Do you have an MDC Robson?
Or any MDC camper, like the Explorer, the Jackson, the Cruiser? We’re sure you’ll agree that the kitchen setups are pretty great. But probably the best one is MDC Robson.
The Robson and the Cruiser have the same kitchen, but the Robson has a hot water system in it. So all the hot and cold water pipes are connected to the taps.
It’s also got really good bench space. What we like about them is the hot plate is a genuine off-road one. It’s got a great drawer for the cutlery, pots and pans.
But then it’s got that cupboard down at the end, which is so frustrating. We’re sure you’ve had the urge like we have, to rip all this stuff out and just start again.
In that cupboard at the very end is stored three main pain points. And in this video, we show you our three solutions to delete those.
3 Pain Points
The first one is the gas hose.
You’ve got to open that cupboard out, pull out the gas hose, and then pop it through the middle.
Be careful that you don’t drop it into the sand so your bayonet fittings got all sand and stuff on it. Because that’d be great for the O-rings.
And then pop it round and then plug it into the bayonet at the end, so that the gas can come through to the hot plate.
The second one is the 12 volt.
Again, you’ve got to go in front of the cupboard, push it out the bottom. Don’t get it in the sand, and then plug it into your little 12-volt adapter at the back there.
And the third one is the waste pipe that you’ve got to again try and get at the bottom while working on the front.
So we’ve come up with three solutions.
Solution One
First thing we’re going to show you is the gas pain point and how to delete that.
Now it’s very important. You need to be a gas fitter to do this work.
Don’t try and have a crack yourself and think you can do it because there’s a lot of regulations you’ve got to follow.
And we’ll tell you, if something goes wrong with your camper, and you’ve been mucking around with this stuff, insurance will drop you like a hot potato.
And worse still, someone could get hurt or injured or even pass away.
Do a Google search. People have died in tents because they’ve had gas fridges inside and stuff like that that have leaked carbon monoxide.
So please don’t muck around with this. Get a professional. There are guys in every state.
There are also guys in Perth. You can call us. Or Steve from Nexus1 Caravan Plumbing and Gas is probably the guy that is most experienced in all this stuff. So give one of us a call, even if it’s a wait a while to get it done. Think about it.
Again, we’ve said before, we love these stoves. We think they’re great off-road stoves.
If we open the stove up, you can see that beautiful gas hose. It stores in there perfectly, so it’s out of the way.
All it is is a bayonet with a quick-release fitting on it. So the deal is you just got to come in here, take out the plug standard from your bayonet. Shove your bayonet hose in, push it in all the way. Lock it in.
The other end has a quick release. And as you can see, we’ve just brought this out on a 30-degree angle. So it’s not far enough to hit anything as it’s getting pushed back and forth.
And all it is is just clip it on like that, and then your gas is connected.
Now just remember, this whole thing is live, but there’s no gas coming out of here until you plug it in. And then it will go through, so it’s always very safe. So 19-year-old kids can hook it up for you, which is great.
Solution Two
Now for the 12 volt for the hotplate to hook up. Again, before, you’re going inside the cupboard trying to find this very long cable on the end of the cigarette lighter plug thing. So you have to pull it out, pop it through the middle.
All we’ve done is when the sink was out, or you could do this even with the sink in, there’s a hole up the back here. You can just try and push it through and bring it up into this area here.
And all I’ve done is stuck a 25 mm pipe, like PVC or whatever you want to use, with a little cap on the end of it. And stuck it on the back of the kitchen on a bit of a 45, going down like that so you can just slide that thing in and it stops at the bottom, and then you can just slide it out.
You just got to leave enough cable on there so you can just easily pull it out like this. Come around, and then chuck it into the cigarette lighter. And then obviously, the stove is going to be able to light up like that nice and easy.
Again when you’re packing it up, just pull that out, and just slide it into the back. Push it all the way down, and it’s not going to get caught up or anything like that.
Solution Three
Now for the waste pain point. You know how frustrating it is. You got to get inside that cupboard, find the waste, poke it through the hole. Then it sits in the bucket while you’re camping, and you’re doing your dishes and everything.
When the water cools down, all the fat and stuff goes to the top, and as you pull that hose out, that just sticks out on that hose. And you’re pushing that fatty, sticky hose back inside that cupboard again and covering it in fat. So obviously, really annoying.
But this idea we’ve come up with… Well, it says in the Bible, “Let another man praise you.” So we’ll leave it to you guys to give us your thoughts and criticism after you’ve seen what we’ve done. But it’s a bit of a life-changer for us0 anyway.
So all we’ve done is we had to make up a fitting. There wasn’t anything available that we’ve found yet. So we had to weld up a brass fitting to go onto a 25 mil nipple at the bottom.
So now, when you turn the water on, you can see it just flows straight out the bottom straight into the bucket. That is handy just for quick stops or whatever. So you don’t have to pull the hose out anymore. That’s a bit of a saving.
But that’s quite noisy and quite annoying. And also you’ve got this bucket full of dirty water sitting under your sink all the time. So what we’ve done is just behind here, we’ve put a couple of clips in there to hold a drain hose.
So all you got to do is push them out of the clips there. It comes out easily between the doors. And you just got to pull that out a little bit further than you should, and you push it back in again. And then that just fits under and goes onto that hose at the back there.
Now, when you turn it on, the water will flow down this hose. And it will continue all the way across the camper to the other side, down the side towards the back of the camper along the water tank. Then if you put a bucket out of the back there, it’ll pop into a bucket on the other side of the camper away from where you’re cooking everything. And that frees up all this space underneath so you can store your bins or cupboards or those containers for pots and pans and stuff like that.
But what if you’re camping at your mate’s farm. And he said, “Hey, listen, you can park over near the lemon trees and the orange trees. And all the water that you’re using, can you tip it onto my citrus bushes, please? That’d be great.” So that’s very easy, too.
So you still leave it connected up to the sink. And all you do is you’ve got to grab the waste pipe and just pull the whole length out. It all comes out like that. And then you can just chuck the end of that hose wherever you want. Flip it out in the garden and just run the water into there. So it makes it really easy.
And again, when you’re ready to pack it up, it’s quite easy. You grab your hose, reach under, chuck it into the pot, just push it all the way up. Unhook it from the sink, and push it in like that and then just lock it back in its clips. And then you’re all sorted.
The only thing you need to do then is head over the other side, grab the hose. And then push it into the final section there. And that’ll hold it in place while you’re off to your new campsite.
Sum Up
So we really think the hardest thing about doing mods your camper is:
First of all, coming up with the idea.
Second of all, doing the research and development seeing which fittings can fit to make it work.
And third of all is to test it, install it, and see if it does work.
So we hope you’ve liked what we’ve done to this camper. Please don’t try the gas side of things. It’s better to leave it to someone with a license who knows all the regulations and then who therefore signs off on it, and, this is the most important thing, takes the risk. Very important.
But as for the rest of the stuff, yeah, go on and give it a crack.
If you’d like to see any more the mods and stuff that we’ve done, check out our camper/caravan section.