Preparing for cold weather
Last winter I had the luxury of a 20# propane bottle to run my heater, which has since spoiled me to the resulting warm fingers and toes. Unfortunately, with the interior rebuild I no longer had space to carry the propane inside the van – which is dangerous anyway – so a plan was hatched to mount the propane to the rear of the van where a hole already exists to run the LP hose to the interior. This required moving the ladder from that door to the side of the van, which I have been considering for some time anyway. Here is to hoping I never get rear-ended.
Why not just add a rear cargo rack to the hitch? Thats what I did and installed 2 big Walmart plastic tool boxes to put stuff in.
I had tried that in the past. The problem is two-fold:
1) My hitch is so low that it already scrapes the ground on driveways, dips, etc. Extending that out via a rack will scrape even more often
2) Weight on the rear tires is a battle I have been fighting for a long time. A rack moves that weight even further past the rear tires which then uses the rack as a lever-device making the effect of the weight compound to equate to even more weight on the rear tires.
I had to raise the license plate and extend the wiring to be above the tool boxes though but it gave me an extra bumper so to speak plus it would guard the lp tank.
I like your set up though. Better than mine but then again I sleep out of a ford ranger camper shell 6 ft bed.