Reimo Roof

On Thursday evening we picked up the van from Concept Multi Car in Hythe, Kent where the new Reimo Roof had been fitted.   I ordered a Reimo roof with colour coding to match the pearescent black paint of the van, and an internal strengthened roof bed.   They had the van four days and during this time also fitted my split relay charger, a mains hook up, two LED lights are carpeted the van throughout.   And I'm really, really pleased with the results of all these upgrades.

With the roof down the profile of the van is altered slightly.  To the trained (i.e. vanarack) eye it's easy to spot the van has an elevating roof but it doesn't change the profile very much really.

There is a slight rubber lip added to the van above the windscreen which deflects the wind over the roof and, once I'd figured out how to secure the roof nice and tightly shut, I have had the van over 80 mph without any real noticable increase in road noise due to this little rubber cleverness.

The back of the roof doesn't quite go all the way to the rear spoiler which looks a little strange but I can live with that.

All in all I like the roof's asthetics when closed.

Opening the roof is a really simple task.  It is held down with two straps on the inside which I'm well used to from years of strapping surfboards to the roof of my old car.  Once these are undone a gentle push upwards is all that is needed to open the roof which slides upwards, pushed and controlled by the gas struts built in.

Once up, from the outside the van now looks like a good old campervan - a look I have always loved.

The interior has three openings.  The front one is plastic and transparent, and can be opened when it's raining or windy as it is sealed.  This lets a lot of light fall into the van without letting in any rain or wind.   It also gives you a nice view out of the bedroom upstairs.  The side openings are simply netted behind the zip up panel, so these are useful when it's warm to ventilate the van.  It was cold and rainy this weekend so we didn't use them much, apart from when we were burning the bacon!

The roof comes with a nice shelf all the way around it and we found this handy for popping all sorts of stuff on when camped up.  You have to take it all off when you bring the roof down to travel but you can keep things on there with the bed up or down, which made it a handy 'bedside table' sort of surface as it was easily reached from the bed.

The bed is an optional extra but for us was one of the main reasons for getting the roof added.   It was really too dark this weekend to take proper photos of the bed section.  It comes with a built in matress which is thin and not very comfortable to lie on all night long.  Also, although the foot end of the bed is raised, at only 5'9" tall I found that if I lay on my back my feet would hit the bottom of the roof.  Not great.  Also, I couldn't quite lie on my back and bend my knees as the roof was too low at knee position.   This basically restricted me to sleeping on my side - and when I awoke I found my hips were aching from the thin matress.   We need to think about how to make the whole experience of sleeping in the roof a little more comfortable.   I'll be posting about that on the BrickYard soon and seeing what others have come up with.

When not sleeping the bed pushes up into the roof.   The very back section of the bed doesn't push up, and the bed folds in a clever way which leaves space up in the "loft" at the back of the bed.  This space is big enough to store your duvet, pillows, sleeping bags and anything else you want whilst the bed is up.  Very handy.

The major plus for us was that when parked up with the roof up you could now stand in the van.  Absolute bonus and what we really wanted.  We can now get changed in the van without breaking our backs.  We can cook on our gas cooker without getting stuck bent over.  It was a real bonus.

Putting the roof back down for driving is something you have to take care over.  I know of a few people who have torn the canvas on the sides of the van by dropping the roof too quickly and having the canvas billow out and get caught in the hinges that hold the roof up.   The secret is to drop the roof to about 6" and then pull all the canvas in by hand at that stage, then drop it the last bit.   Not a great hassle to be honest.  It also helps to have a side door open to let the air out when you drop the van.  No problems for us with this over the weekend.  And when down the roof looks nice and neat.

Securing the roof is simply a case of pulling some straps tight.  It's really not difficult once you've figured out how to do it most efficiently.  And with it pulled really tight the road noise is negligable.

All in all I'm delighted with the new roof and I think as long as I can solve the comfort issue with sleeping upstairs we will have many fun weekends in the roof!

Oh, and getting out of the bed head first is not recommended!