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Everything mechanical was running great, so I decide to mess with.  A 22 gallon tank doesn’t give us much range, so I up-sized to a 43ish gallon tank that is EFI ready if I ever decide to get fuel injection. I couldn’t find anyone to build and install it form me, so I had to work with a company if CA to design and build the tank, then I was back on back for the second time replacing the tank.

The pump is inside the tank and is an EFI tank, so I needed a regulator to bring it back to carb pressures after the EFI installer talked me out of EFI. I was worried for a couple of days because the regulator company said I needed bigger lines, but the gas tank supplier said not to worry about it.  It seemed the regulator guys were right because I couldn’t get the pressure down, but it turns out they sent me the wrong part and everything was fine.

The first vent line was too low and poured fuel when the tank was full and the Dale was at an angle.  I put the vent in the spare tire next, but the vent line got pinched and didn’t quite work.  There was also a leak in the service plate, so the tank came down again to work those issues out.  I’m not just waiting for a proper vent and the fuel system will be done.

We made it through the mountains pulling the Mini!

We were able to climb the big hill into the mountains and then up and down the pass both ways to winter park.

I don’t think there is anywhere we can’t go now.

We’ve always had a problem with the door on the Great Dale. There was no way to latch it open and it would blow around in the wind. I tried a standard RV door latch in the beginning, but the bedroom windows sick out too far. Larry tried a couple of options when he re-skinned it, but gave up in the end.

I finally had an idea and scraped up a prototype using an piece of angled metal with two holes in an existing screw hole at the top and a block of wood. The block of wood had a screw in one side to connect with the angle on the body of the RV and then I cut a diagonal slot in the wood to hold the door. Then I added a handle to make it easy to install and remove and, low and behold, it worked pretty well. It also fell apart pretty quickly.

I was going to make the final wood block in the shape of of the Great Dale, but decided it would be too big and bulky. Then I hit on the idea of making it the shape of the original 1965 Dodge Coronet, and that was perfect.

Here’s the new prototype that I whipped up in an afternoon. It’s working great! I plan on learning some carving in the off season to ad some detail before I finish it to match the screen door.

The Great Dale Swamp Cooler prototype is complete and tested.

This is a modification of a modification of the home depot swamp coolers that people usually build for Burning Man.

I made a couple previously for burning man and learned a lot from my mistakes.

The idea here is that you can get better cooling with more surface area as per this post

DIY portable camping PVC pipe evap air conditioner

The big modification is the storage container and how I feed the water up the pipes.  I also added an auto-fill mechanism that will fill the base to a preset level when we’re connected to a water supply.

The next steps will be to add a switch to turn it on and off, build a good looking frame, and then get some way to direct the air.

We took a trip to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, NM.  We pulled the Mini all the way there and the Torquemonster performed perfectly.