Tag: DIY

Last weekend, we attended Rendezvous in the Ozarks for the second year in a row. It was rainy the first couple of days, so we brought along a 10’ x 10’ canopy to give us cover between our ground tent and the back of the 4Runner. But man! that thing is heavy and bulky.

So when we got back from camping, I started looking into alternatives. There are lighter-weight canopies out there, and also a really cool product called the MoonShade, which is basically a fancy lightweight vehicle awning. But I’m overlanding on a budget, and $325 is a bit steep for an awning. Enter the DIY Poor Man’s MoonShade.

This build pairs well with my Rear Window Drip Rail.

The basic concept consists of a tarp with one side affixed to the vehicle and the opposite side supported by 2 poles. Since I want this to come off the back of the 4Runner, and it’s pretty narrow, I also need a strut to hold the tarp out wider than the 4Runner, similar to the MoonShade’s solution. I also want to run guy lines from the corners to help keep it taut.

Supplies

• Tarp. I found an 8’ x 10’ lime green one to match Dampé’s color scheme.
• 2 adjustable tent/tarp poles. The smaller they collapse, the better!
• Fiberglass tent pole repair kit with crimped ferrules. That last part is important because it allows the pole to insert into the tarp grommets.
• 2-4 Tent stakes
• 2 Carabiners (optional)
• X ft of paracord

The nice thing about fully adjustable tent poles is that you can set up one slightly taller than the other, or both shorter than the vehicle, to create a slope to shed rain.

The tent pole repair kit was the key piece to this puzzle for me. I was having trouble finding a double-ended tent pole with 2 pins for the grommets like the MoonShade has, and was seriously considering fabricating something myself until I stumbled across this kit with enough poles and pieces to make exactly what I needed.

Build

The main thing that needed to be built was the strut. I assembled the tent pole pieces and laid them out on the 8’ side of the tarp, with the pin end in one of the grommets, and set the other pin end in the opposite grommet to see where to cut the last tent pole section, marking it with a pencil.

Then I cut the tent pole section with a hacksaw, sanded the cut end, and fully assembled the tent pole with the provided shock cord. I tied the shock cord after the pin ends so the whole assembly is contained, and melted the ends of the shock cord to keep it from fraying.

I also needed a way to affix the strut to my vehicle. MoonShade offers a variety of attachment methods, but since I have a roof rack, I kept it simple and used a couple of tarp ball bungees to hold the strut to the roof rack. In my case, the tarp grommets lined up pretty close to the sides of my roof rack, so I loop the ball bungees through those as well to hold everything together.

The last piece is the guy lines. I measured out paracord with enough length to tie taut-line hitches for adjustability and tied them permanently to all 4 corners of the tarp. On the vehicle side, I actually attached these to my roof rack with carabiners, but they’re long enough I could stake them to the ground instead.

The far side is supported by the telescoping tarp poles and held taut with guy lines staked to the ground.

I need to play around with tensioning to make sure water doesn’t pool in the center, but overall, I’m really happy with this build. It’s easier to set up with 2 people, but I can tear it down by myself in just a couple of minutes, which is a lot faster than my 10’ x 10’ pop-up canopy!

Cost

I managed to pull this off for under $100.

• Tarp: $14.99
• Adjustable tarp poles: $54.99
• Tent pole repair kit: $16.99
• Tent stakes: $6.49
• Carabiners: $2.87

Total: $96.33

One of the (few) flaws of the 2nd gen 4runner, in my opinion, is the lack of a drip rail above the rear window. Even if the rear of the vehicle is under cover (such as my Poor Man’s MoonShade), if the rear window is open, rain on the roof will run straight into the cargo area!

I spent several hours trying to find someone else who had solved this problem before, and maybe my Google-fu is getting rusty, but I was surprised that I couldn’t find anyone else doing something about this!

I think the ideal long-term solution would be to weld a proper drip rail above the window, but I don’t have a welder, and I’m not prepared to strip and repaint. Maybe someday…

What I did find, though, was a product called RV rain gutter, which is essentially J-channel rubber molding that can be applied above windows and doors on an RV to solve this same problem.

Supplies

• RV gutter (I bought 10′ but I used about 52″)
• Rags
• Isopropyl alcohol
• Masking tape (optional but recommended)
• Old toothbrush (for pressing the gutter into place)

Build

This build was really straightforward, and I basically just followed the instructions that came with the RV gutter. I cleaned the area to which I was going to apply the gutter, then rubbed it down with isopropyl alcohol and quickly dried it to get it extra clean and ready to accept the 3M adhesive strip. Then I laid out masking tape right below where I was going to put the channel.

I have a window wiper assembly above my rear window, so I didn’t have a lot of room to work with, and basically mounted the drip rail immediately above the wiper. I ran the channel around the corners on either side towards the windows, where there’s a vent that handles drainage already. This gets the rain completely out of the way of the rear window and allows it to drain down the sides of the vehicle.

I tested it out by pouring a jug of water on the roof and watching it run down with the rear window open. I was very pleased that no water made it into the cargo area!

Cost

The only thing I had to buy for this project was the RV gutter itself, which was $14.74. Cheap, easy, and effective!