Sunday, August 11, 2013

A Very Impressive Mobile Office And Holiday Home On Wheels...

I recently caught up with Grant, Miriam and their children Luca and Jake on their maiden voyage in their new pride and joy here at Tokerau Beach.
This most impressive rig had been finished that morning after eighteen months of hard work and here they were, enjoying the fruits of their labours just a couple of hours later.
I first saw it from a distance and it looked as though a spaceship had landed. Its massive bonnet, the solar array reaching for the sky and the popouts, well, popped out.
The tractor unit is a 2002 International with a 450hp engine with all the bells and whistles, an eighteen speed gearbox that I guess you could play with all day. The finished rig is eighteen tonnes and is twelve metres long, two and a half metres wide and 4.150m high. It carries 1500 litres of water, the black tank will contain 500 litres and the grey tank, 900.The fuel tank holds 400 litres which is just as well because the beast is a thirsty one consuming one litre every three kilometres travelled.
The hydraulically tilted solar array consists of four 220 watt Sharp Solar panels which feed four 260 amphour state of the art batteries. The original tractor unit was a mere six metres until it had a surgically induced stretch procedure as you'll see below.
The windows are all double glazed and  the complete structure is totally insulated with natural wool batts installed between 50mm refrigeration paneling and 25mm ply.
This marvellous mobile office and motorhome is an engineering masterpiece and of course one of my favourite features is the state of the art food defroster shown in the bottom photo...










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10 comments:

  1. That is one beautiful rig!! They can be proud of that and especially so since they built it themselves. Trouble is, if they come to not liking some feature, they have no one to blame. . .

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  2. Green with envey, that's all I can say.
    Petercw

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  3. I think I could afford the food defroster. Pretty sure the rest is out of budget. Still, it's one heck of a nice rig. They did a nice job.

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  4. OMG Awesome! What a beauty! In love :)

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  5. Wow! Awesome!
    Why not have your home portable - great plan I think!

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  6. An amazing vehicle. I saw it parked at a beach just south of Paihia in the Bay of Islands. I nearly drove off the road gazing in awe at this monster. It was towing a small car behind so would have been 15 meters or more on the road.

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  7. Where did they build this vehicle?

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    Replies
    1. It was built near Kerikeri in New Zealand's Bay of Islands.

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