BEAM ME UP
The OP4 is an attractive camper, even when it’ s all folded away for travel. This camper was originally released in Australia nearly 15 years ago as a much more rudimentary beast. While the essential shape was the same, it did involve tent poles to achieve the classic dome shape of the roof. However, there was room for improvement.
Thus, the Opus Air was born about nine years ago. Instead of tent poles to provide the shape and support for the camper’ s tent section, Opus developed‘ air beams’ to replace the tent poles – when inflated to 7psi via the onboard air-compressor, these air beams become rigid and the tent section self-erects.
Setting up the camper, which is now known as the OP4, from go to whoa shouldn’ t take more than 10 minutes, though you’ d probably get it down to five after doing it a few times. First, you flip up the roof rack, which lifts easily on gas struts towards the offside of the camper. You lower the rear spare wheel, and then flip open the two lids of the camper. When open, these lids become the floor of the separate sleeping areas. The roof rack, the spare wheel and the trailer lids are all locked in their travel position via over-centre catches. Everything feels tight and solid, and if it can crash and bang when being closed, such as the roof rack, Opus has included a stopper to prevent damage.
There’ s a locker on the nearside containing isolation switches for all of the 12V functions of the van, including the air-compressor. Simply hit that switch when the camper is opened up and within minutes, the tent section will be up.
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