Hello All. Looking to buy a Micro Minnie 2108TB

[Fred L]

New to the forum and looking to buy a 2108TB sometime in the near future. Previously owned a 23ft Airstream and didnt take long to figure out the auroa was all about the aluminum skin and nothing else. Poorly made like most travel trailers.
I do a lot of gravel and dirt road driving to remote boondocking sites and the minnie winnie "seems" to be what I need.
One quick question... when first reading this site, it was easy to do so on my phone, but i registered a short time ago and apparently changed how i view it. What i have now would be perfect on my laptop, but not so much on the phone. Any suggestions on how i can get the phone view back?

[Marine359]

Cautionary note about off-pavement use of Micro Minnie’s.
Although Micro Minnie’s have high ground clearance and torsion axles, Off-pavement use creates dynamic loading that is likely to cause failures.

Both my fresh water tank and my 12v fridge fell out of their structural support. Take a look at my photo album for fixes, and maybe prepping your camper for off-pavement. I recently posted details on this issue. No alarm here. We enjoyed using FS roads, and enjoyed our 2108DS. Link to post follows.

https://www.winnieowners.com/forums/...ml#post3949032

[wahoonc]

Originally Posted by Fred L

~snip~
One quick question... when first reading this site, it was easy to do so on my phone, but i registered a short time ago and apparently changed how i view it. What i have now would be perfect on my laptop, but not so much on the phone. Any suggestions on how i can get the phone view back?

Look and see if you have "mobile site" checked, if memory serves me it is at the bottom of the screen when you use a mobile device.

Aaron

[Fred L]

Aaron,
Thanks for the suggestion, just took a look and not seeing the "mobile site" reference, will spend some more time looking for it shortly.
Thank you Jim, I did see your post and planned to crawl under it when i get it and see if i can install your mod. Did make me think though that I had understood that the underside of Minnies were enclosed? Is that not the case or is the removal of a skin or cover fairly straightforward?
I have a few other questions i may post, but will try searching the topics first.
Appreciate your assistance.

[wahoonc]

There is a small pull down menu in the extreme bottom left corner. It says Winnebago Forums. Hit that and select mobile.

Aaron

[Marine359]

You don’t remove the coroplast to install the tank mod. The u-bolts can be slipped over the frame rails with some elbow grease. The strut goes below (ground side) the coroplast, and gets bolted to the u-bolts, which goes thru the holes in the strut. If for some reason in the future you need to take down the coroplast, simply undo nuts on the u-bolts. You do have to remove the fridge to install the 12v fridge mod, as unlike absorption fridge models, 12v fridges are not accessible from the outside of the sidewall.

There was another owner who first installed the tank mod and told me about it on this forum. Maybe he has photos of you need them.

[Fred L]

Found it Aaron. Appreciate it and so much easier to navigate.
Thanks Jim, sounds much simpler than i imagined. Once i find the trailer, will get some eyes on it and go from there.
Is it possible to build a simple frame and put that on a furniture dolly and slide the fridge out on to it?

[Marine359]

I suppose it would make it much easier. My 39 year old son was available to help he get the fridge out. It wasn’t easy. Being able to slide it out onto a platform, then move it to the side would have been way easier. Why didn’t I think of that.

[Fred L]

Well Jim, thats what God made 39yo sons for.... I have 2 daughters and was more thrilled the past 25 yrs than originally anticipated. Then it just got better in the last couple years when they each married great guys, who I know would come and help in a minute.

Last question for this thread; im torn between 2021, 2022 and 2023- 2108TB trailers.

Any insights on those choices would be appreciated. The only difference other than yrs and price, is the 2021 Im looking at still has the old propane/ac fridge. I plan to boondock for 10 days this fall in no. Minn or Wis and dont want to have to worry about a 12v fridge. As of now, my plan to put 400watts of solar on the roof (if i can fit it) and a 300 AH LiFepo4 battery on board (with a mod to keep it insulated in more of the living area vs the pass through). Also have a honda 2000i, that will come along, but wouldnt be upset if it never came out of the Tundra bed.

[Marine359]

You’ll hear other opinions that absorption fridges are better suited for boondocking. I don’t agree. If you’re going to boondock, upgrading batteries and adding solar are what I call “sunk costs”. So in my mind there are no added costs to getting a 12v compressor fridge. Many advantages. It’s bigger inside, 10cuft instead of 8cuft for absorption. It gets cold really fast, like about 2 hours, so you don’t have to turn it on overnight to cool down. It will stay way colder than an absorption fridge. It doesn’t have to be level. It’s completely safe, no danger of fire.

I don’t know which brand/model compressor fridge you’re looking out, but they’re all about the same as far as consumption. I did a lot of testing and posting on the performance of my fridge in various ambients with no other 12v loads running. It’s going to use between 600 and 750 wh per day depending on ambients. So, for planning of battery and solar, just count on it gobbling up 750wh daily from your battery bank. We’ve been RVing for more than 40 years, and always had absorption fridges. So, naturally, we wanted one on the new trailer. But we coalesced and accepted the compressor fridge, then came to love it. Just like our fridge at home.

We are pretty frugal with power consumption when boondocking. We don’t hardly ever use our inverter, so we live with no ac power. In normal camping, we will use 900-1,000 wh each day when boondocking. We use an additional 600wh to run the furnace all night when ambients drop below freezing. We offload device charging and cpap use to a small 300wh powerstation, which we recharge with solar. We have 300w of highly productive CIGS panels on the roof which farm about 1.0-1.2 kWh daily, and a 100w folding portable panel which can kick in an additional 250wh daily when it’s not busy charging the small powerstation. Our house battery is a 170ah (2kWh) LiFePo4, which can absorb all the solar we produce. Last year we added a 2kWh Ecoflow delta 2 Max powerstation for backup, and to run ac power on pass thru, so we don’t have to invert any power from our house battery. When we use the Ecoflow for ac, we turn off battery charging function on our inverter/charger, so the Ecoflow doesn’t get drained by the house battery. When morning comes, the house battery usually fully charges from solar before nightfall. With this setup, we can go virtually forever without running a generator, or 3-4 straight days with no sun at all.

Depending on your camping style, you may consume more or less power than we do. Bottom line is that 400w of solar, and 4kWh of LiFePo4 are the ideal components needed for extended no-generator boondocking. We actually stopped bringing our generator on shorter trips as we gained confidence in our power production and reserves. On long trips of two weeks or more, we still carried our small propane generator as insurance, but never used it.

As to model year, we had a 2021b model, a mid model year change, which we thought was much nicer than the 2921 model. However, it was built in September 2020 during the height of Covid. Don’t know if that was the reason there was some shoddy workmanship. I believe they deleted the range hood on 2023 models. And instead went with a mid-cabin exhaust vent. I don’t think I’d like that, especially in cold weather when you just want to exhaust moisture and odors from cooking, but not suck all the heat out of the camper. Range hood’s also catch particle laden vapor. So, try to find one with a range hood.

The Micro Minnie’s come standard with a Dometic 300 plastic toilet. It’s the thing we hated most when our camper was new, and the first thing we replaced. [with a Dometic 310 porcelain toilet.]

[Fred L]

Thank you Jim. So essentially the fridge is a non-issue in my selection. Now I just need to decide which year. I sure hope this doesnt come down to decor being the deciding factor.... hoping its based on best value, but my wife is joining me at the Harrisburg Pa RV show this weekend, so my plans may change.

[Marine359]

Good luck and have fun at the show.