As I mentioned in this post, we had some issues with the MyWay Serengeti tent, we loved it. But we need to get the niggles sorted. Luckily Paul was on hand with advice and apologies.
After a few nights in the tent we did discover the first issue with the tent, which we now have a solution for. This came about due to a design change, apparently ours is one of the first of a new design.
The top half cross member behind the hinge tended to sag by approx 10mm, this put a noticeable step in the middle of the base board, between the two halves of the tent. Unfortunately we could feel this through the mattress. Tents before the design change had some locating pegs to ensure the cross members of the two halves were mechanically locked, so any sag was minimised and mutual, this most importantly avoided a difference in hight between the two plywood base halves.
In order to remedy this we installed some locating pegs, which are actually formed by the cap heads of some stainless steel bolts. These will interface to locating holes on the second half cross member which folds down.
The important thing about this issue was that it did not prevent us from enjoying the tent and when we got back, Paul offered some brilliant support for discussion to come up with a solution.
The second issue we found when we removed the tent from the Landy. This was that the lower half of the cover was holding a small amount of water. We had come back from France is some serious rain, I guess that must have made it through the overlap seal in the cover. I guess this would have been exacerbated by the fact we had to pack the tent away wet on the way back. Had we used the tent after the rain this would have had the chance to dry out.
To remedy this issue we cut some crosses into the lower cover about 20 mm in length, these are just two slices or lines that form a flap arrangement. We located these in three places. The first was central and the others were about 30 cm from each side in each corner on the hinge end of the tent. Hopefully any water collecting will have a route out now. I was originally planning to put five slots into the cover.
I guess time will tell how these modifications work. We’ll let you know if we have an issue.