Tune M1 Camper on Tacoma OffRoad 4x4 2021

This is a thread to centralize my tweaks work on 2021 Tacoma OffRoad 6ft bed, with a Tune M1 popup Camper. Hard to find right spot for bed prep for camper, and various electrical, so just gonna centralise here. Figure it will be more helpful for other popup canopy or wedge camper folks to see all the mods in one place.

I have a 98 Tacoma 4x4 OffRoad that I drove more, so only 11k miles on my Oct 21 Tacoma. So all is in great shape.

Pickup Bed Preparation
First, before having the Tune camper installed in Jan24, I did the following preparations to the pickup bed:
1. Removed bed rail caps on sides, to seal up all the 20 holes underneath. These are plastic and just popoff with a screwdriver. I placed a strip of 2" aluminum tape down over all the holes, whole length. Then I ran a bead of sikaflex on both sides of plastic rail cap. Then reinstalled, pressing the locking tabs down thru the aluminum tape, and tapping with rubber mallet.
2. Removed bed front rail cap, ran bead of sikaflex on fiberglass bed top amd the rail cap, reinstalled. All water running down the cab face of a camper shell would just run right in there, without this. There is no seal at all, it really needs it here.
3. Plugged top corners where side amd cab bedrails meet, with butyl tape. Two half inch by 1 inch gaps there.
4. Installed Rok Blok tailgate bed seal, and also the side tailgate seal from same company, ESI.
5. Installed bed stiffeners from Total Chaos. Pretty expensive, other companies make for $40 and would work, but the TC ones don't blick slide out drawers as much.
6. Installed Pop And Lock tailgate keyfob locking mechanism. Big help getting into camper amd locking or unlocking at night!

Here is a video I made showing so.e of the prep.
https://youtu.be/R8ZqSac-Jmo


Drilling Holes in fiberglass bed for Diesel Heater
I did this before camper install too, figured it was easier to blow out any fiberglass dust then. I decided to i stall heater inside bed, the way it was engineered by Eberspacher to be installed and as directed in their 98 page install manual. But mostly done incorrectly by Chinese diesel heater purchasers. I positioned it against front cab wall, passenger side. There is a nice open area near muffler that lets you drill through and have your diesel exhaust go right out near car muffler. I drilled two 1.5" holes using a hole saw. Bed is solid, but easy to drill through. I then wrapped the intake and exhaust tubes with fiberglass motorcycle muffler wrap, to deal with any heat near pickup bed, and taped it all on with aluminum tape for gas water heater exhaust ducting. Then I sealed the tubes through the holes with same tape, so no airflow possible. This pisition has worked well. Only issue is the diesel heater tank has terrible lid seal, and leaked when sloshing about. So I will be moving the diesel tank outside, under the car between gas tank and muffler. Or maybe in gap between fender and fiberglass bed. Here is a video I made showing heatee install.
https://youtu.be/mmbJJEkOVL8

DC Fuseblock for 12v Camper Electrical
The best practice for electrical for a truck canopy camper, is to run 12v DC power to a fuseblock, then supply all your loads from the fuseblock, with correctly sized wires running to each one depending on watts and amps used. This lets you have a fuse for each load, correctly sized to protect the wire to the load as you're supposed to. You can also size fuse smaller to orotect whatever the load is too, so long as the wire is sized to allow the max current that device will pull, and the fuse is 125% of that. Especially in a mobile setup, a truck camper, you will get lits of wire movement and chafing, asn also wire connection movement, which both lead to shorts or hot connections. Which lead to fires and your car burning down. So a properly planned out fuseblock is key.

Before my install, I bought a BlueSea dc fuseblock with 12 fused connections, and the proper size ATO blade fuses, and correct gauge wires, for all my expected loads. Then I crimped connectors to wires, and had everything ready so I could screw it in place on rails when camper was installed, and hook up the lights, maxxair fan, diesel heater, heating blanket socket, and USB ports for phones and laptops in bed or pickup bed.
Here is a video of my dc fuseblock preparations.
https://youtu.be/jxsSqD40bYw

I will add more on the camper install, power station setup to power everything, insulating the camper, charging power station from the Tacoma truckbed inverter, 400W Anytime install, etc. As well as some camping use!

