In February 2022 we got our Quickpitch roof tent mounted on our New Defender. First it was installed on two cross beams from Frontrunner. Everything went well for half a year. Then suddenly the roof tent started to make loud banging noises, for example when driving over tiny bumps like drain covers. Real off-road driving was no longer a possibility. On closer inspection, one could see that the mounts of the crossbars were protruding beyond the rubber plates on the roof rails and had deformed the plastic base. So it was off to the workshop. The roof tent was removed and now the full extent of the disaster was revealed: The front crossbar had sheared off completely.

The roof tent was no longer held, all the load was only on the rear carrier. When the road was uneven, the tent lifted up at the front and then slammed back down onto the broken edge of the carrier, hence the banging noise.
It’s hard to imagine what would have happened if we had had to brake hard.
After this experience, it is clear to us that we will never again use Frontrunner crossbars for heavy roof tents such as Alu-Cab or Quickpitch, even if on paper they should be able to carry the load.

Instead, we have now switched to a roof rack platform from Rival. This is attached to the roof rails in more places than the crossbars with their total of only 4 points. The tent also has more attachments on the roof rack platform than before on the crossbars.
The whole construction seems more stable and torsion-resistant.

Der Beitrag Fit Quickpitch or Alu-Cab roof tent: Better to use roof rack platform erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

Original Maxtrax anti-theft mounting pins

A set of 4 fastening pins * is available from the manufacturer of the Maxtrax MK II recovery boards. Up to four salvage boards can be fixed with it. By turning the head section 90°, the sand boards can then be fastened in the mounting pins. When closed, we can now insert a conventional TSA lock through the head of the pins and thus protect the Maxtrax MK II from theft.

The mounting pins rest on an M10 stainless steel thread – but how do we get these mounting pins onto the roof tent?

Aluminum square tube crossbar

The mounting rails of the roof tent are suitable for the use of M8 carriage bolts * and M8 hammerhead screws *. Both variants fit into the rails and can later be fixed in the rails with a self-locking nut * or ring nut *.

Now I have built myself crossbeams from 25x25mm aluminum square tube. To do this, we shorten two of these crossbeams to exactly 123 cm in length at the Quickpitch.

We arrange the cut square tubes on the rails of the roof tent and mark the places through which the thread for the carriage bolts or hammerhead screws is to be inserted later. At these points, we now drill through the square tube on both sides. I pre-drilled with a 4 drill bit, then widened the hole with a 6 drill bit and then finally widened it with an 8 drill bit for the M8 thread.

Now you can temporarily mount the two beams on the tent at right angles to the roof rails. With a M8 ring nut * you can easily tighten both cross beams so that you can loosen them again later.

At this point we grab a Maxtrax recovery board and place it where we wanted to attach the boards later. I chose the right rear corner of our roof tent because the wind resistance is lowest here and the recovery board is conveniently accessible via the tent ladder.

Move the temporarily mounted cross bars so that they are centered under the four large round cutouts of the recovery boards. Mark these positions exactly in the center of the square tubes with a pencil. Before you do this, make sure that the cross beams are really at right angles to the rails. You can then remove the cross members again for the time being.

Now we drill holes on both sides of the marked areas again, but this time with a 10 mm drill bit. We now insert the Maxtax salvage pins through these holes and initially tighten the nuts provided by hand.

Attention: On the front crossmember, the thin side of the mounting pins points to the front, on the rear crossmember it points to the back. Only when you have checked this will you finally tighten the nuts of the retaining pins.

Now the crossbars with the attached mounting pins are put back on the roof. But we do not fix them yet. Before we do that, we put the recovery boards into the mounting pins. Position the cross beams in such a way that the boards fall smoothly into the pins and check again whether the cross beams are still at right angles to the rails. If this is the case, screw an M8 ring nut onto the M8 thread from above and thus fix the cross beams.

Why actually ring nuts * and not normal nuts? Both work. But the ring nut looks cooler and is also suitable later for lashing other luggage to the roof.

You will notice, however, that the simple thread of the ring nut is not exactly bombproof and can loosen again in case of vibrations. If you do not trust your ring nut, you can also turn a self-locking nut * over the thread, which then secures the ring nut.

So that one cannot look into the square tubes at the sides, I bought four black lamella covers from plastic in the measure 25x25mm *. Looks like bought.

The mountings can now be easily secured with any standard TSA lock *.

* All links marked with an asterisk are Amazon affiliate links. We receive a percentage of purchases made through them. Nevertheless, our recommendations are honest and sincere.

Der Beitrag Mounting Maxtrax MK II theft-proof on Quickpitch / Alu-Cab roof tent rails erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

On the top of our Quickpitch or Alu-Cab roof tent we find C-profiles for attaching attachments or securing cargo. When I first looked into it, I was not clear with which nuts and bolts I can combine the rails.

I finally decided to use M8 carriage bolts * and M8 hammerhead screws *. Both variants fit into the rails and can then be fixed in the rails with a self-locking nut or ring nut *.

I recommend using stainless steel hardware. These do not rust, are durable and do not cause ugly rust spots on the roof tent or vehicle.

In this post, you’ll learn how I attached our Maxtrax MKII Recovery Boards * to the roof tent: MOUNTING MAXTRAX MK II THEFT-PROOF ON QUICKPITCH / ALU-CAB ROOF TENT RAILS

* All links marked with an asterisk are Amazon affiliate links. We receive a percentage of the purchases made through them. Our recommendations are nevertheless honest and sincere.

Der Beitrag How to use Quickpitch / Alu-Cab Rooftent mounting rails erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

How does one get the idea?

