Otis24's Otisbound Outdoors Bodonkadonk Supercharged Twin Locked Micro Camper Build (OOBSTLMC)

will do. it'll probably be a little while but that just gives me more time to research. when you put it like that, it might be more feasible to do a switch like the old fords had. once stuff opens back i'll go up to the local 4x4 shop and ask the guys there what they think.

 

Sounds good!
From the time I thought about adding a second tank to actually doing it was about 2 years. It took me a year to gather all the parts and actually build the thing.

A couple issues I’ve had are when both tanks only have a few Gallons of fuel the evap system thinks there’s a leak due to all the extra volume when it pulls a vacuum to check for leaks. It throws a check engine light.
When smog time comes I don’t use the tank and clamp off the transfer hose and the vent.

Don’t over fill it. It goes into your evap canister and causes problems.

My aux tank sits higher than the spare tire. But, I managed to wack it on a rock and put a small dent in it. I can drop the tank, removed the fuel pump and push the dent out from the inside. I just haven’t.
At some point I’m going to build a bumper that matches the width of the camper. When I do that I might RE-weld the fuel tank brackets so the whole thing sits higher and more protected.
I can’t go too high because you need elevation between the mouth of the filler neck and the tank.

 

This might be worth waiting in and combining it with that engine swap too. That would be slick.

 

that's what i was thinking. my plan for the time being is to leave a lot of this stuff as is. plus... the fuel tank addition would require a lot more than just the fuel tank, pump/ sending unit, switch, and whatever lines would be required. if i did this i'd go to a junk yard, find a first gen, and cut the fuel door out of the bedside. then i'd try and splice that into the bedside of my truck, but closer to the rear. i'm basically trying to go for something as close as possible to what the OBS fords came from the factory with. additionally, i don't want to have the spare taking up bed space which would mean that i'd need a rear swingout... and corresponding frame reinforcement. i might not totally box the frame, but i'd do a set of plates for sure. then there's the issue of parts storage, i'm about a month away from graduating from high school, and about 3 months away from moving out of my mom's house and into a dorm (hopefully). basically what all that means is that my ability to store parts and stuff is about to take a big hit. at the moment i'm just going to try and leave the powertrain as stock as possible for as long as possible. i'm planning on doing 4.88 gears next summer and that should keep me happy power-wise until the stock 3.4 blows up... or i get bored. once i get my own place with enough space to work on trucks and store parts though, i'm for sure going to start compiling all this stuff. the engine swap, diesel or V8, is the end goal.

 

Sounds like a good plan.
What’s going on with graduation for you with the Coronavirus situation?
Will there be a ceremony?

 

at the moment it's not looking like there will be a ceremony. there has been talk of doing stuff like having a ceremony this coming winter when everyone is around for the holidays, or maybe having us walk with the class of 2021. IMO i'm just ready to be done and graduated, but i can also understand some of my peers not being quite so excited to just drop the culmination of the past 4 years and move on. we'll see what happens. there will be a virtual one on the day that the ceremony was scheduled (June 16th) and then there will be a drive up system to turn in our textbooks, laptops, and pick our diplomas up sometime soon after that. they haven't released an official date for it yet. Who knows what they'll end up doing. i'm just kind of ambivalent about the whole situation; "along for the ride" if you will.
like i said before, i'm just kind of ready to finish up, make tracks, and get out of here.metaphorically speaking of course since there really isn't anywhere to go right now. i am planning on going camping after graduation though so i'm looking forward to that.

 

Yeah, no kidding. Time to move into the the next phase of life.
I moved from near Philly to near Detroit halfway through my senior year. I skipped graduation. I didn’t really know anyone and mostly I just wanted to move along.

 

yeah, my mom did the same thing. my grandfather was in the foreign service so she didn't really have the experience of sticking with one class and getting to know people. the first time that she actually walked at a graduation ceremony was when she finished with grad school a few years ago. High school hasn't been miserable for me, but it's also not something that i care to dwell on... so i'm just ready to get 'er over with.

 

You’re gonna love life post high school. You mentioned a dorm...college?