 

Heating and Insulation

I looked at hundreds of threads and builds on insulating a canopy camper, as well as info from professional aircraft designers, van builders, and insulation engineers. Based on Boeing insulation philosophy, I went with "There WILL be condensation and vapor barrier penetration in mobile setups," and so went with airgapped foil coated closed cell polyurethane. I looked at the pink board or blue board, reflectix, polyiso, etc. The best insulation that had zero water pickup was a 5mm closed cell flexible polyurethane foam, double sided foil wrapped. This is used for wrapping du ts, both air-conditioning and heat. In Arizona, it is critical to keep the heat out during half the year, and the #1 method is a reflective foil installed with an airgap inside camper. This stuff is massively beter than reflectix.

Here are some videos I made showing how to insulate popup tent, as well as the camper aluminum walls and rails. These rails are a huge heat bridge, so important to insulate.

Insulating front and read of Tune M1 tent, folding mechanism etc.
https://youtu.be/WcEyKWM2-HM

Insulating tent sides
https://youtu.be/n78yuHaH-Nc

Finishing up insulation, including the aluminum camper body and rails. All removable, velcro.
https://youtu.be/W8cEbhkkQ84

 

A key buying decision for canopy campers, is what fits in there when you close roof? Can you leave your bedding, or still have to take it all down and store somewhere? This is a HUGE DESIGN CRITERIA!! No reason to have to remove all your bedding.

Here is a video I made showing how all bedding, 4" mattress, as well as camper insulation, can be left in place when closing roof.
https://youtu.be/ineRXSKxID0

Another key factor:
What size seat can you use with roof closed, to use camper in bad weather with roof down?
Here is a video I made showing seat sizes, headroom with Tacoma, and measurements for taller or shorter folks to design bench height, seats, etc.
https://youtu.be/7dP3T2MNrgI

 

Adding pic...

 

Getting Alternator Power to your camper system.
Everyone with a truck camper will soon want to grab power from their alternator while driving, to charge up a 2nd house battery or power station. The issues to solve are:
1. You want the two batteries isolated from each other when truck engine is off, so that you don't end up draining your start battery.
2. You don't want to overload your alternator, they can usually be run continuously at roughly 70% rated load or less--after that the alternator temperature will go up and you can burn out your alternator. In my Tacoma, driving with my standard loads (lowbeams, turn signal, airco and fan, engine load), it was about 39 Amps. Maybe 45A with Highbeams. Note this is no window or seat heating, no radio. My TRD OFFROAD model has a 130A alternator. So I want to stay below 75A or so, giving me 30A or less to charge with.
Here is a thread I made testing various Tacoma loads:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...-amp-draw-and-alternator-loads-tested.821385/

So for a 2021Tacoma OffRoad, you can probably be safe pulling 30A, which at 13.5V or so is 405 Watts. I made a video measuring wire circuit length from alternator to truckbed in my AccessCab, 30ft, and how to calculate correct wire gauge for 30A, which is 4 AWG. Here it is:
https://youtu.be/RDmDXq3OH4U

For 15 years or so, virtually all cars including Tacoma come with a "smart alternator", where the Electronic Control Unit ECU varies the alternator output voltage depending on driving load, rpm, temperature etc. Because of this, you can no longer just connect the batteries with a relay triggered by ignition, as a battery isolator. The voltage going up and down, combined with lithium Battery Management Systems BMS, will cause the current to constantly start and stop and issues.
Therefore, we now need to use a DC to DC charger intended for alternator charging, which both isolate your batteries so starter isn't drained, and account for smart alternators to deliver correct voltage steady power for charging a 2nd battery. There are many, some common high quality ones are Redarc bcdc25 at 25A, and Victron Orion 12 12 30 at 30A. Renogy has an inexpensive one that also functions as a solar charger and AC shore power charger, but I have read many issues of these breaking down while in the bush, not good.

If you are actually charging a piwer station, instead of just a 2nd house battery system, then some of the functions are already in place in the power station, and you may be able to just use a dc to dc CONVERTER, which is a bit cheaper, to get the correct voltage your station needs. Victron makes these also. The 12.8V to 13.5V your alternator delivers won't correctly charge a lithium battery which wants 13.6 to 14.6V, thus the converter need.

Using the Already installed Tacoma Inverter and Wires to get Alternator Power

In the 2nd and 3rd gen Tacoma, some models, there is an inverter to give 120V AC power to a truckbed outlet. The inverter is limited to 100W (about 8A alternator pull) while driving, and 400W (31.25 A pull) while in park. There is an easy mod many have done to allow 400W while driving. Here is the thread:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/how-to-400w-anytime-mod-3rd-gen.436831/

As we saw above, this 31A alternator load should be fine in most driving conditions, and keep total alternator loading at 50% to 60%.

