revel Facebook group, Marcus Hammitt, has disassembled the garage in his Revel, and he's documented the outcome, along with providing measurements. The photos are reproduced here with his kind permission.

Organizational System for Our Gear

The Revel doesn't have much built-in storage, and we like to stay very organized in a small van, or things get chaotic and unworkable very quickly. In other words, we're 'everything must have its place' people. Here is what we've done to keep ourselves organized -- this is basically how we roll after fine-tuning it for a few months.

We are not adventure sports people (although we admire them!), so we don't have climbing gear, kayaks, etc. Instead, we do 'backroad/offroad touring', usually with our bikes on a rack behind us, and our gear reflects that. This is basically how we make camp every night (scene from breakfast at Joshua Tree in January): zero-gravity chairs for campfires and star-gazing, and a folding table for meals and miscellanea.

We keep the bedding on the bed, and just raise the bed everyday so that we have access to the garage, and the bedding stays clean and tidy. 

All of our gear is organized into tubs. From left to right: 

• Lower left grey tub is for the water resupply, like water hose and filter, gravity pour spout, funnel, water bandit, etc. 
• Upper left grey tub is for pantry and household sundry overflow, like garbage bags, extra paper towels, ziplocs, laundry soap, extra boxed/bagged food.
• Lower blue tub in the middle is power cord, large toolset, jumper cables, emergency equipment, extension cords; 
• Upper blue tub in the middle is footwear: boots, shoes, flip flops; 
• Black tub is firewood, firestarter, kindling, hatchet, gloves, marshmallow forks for smores, and other campfire stuff;
• Lynx Levelers and Dustbuster (it has found a home since this picture was taken);
• Outdoor zero-gravity chairs and outdoor folding table. 

I have not used a single bungee cord — the carpet in the back keeps everything from slipping. And there are labels on everything, which gives us inner peace, dammit.

Looking at the back row of garage:

• On the right we have two grey tubs that serve as our 'clothes closets'; these are his & hers tubs, and they hold about 10 days worth of clothes in an organized fashion.
• Just above them is a tub full of full water jugs for drinking; until we’ve had a chance to sanitize and install a water filter on the line, we are carrying drinking water. This is not sustainable, and we will not keep buying/hauling jugs of water in the near future.
• On the left is the cargo net, which holds all of our exercise equipment for daily exercise: yoga mat, weights, resistance bands, tarp for outside exercise, and small ball.

Nightstand Pockets

We've really missed having some sort of 'nightstand' on either side of the bed for all the normal stuff: kindles, chapstick, kleenex, etc. 

We decided to install some sort of cargo pockets on the wall above the bed, and decided that it should have a rigid frame, no adhesive, and accommodate enough stuff without ripping out of the wall. I found these things on Amazon, and they came to us from Germany (took a couple of weeks to receive them).

I was extremely concerned about putting holes in the wall near the flares, because the flares are made of fiberglass. Also, it was unclear to me if the plastic 'shell' that surround the whole garage would be strong enough to hold screws & weight.  After taking some measurements of the plastic and the fiberglass, I settled on these screws, and they worked perfectly, staying away from the fiberglass. If you do this, I highly recommend these screws (7x1/2" flathead), but don't over-tighten them, or you'll lose your grip in the plastic!

The pockets work very well, and are rock-solid, no danger of them falling off the wall at all.

2020 Update

This system continues to work well, but we added yet more storage with this pocket, ideal for holding iPads and similar. Once again, I used simple screws in the plastic walls, and there have been no problems at all with it.

Audio System Part 2

After upgrading the amplifier, speakers, and subwoofer, as detailed here, we decided it was time for speakers in the back.

We went with these mid-grade Focals for about 1/3 the price of the pair that we put in the front, and they sound great. We spray-painted the grills to match the interior, and they came out pretty well. We also added plenty of Dynamat in the doors for sound insulation and vibration-deadening.

To get the speaker wires from the amplifier in the base of the passenger seat to the rear doors, we elected to go under the van. We dropped the wires from the amplifier under the passenger seat to the undercarriage through an existing grommet. Then we ziptied the wires to the frame, shown here. I didn’t do the zipties, and as I look at this now, I think I’ll redo it and use stronger zipties. Sigh. (Note that others have simply run the wires inside the cabin, through the galley cabinetry, etc. This is ideal, but seemed onerous and lengthy to us, so we went with this approach.)