 

yup! I'll be heading to Montana State University in Bozeman this fall. they actually moved the start date up from August 30th to August 17th to avoid people coming back after thanksgiving break. trying to cut down on the spread of Covid, which i can completely understand. looks like this is going to be one short summer since the district i live in get's out later than most (mid-June). Planning on Majoring in either rangeland ecology and management, or wildlife habitat ecology and management. basically the same degree with minor subtle differences, i should be able to switch back and fourth as i start to get a better idea of the direction i want to go in. pretty much all the class requirements are identical for both degrees for the first 2 years. Very much looking forward to it, not only for the college its self but i'm really looking forward to living in Bozeman too. i've been out there a couple times and it's absolutely beautiful.

 

Nice!
I lived in Whitefish very briefly in 1999. Crazy beautiful.

 

yeah, if i can get a solid job with the parks service up at glacier then Whitefish or Kalispell wouldn't be a bad place to end up. My main goal after college is to work in the natural resources field and live in Montana or Wyoming. whether that means working for a government agency or a private land management company, who knows...out of curiosity, what took you to whitefish?

 

Did you use z bar for your door jambs? I need to build a few hatches in my fwc and have been thinking it out. Z bar and then U channel with ply skinned in sheetmetal with a automotive stylebulb seal. But I am not sure if that will be enough to stop rain while driving.

 

I was moving to the SF Bay Area from Connecticut and decided a good way to get here would be by bicycle.
I left from the Delaware Water Gap in New Jersey on July 1st. I ran too low on money in Montana to make it all the way across. luckily I had a friend in Whitefish. I crashed at his place for a few month. I got a job at a restaurant in town.

I rode 3200 miles in 40 days. My route would have taken me down the Columbia River and then south for around 5,000 miles total. If I’d taken a more direct route I would have made it with miles to spare.

I’d been cooking for a long time already. The owner of the place in Whitefish talked me into going back to the east coast and going to The Culinary Institute of America. I graduated in 2003.

I finally made it to California in 2007. I’ve been here since with the exception of moving to Arkansas for all of 2014.

 

No I didn’t but I did look into z bar shaped profiles. As long as the dimensions add up that should work.

I’ll make a cross section of a door jam and the door section today so you can see how they work and fit together.

 

Look into h channel as well. Sometimes it’s called chair profile (I think)
I didn’t use it because I couldn’t find it in dimensions that would work for me. It would have been way easier than what I ended up doing.
Like this.
https://bendtrailers.com/apel-extru...DEay3lbwHSuRnSAeGEAA_WVUCer9cR2RoCG8gQAvD_BwE

 

Alrighty, I made a cross section.

There is no interior skin in the cross section.
Bottom of the pic is the outside, right is the inside.
On the left is the door jam, on the right is the door frame.
The outside has 1/16” x 1” x 1.5” aluminum angle. That’s adheres to the .050 aluminum skin with 3M CV43F double sided commercial vehicle tape. The little gap in the corner is usually filled with loctite PL8X polyurethane construction adhesive.
Next in the door side (right) is 3/4” aluminum tube adhered to the skin with 3M CV62F tape, just like the other one but thicker.
On the door jam side is 1”square tube followed by 1/8”x1”x1.5” aluminum angle...more CV62F.
The weather stripping in the middle is marine grade self adhesive stuff I got at my local Ace hardware.

 

Good ideas and thanks a ton for the pic. That should be significantly cheaper than using z bar. Depending on the hatch and where I decide to hinge it, I think on the upper frame I will try and use a T bar in place of the 1/16 angle to give a bit of a drip edge.

 

Have you looked at pre-made hatches?
I almost used a complete teardrop door but decided on the drop down with stairs in the back at the last minute when some one said “you should have it drop down like an airplane door with stairs in the back”.
I was like F’ yeah!

 

This is how you end up with 650 feet of double sided sticky tape in your camper. The first few rolls were $1.22/foot and then I found it way cheaper for $.78/ foot.
I think it ended up being the 3rd most expensive ingredient after tube and aluminum sheet.