At the beginning of the Corona pandemic, we were longing for a way to travel flexibly and without much effort. Spontaneously pack a few things, go to a nice place, for example somewhere on the banks of the Weser, and then spend the evening there.

Land Rover was offering a test drive of the new Land Rover Defender at that time. You could rent it with a roof tent for a weekend. We were hooked – until we saw the price for this short adventure. Nevertheless, the idea remained in our minds. We liked the new Defender anyway, we had seen it rather by chance at a Jaguar dealer and were thrilled by the design. In our eyes, a contemporary successor to the original Defender had been designed.

In 2021, we were then on the road in Slovenia with the motorhome. Narrow mountain passes and hour-long descents are only little fun with 4.5 tonnes and 7m in length. Often the dimensions mean that you can’t visit some remote regions at all. Thus, large parts of the Triglav National Park remained hidden from us and we were also denied access to large parts of the Bohinj area. Some passages near Kobarid or in the vineyards in the north were possible – but with big sweat stains under our arms. Once again, we remembered our romantic idea of the 4×4 off-road vehicle with roof tent.

By the way, you can watch our travel report about Slovenia here on Youtube.

In Kobarid, at Camp Lazar, we met a couple from Munich one evening who were visiting Slovenia with a roof tent and Landi. We exchanged ideas and were now a bit more sure that we would like this kind of adventure. With the right vehicle, Albania tours, Greece road trips or an autumn in the French Maritime Alps seemed more real than with our RV. Someday we would fulfil this dream, we told ourselves. Sometime in a few years.

On 13 November 2021, my father Ralf died at the age of 65. He spent the first and last month of his retirement in the hospice. He used to say “life, that’s what happens while you are busily making other plans”. In the last weeks together, I talked a lot with him. Among other things, about the time when he drove off-road vehicles himself: Isuzu Trooper, Nissan Terrano. We exchanged ideas about the right tyres and equipment, technical features and some anecdotes that were nothing but fragments and nebulous memories from my childhood for me.

Aware that life can be short and some plans should not be postponed for too long, moreover in a kind of “quarter-life crisis” in which I emulated my father out of a search for comfort in various attitudes and interests, we ordered our Defender 110 in mid-January. On 4 February the time had come and we brought our white “Ralfi” home from Schwerin.

The right off-road and camping equipment – compromise vs. compromise

Our cherished motorhome cannot replace an off-road vehicle and neither can the Hymer be replaced by the Defender. We cannot expect the comfort of the motorhome in the off-road vehicle. We suddenly have to deal with things that are taken for granted in the motorhome: Fresh water, hot water, heating, cooling, sleeping arrangements. All these points can only be considered much more rudimentary, one could also say more purist, due to lack of space and weight. And that is fun. Compared to a motorhome, these are simply always compromises. But it is precisely this weighing up of compromises against each other to find the optimum compromise that is so much fun – and, unfortunately, also quickly hits the wallet.

Sleeping in the roof tent

A roof tent is needed. But a huge choice does not make the decision process any easier. Normal roof tents are the lightest, cheapest and take up less space on the vehicle roof. Hard-shell roof tents are expensive, quicker to erect and dismantle, often more fuel-efficient but above all more resistant to stripped branches and moisture.

Hybrid tents combine the advantages (and disadvantages) of both concepts. In the end, a certain laziness also led to the decision in favour of the hard-shell roof tent. The bedding can stay in the tent, you don’t have to move it around, you save space in the car and the set-up times are simply faster. At first we favoured the “Airlander Plus” or the “Alu-Cab 3.1” and then finally came to the “Quickpitch” aluminium hard-shell tent.

A big advantage here is the possibility of attaching equipment such as awnings, headlamps or sand boards directly to the tent frame. Even the attachment of solar panels is possible. The Quickpitch tent has one (!) continuous hinge for opening and is slightly cheaper than similar tents.

Keyword awning: With the 270° awning, Quickpitch offers an awning that can be attached to the tent and folded out 270° around the car. It doesn’t get any more convenient than this.

Tyres for off-road use

The smaller the rim, the more “rubber” the tyre may have. And the more rubber there is between the rim and the tyre, the tougher the tyre is. The standard 19″ rims have to go, instead we need off-road all-terrain tyres with winter properties (Alpine symbol). Already my father was a big fan of General tyres, reason enough for me to put my trust in this brand. Of course, the original Land Rover 18″ rims would be ideal, but at 320€ for a simple, no-frills steel rim (!) the fun stops for me. I’d rather go for the Dotz Kalahari for around 250€ and invest the money in good tyres instead.

Sitting, eating, drinking, living

There are great concepts where tables and chairs can be inserted into the roof rack when driving. Sounds great at first, if you can save cargo space in the vehicle. However, if you have to clean the furniture of brake dust and road dirt before each use, you quickly abandon this plan.

Space-saving aluminium chairs and a rollable aluminium tables are more practical – above all, we already have both in our RV-motorhome.

Water canisters on the roof look cool. In winter in the Alps, however, not a good idea. Much more practical is a water tank that can be installed between the front seats and the folded-down rear seat. The water is then at room temperature and does not unnecessarily increase the vehicle’s centre of gravity.

This is just the beginning

As you can see, there are endless questions to deal with as a newcomer and many more questions will follow. One thing is certain: we will embark on this adventure, this new way of travelling. We are looking forward to many travel stories on our blog, which were only made possible by our “Ralfi”. Stay tuned!

Der Beitrag 4×4 with the New Defender – our new way to travel erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.