JakeJake (and Dale!) 's Camper Truck |2000 AC

Good to know and thanks for the rec. Badass work!

 

Not very much, Im sure with some airbag pressure tuning I can mostly eliminate that. Sitting at 20 psi in the bags and they are rated for 100. My damn work truck needs a similar setup pronto.

 

I could touch myself to this fab work

 

Just wow, love the detailed work that's going into this, fantastic thread and fantastic work on the truck!!

 

Yesterday Terry got me dialed in with a perfect alignment. I was a little worried that we would run out of adjustabilty with the added 1200lbs, but with how level everything sits it was no big deal.

I unloaded the 800lbs of concrete this morning and the steering wheel was 1-2 degrees off to the drivers side. I dropped air pressure in the bags down to 5 psi and the wheel straightened up and everything is straight as an arrow again.

I was going to dive into the bed some more today, but I think that I'll get the new wheel studs/spacers/big meats installed today and go stay somewhere in the rig tonight so I can see how my ideas are going to function in the the real world.

 

your tail lights got me lol'ing


Wait, why not turn them side ways and have the flat side up against the rail of the bed? (Signals outside, brake mid, reverse inside)

 

For the lolz of course! They are just temporarily in that location, end goal is to have them in basically the stock location, molded into the back of the upper boxes.

I guess that kind of gives away my next secret too. The lower portion of the flatbed will be steel, while the upper boxes will be fiberglass like the camper.

 

That's good to hear. I'll schedule an appointment there soon. Hopefully they can get me fixed up.

 

If you need any more confirmation that he is the guy, his daily driver is a black 1g Sequoia!

 

Put the big meats on the other day. 1 1/4" spacer in the front and 1 1/2" spacer in the rear. Sists nice and square with the front actually 1/8" more narrow overall. Didn't initially love the tire noise or the ride. Improved the ride by dropping 10psi in all four. Chalk test shows full tread contact. They are still loud AF. Re gearing would be ideal and I definitely notice the reduced acceleration and increased breaking. Looks great though!

Did a little Departure angle testing. This is way more than the truck will ever see with its intended use. Planning on keeping everything equal to or higher than the stock departure angle determined by the hitch.

Today I added some legs to the camper cart to facilitate easier loading and unloading. It sits about 4" lower than the flatbed deck, and just clears under the garage door with 3-4". Still a clunky process, but a good start.


Giving myself this week to get as much done as possible to the lower steel portion of the camper. It's going to be over 100 everyday, but I'm pretty motivated to get these ideas out of my head and into the world.

 

Got a good start on the flatbed today.

This is bugging me though. I intentionally set the centerline of the wheel arch 1" to the rear of wheel centerline. This was to plan ahead for the rearward motion of the axle when loaded. Im thinking now that I may only see half of that (or 1/2") movement rearward when loaded. I don't know, I'm just making this shit up as I go along.

For reference.

I guess the plan tomorrow morning is to load the bed with 15X 80lb bags (1200lbs) of quickcrete and see how things look. I'll make a decision after I see things at their intended ride height.

 

So...the axle only moved 1/8"ish with load.




I cut the fender assembly right through the centerline.

Put a 2" strip of 3/16 plate in, and zipped everything back together.

Happy with the nice consistent wheel reveal, not so happy about losing half a day to do it. It do be like that sometimes.Lunch break and then I'll start working on the rear section.

 

Calling it an early day so that I can do some head scratching and figuring out.Also, the thermometer shows 101! I should be able to hit the ground running tomorrow morning.

I built this skateboard tail to bump the bed out to a full 8'. It supports the very edge of the camper right by the large rear door, so It makes me fell better about that overhang. It's well above the stock Departure angle line. If it ever gets close I'm doing some sketchy stuff.


Cool little boxed 14ga plate affair. Also has an Internal stiffener.

 

All of this is awesome. Love it.

 

Watching!

 

Great build!!

 

Awesome Build!!!

 

I guess I never finished the Flatbuild posts, here's a handful of pictures how it sits


Yoinked it off today for the first time since building it. Feeling a little spoiled with the forklift around

 

Started Building set of rock sliders today. Tubing is 1.75" .120 wall HREW.

Started with some design.

Main tubes bent.

The short section in the center is everything I had leftover, explains why I want to be accurate in the math department.


High and tight baby.


Believe it or not that's everything I accomplished in an 9 hour day

 

There's no pictures of all the times you threw the frizbee or ball for Dale though.
Looking good I'm just a hack welder fabber when I have to be, this kind of shit gets me juices flowin.

 

He keeps a close eye on me

 

These sliders look like they're gonna be awesome. Been thinking about some since I took my old man steps off. I'm excited to see the final result.

 

Just wrapped up another long day in the shop with seemingly little progress

Started the day by making full size templates of the driver and passenger side frame rails. Then everything was drawn in CAD


This first draft was cut in some 14ga steel to check fitment.


Checking fit and marking up changes with a sharpie. Dale says "shits fucked yo"


I tweaked all the dimensions and locations in CAD and cut yet another 14ga template to verify fitment. Only made one change from the second template to the final part.

Heres the fruit of all that labor. A rock slider mounting plate/frame doubler that incorporates all of the factory holes and features. Cut from 3/16 plate.

Wanna bolt your sliders on? Use the 5 factory holes and some 5/8" bolts, it won't take you an hour. Wanna weld your sliders on? Use a few of the bolt holes to hold things where you want them before you burn them in. It doesn't get any easier than that.




Tomorrow I should finally start putting all the pieces together, but it feels good to get this groundwork laid out. The next set will be blazing fast

 

So the set I bought were made by a dude playing another dude who was doing an engineering exit project or something. He pretty much did what you did with the factory holes, but on the backside for nuts and washers he keyed each opening with a washer on top of that

 

I did consider something like that, but you gotta draw the line somewhere

 

The night is still young…..

 

So, the numbers told me "move on Jake, this is silly"

A 5/8-11 grade 8 bolt has 20,325 lbs of clamp force when torqued to spec.

5 of them bad boys is plenty of squeeze to keep the plate from moving.

 

Sliders look great so far. Any reason why you're using a standard bolt instead of a metric one?

 

Thanks!

I guess the only determining factor was accessibility. Standard hardware is cheap and available less than a mile roundtrip from the shop.

Thinking about it i'm kinda standard brained by default/habit too, hell even my tape measure has inches on it