ARB Introduces New Rooftop Tent
If you’ve been looking for an alternative to standard tent camping, a roof top tent on your expedition vehicle may be a viable option for your needs.
Imagine only taking minutes to set up and tear down the tent. No more trying to find that perfect level, lump-free, dry spot to pitch your tent. No more valuable cargo space taken up by a tent, mattress and sleeping bags. Maybe I getting old but it sounds good to me.
There are many roof top tents available in the United States, each with features that are great for specific purposes. The latest entry into this market is the Simpson II tent from ARB. From the early versions I had the privledge to view, its a nice set up to have. It would sure look nice on my Land Cruiser.
For further information, please read the ARB Press Release.
Before you get too excited about never having to setup a tent again, the weight limit on the rails of a 96 LC is 80kg. This makes me extremely leery of these rooftop setups – and roof racks, in general. I am not sure about Toyota but Rover issues two specs for the roof weight one for off-road, that’s about 60% of the on-road weight.
The real expedition vehicles you see usually have the racks bolted through to the safety cage, which is how they manage to take ten jerry cans without cracking the pillars at the first sign of a green-lane with bad ruts or corrugations.
I am especially leery of the rooftop tents because the loading is off-axis, and slinging the out like that makes me think of torque and levers. Plus I am not even sure what sort of a rated load you could expect for a lifting force like these setups create (on the outboard side).
Soft-sided tents don’t make the grade in bear country, either. By putting your tent on or near your vehicle (with, probably, your food and certainly your cooking smells) you are asking for a visit – Guess how I know!
And then there’s the MPG hit… Since you might not bother (I wouldn’t, anyways) to remove the thing the 320 days out of the year I wasn’t using it. The good next-step up from soft-sided ground tents and cots is an expedition trailer, I think.