THE TROOPY: DRIFTA INTERNAL FITOUT REVIEW

20/6/2023

As explained elsewhere, we decided to take the plunge - a giant leap of faith really - and have our internal fit out done interstate - in Gloucester, NSW, quite distant from Melbourne....here's how it went and what we think of the workmanship, the products and the customer experience.

CABINETRY

We went for the Troopy system #6 as advertised on Drifta's site, with a few modifications.

LHS: THE MAIN DRAWER WITH HUTCHES For starters, on the left hand side (looking into the rear of the vehicle - Drifta normally supplies two drawers, one atop the other - as the main storage system. We changed this to one large drawer, with two hutches on top providing accessibility from inside the vehicle (we didn't want to have get out of the vehicle in the wind, rain or cold in order to get something from this main area). This drawer and the hutches have worked well, but we find the drawer pretty difficult to open: it's probably because it's very heavy, but also the latch has no real handle, and the angle of access is quite high for us. We've thought about getting a handle added but we haven't done it yet. The drawer has an insert (which we use as a cutlery drawer) and a divider, which we're still experimenting with. We tend to put all out food and cooking pans at the front of the drawer and other 'hardware' at the rear. It's a bit of a jumbled mess but our camping skills are still evolving. It works ok for us.
LHS: THE STAND ALONE TABLE: This is such a neat idea, and very easy to pull out and put away. Along with the Frontrunner rear door drop down table with extension, we have plenty of outdoor cooking and prep space.
LHS: THE SIDEWINGS: These work well and it's surprising how much you can get into these areas. Ours is foreshortened by the water tank, and then we lost more space to the water pump. More on water storage shortly.
LHS: REAR AREA: This area houses our 100 litre water tank. We weren't sure how much we needed and seems we opted for a very large tank. It sure takes up space, including half the 'corridor' space. Knowing now how this works, we might have opted for a slightly smaller tank. We also have a small nook in that area, and this is a good concealed, if not locked, storage space.
RHS: STORAGE AND BENCH SPACE, WHEEL ARCH STORAGE AREAS: As per Drifter's video, we have the large high cupboard behind the driver (but everything underneath this space is taken by the electrical system - more on that shortly), then we have three drawers and a pull out desktop and a bench area. We find the too floor level 'wheel arch' storage areas really useful - ours house all sorts of laundry and cleaning products, but also our stowed fold away toilet, our induction cooker, and our nested washing up tub/salad spinner/strainer. We can get to all of these items when we're cooking outside at the back of the vehicle. Very nifty.

The workmanship on all this cabinetry is excellent, and we're super pleased with it. All joinery and surfaces are excellent, as are latches.

FRIDGE: NATIONAL LUNA 50

Drifta's #6 system is designed around this high profile narrow fridge. It came highly recommended so we went with it. It was huge disappointment because the fridge was faulty: the freezer went to -30 degrees, no matter what we set it at. Of course, the took days to discover, and by then we were back in Melbourne. Now what? We got back to Drifta, who got back to the NL provider, who offered to repair it for us. We weren't best pleased with a repair - we expected a new fridge to be brought to our house and swapped out for the old one. Just make this problem go away. Nope. After much back and forth and two one hour trips along the Monash Freeway (shoot me now), the fridge got repaired, and - fair dibs - has worked well ever since. So it all got resolved but the faulty fridge really spoiled our Drifta experience: we felt they left us to sort it out with NL rather than really going into bat for us, as they sold us the fridge...disappointing.

WATER

As explained above, we went for a 100 litre water tank - another leap of faith, only to discover on collection that 'this was the largest tank they'd ever put in a Troopy". Hmmm, wish we'd known that...we should have asked more questions. To be fair to Drifta, shortly before the job was done, we asked if we could have a pump added, and water pumped to the rear of the vehicle through the sidewing. They did it. And also, could we have a digital monitor added so we could see how much water we had - they did it! That was all very good, but we're not that thrilled with the water hose which looks like garden hose and has a pretty ordinary tap which is already squirting water once the pump is primed. We'll have to get this replaced with a stainless steel mesh pipe (we reckon). This is disappointing.

POWER

We went with Drifta's advice and had an Enerdrive Adventurer pack installed: we have 150 watt solar panel on the roof feeding into a 200 amp hour lithium battery, and a 2000 watt inverter. This is a very slick system, even if very space occupying - it uses two thirds of the cupboard space behind the driver's seat. It has one 240v outlet on the inverter, and another two just above on the cabinetry; one accessory socket and two USBs on the system, and two more of each on a distribution panel on the bench top. We're glad we have plenty of grunt, and it all works well, but there are a couple of niggles. Because we do our cooking out the back of the vehicle (kettle and induction cooker), that's where we need the 240v outlets. Instead we're running a power board out there, which works but it's a bit ugly and could have been avoided. Secondly, to get water pumping or the inverter working, we need to leave the back of the vehicle, go around to the drivers door, and fiddle about in there...bit of a nuisance, and a risk when you have to leave stuff unattended. Not a train smash, but now we know how it all works we might have asked for some tweaks. And yes we have now figured out how to programme the inverter to turn itself on when load is detected. But we'll always have to be going around there to turn the pump on and off, so we'll have to find a better solution in time. And that will mean more $$$. Annoying!

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Not great, to be honest. Very responsive at times, but when we first made contact we made it clear that we were new at this and needed advice. We got some - but it was limited. Also, it would have been good to have active advice about how much storage we were giving up because of the water and power choices we were making, and also how this whole system would function - its liveability. We should have asked for a CAD file, so we got a better idea of dimensions, but we didn't.

When we went to Gloucester, we never got to meet the person who negotiated our contract, even though we saw him about. Call us old fashioned but we think meeting people is important. Separately, the installer was very good but it might have been a better experience if we had consistent contact with one project manager for the duration.

What's more, we delivered our vehicle on time on the Monday morning, but we were left waiting for over an hour in the yard for staff to come and check us in and take our vehicle. Likewise, we belted back to Gloucester on the Friday to be on time for lunchtime collection. Two hours later, no refreshments offered, our vehicle was bought out for us when it was clear that most staff had left for the weekend. The handover felt rushed and we had many miles to make...disappointing.

There's a lot to like about Drifta's offer and what they deliver, but we feel there's room for improvement in the customer experience department.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Feel free to leave us a comment...(it's easy if you opt to comment as a guest).

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