Rather than installing a dc to dc charger, and running 30ft of 4 AWG copper cable, you may want to use the 400W already supplied in the pickup bed, to charge a power station. The issues are that the Tacoma inverter is a crappy Modified Sine Wave model whose malformed power is not accepted by newer or larger piwer stations, where the station just plugs into ac and the dc conversion takes place internal on a motherboard. Older or smaller power stations with an external charge brick CAN make use of the power, so long as they draw less than 100W or 400W with the anytime mod. There will be 5 guys who didn't understand what I just said, post below saying, "My Jackery 500 has no problem using the inverter"... yeah, external charger. The industry is going away from those except on small stations.

An issue is that if your power station CAN take more than 400W of charge input, it can trip the overload protection on the Tacoma inverter, shutting it off, and maybe even blowing its fuse. So you need something that can limit power draw to 400W, and convert the crap MSW waveform to DC for your power station to use, usually via a solar charge input. The answer is an adjustable Power Supply. Here is a video I made showing this:

https://youtu.be/QQK6141y1e0

 

Timely thread! Thank you for sharing in such a detailed and organized fashion; I’m eyeballing these setups after considering RTT’s and trailers for a while, but having had a Westfalia in a prior life, this style camper has a lot of appeal over that. I’ve had my sights on SuperPacific but just found the M1 this week and it’s definitely caught my eye..

 

Any suspension upgrades needed to support the weight of the camper? Would like a similar setup and avoid going Tundra route.

 

Super cool build! Thanks for sharing all of the details and your knowledge. Looks fun!

 

@grogie thx much!

 

No, my Tacoma isn't sagging at all. I measured before and after install, 1/4" at most on rear. The weight of the Tune is quite evenly distributed due to the long cab overhang.

However, I do plan on putting some Firestone airbags in there to help with any sag issues when loaded. No plans for more springs yet. Unfortunately that doesn't really help the terrible payload of the Tacoma, mine is only 1150 on the 4x4 access cab OffRoad 21, and that is the MAX payload rating 3rd gen offers!

If I didn't already have and like my Tacoma, I would look for a truck with 1500 lb ACTUAL payload rating on the door sticker, for a permanently mounted camper shell like this. 400 lbs extra or so would really help to stay below GVWR.

 

So you would prefer a Tundra? Guess the build out will make a difference - leaving it as is or adding the batteries, solar, fridge, fan, water?

 

@Googlefish
I pretty much have to add batteries, water, fridge, food, tools, to use the thing. I have all weighed, and it adds up fast.

The 3rd gen automatic tacoma does a TON of gear hunting and useless wasted shifting, really annoying, I'd much prefer a manual with this on it. And I'm only getting 13-14mpg.

Not sure about Tundra, it doesn't have that much better payload. I used to think Tundra, until this latest engine thing. I do like the tacoma for size though. But folks with F250s are getting same mpg as me! I might as well have the size and payload if I'm burning the same gas.

Never thought I'd want a truck different than my Taxoma, so don't know much about the Tundra / F150 size trucks.

 

I’d want all those niceties as well and was banking on getting the new Tacoma, but the price increase over the previous gen is huge. Then started reading that using a Tacoma should involve some additional suspension work - think I saw a comment from Tune themselves suggesting it would be good to reinforce the suspension.

Started looking at the new Tundra but really do not like how big that is. It does have about 500lbs more payload I believe. Won’t touch a new one now with the recall. Just recently started looking at previous gen Tundras but the inside looks ancient and it’s pig on gas! Not to mention prices on previous gen is going up pretty fast. Then again previous gen Tacomas prices are sky high, since pricing on new ones were announced (at least up here in Canada).

Curious how your setup drives- did you add bigger brakes?

 

Around town, 50mph and less roads etc, I can't tell the Tune is on. Drives the same. Still lots of acceleration. Only above 65, maybe 70, and it starts hear hunting when going slightly uphill. Everyone who has regeared, or even done the tuneup tweaks, says that solves it. I don't want to mess with the warranty of a retune though.

 

I’ve seen Toyota techs say a tune will not affect warranty, and I have yet to read a single case of that happening. I felt the same way until I did research, got the OTT tune last month and couldnt be happier!!

 

Would love to see some pics of the inside. Specially the bed layout to get a feel for how much space there is with a 6ft bed thx!