In the rear corners of the van, we drilled small holes into the bottom of the tail light housing, and the wires entered the body of the van there.

After the wires were in the taillight housing, we simply ran them through the rubber conduit that you see here. At this point, the wires are in the doors, and we pulled them up to the speakers to finish the job. It took about 4 hours to install and wire the rear speakers.

Garage Lighting

One obvious flaw that WGO overlooked is a light under the bed, especially for night. I installed an LED that I found at a truck stop while on the road. You have to have a light down here somewhere.

Since these pictures were taken, I have installed two more: one near the right rear door, in the wheel recess, and the other near the rear heater duct. This allows for light whenever you need it: accessing the garage from outside, or accessing it from the hallway.

Cargo Net in the Garage

My wife and I feel that ‘everything has to have its place’ in a small van, and can’t stand disorganized, jumbled crap rolling around & getting under foot. Since we travel with oddly-shaped exercise equipment (like the yoga mat, below), we needed a simple solution for it. 

As a first approximation, I threw this cargo net solution together very quickly. It was wider than we needed, so it’s doubled over on the right side, but could stretch to the back corner of the van, if needed. 

I wanted any/all mods to be non-destructive, so I used existing screws for the tie-down points for the cargo net. In this case, I bought some ‘1 Hole Strap’ fittings that are used for tying down electrical conduit, and bent them to make them a bit smaller & tighter. 

Just to be clear, I did NOT drill new holes here, I just used existing wood screws that fastened to the cabinetry through the plastic housing. 

This is ugly, but it was the fast, $2 solution that my hardware store had. I’m just CERTAIN that there is a little device that slips over a screw head in order to provide a ring or hook point, but I’ll be damned if I could find anything in my local store. 

Edit: This would be an improvement: https://fasteners.fasnap.com/viewitems/metal-d-rings-hardware/screw-mounted-d-rings

WGO ships the Revel with three screws in the top of the bolster (under the bolster pillow) that are driven into the steel frame. I used these as the anchor points, then attached two chain links and an S-hook. Again, this was the fast, $3 solution to the problem that I found in my limited hardware store. 

Edit: This would be an improvement: https://fasteners.fasnap.com/viewitems/metal-d-rings-hardware/screw-mounted-d-rings

Here’s the cargo net that I bought off Amazon for a few dollars. 

Update 2020

I finally followed my own advice and used D-rings throughout the project. I'm not sure if I'll continue to use the black plastic hooks that accompanied the cargo net, or if I'll maybe bend some S-hooks.

Screen Compartment

I didn't like the fact that our screens and tarps didn't have a safe, flat place to reside without getting smashed or bent. 

I noticed that there about 3 inches of vertical space in the rear of the bed, so I decided to make a compartment for the screens and tarps there. However, the belts that raise the bed also travel through this space, so I needed a way to shield the screens and ensure that they didn't slide into the belts and get chewed up.

I wandered the aisles of my hardware store to find something that was L-shaped, lightweight, several inches high, and could be installed into the Revel non-destructively. I came up with this thing, which has a plastic L shape and which I could easily cut into two pieces with a hacksaw.

I fastened the two pieces to the inside of the bed with double-sided tape. In the above picture, you can see one of the pieces forming the left side of the new screen compartment. 

This is an overview of the new 22x29x4" compartment with the screens inside. The left and right sides are formed with these L-shapes, the top is formed by the center brace that Winnebago installed in the bed, and the bottom side is formed by the side of the bed itself. This works very well - - they don't move around, they don't get beat up & smashed/bent, and they are easy to access by just lifting the mattress and reaching in.

Hot Air Deflector

The rear heating vent (in the garage) blows straight out onto the cargo and under the bed. In order to avoid scorching cargo and to circulate the air a bit better, I installed this air deflector (Model # HD9 Internet #100550643 Store SKU #146331). I found it at Home Depot - - they sell two different sizes, I found that the largest one (HD9) fits best.

Carpet in the Garage

The floors seem to scratch easily, so I added some cheap carpet (that I could cut with scissors) as an experiment. This stuff was about $20 at a big box store.

I used the existing screws to tack it down along the door, but should use some washers, too. Trying to keep it from sliding as boxes & tubs come in and out.

I also opted to put the tie-downs on top, as they help to keep the carpet in place.