Vagabond Drifter Camper Buildout and Mods

Get some good front coilovers if you don't have them and plan to run around Baja. They make all the difference in road feel and handling. I just have a stage 3 Icon standard front (650 or 700lb spring, no idea how it compares to gen1 trucks) and it is magic and very predictable behavior in rough high speed stuff with an occasional ditch or washout or boulder thrown your way. Just a single tube and no resevoir seems to be enough.

 

This would make the hotter summers more tolerable… but would be further contributing to the issue.

https://www.ecoflow.com/wave-portable-air-conditioner

 

What materials are you guys using for your interior build outs? Looking to keep weight down as much as possible. 8020 & plywood? Some kind of composite sheet material? Looking to do a fairy simply L shape seating/storage buildout with a couple drawers and storage for the electrical build.

 

In an ideal world I’d love to have an aluminum frame that handled every load requirement and coroplast sides for weight savings. But I didn’t have a framing material on hand/ couldn’t think of an easy framing method that would provide good shear strength, so I used thin plywood for the sides for the shear strength.

 

Are you talking about long spans? Extruded like 8020 seems like it would handle quite a load, and it lends itself to reinforcement. I didn't know about coroplast so thanks for that! In an ideal situation, what type of material would you use? The brushed fabric lamination looks cool. https://www.coroplast.com/products/brushed-fabric-lamination/

 

For what it's worth, I've also got a 1st gen, xcab regular bed '98, so almost 25 years old, 282K miles, lots of 4wd use and full-time camper for all but the first couple years. No issue with gaps at the rear quarter panels and tailgate. Gap is 5/16".

 

The 1" aluminum extrusion (80/20, tnutz) works well. I looked at Coroplast as well but went with baltic birch. I liked the look of the wood with stain and finish on it. Coroplast is probably not much difference in price but not sure. On the Baltic birch, I used 1/2" for the bench/cabinet tops and 1/4" for the side panels that fit inside the extruded aluminum.

 

Measure the top and bottom widths of the tailgate. (I’m not sure about 1st gen Tacomas, but) a tailgate is often tapered toward the top, to allow for some frame flex (and corresponding movement of the bedsides). This makes the gap at the top larger than at the bottom.

edit: oops, I quoted the wrong person again. This was aimed at @cobes

 

I've had Alcan's on my truck for 19 years and they've been great. Now that I have the Drifter built out and added a rear swing-out carrier, it's much heavier than my old camper setup and the old springs are out of spec. So I just ordered another set of Alcans and will be installing them soon. I'm looking forward to getting them on there. Also, get the largest diameter shock and/or reservoir shock that you can accommodate, whatever your budget allows... the more volume, the more heat they will handle and less they will fade with the heavy camper and other loads at the back half of the truck.

 

If you are aiming that question at me, I would probably would go the 8020 route with coroplast in my ideal world. (At the time I built my boxes I was in a pinch with limited materials and tools, and wood was what I had on hand.)

Only thing about Coroplast is you’d have to be mindful how you load the box. I wouldn’t sheathe a box with coroplast and load it with loose tools or some such — loose heavy items with sharp corners can deform it. Also, you can’t mount anything with weight to a sheet of coroplast. Those considerations are the tradeoff for how lightweight it is.

 

Good to know. I have OME 90004 & OME 2880 coils. Its an area I dont know much about truthfully, just went with OME when my stock suspension was practically dead and figured it would be a good upgrade for my budget at the time. I reeeeeally am finding myself wanting an ARB front bumper now, so I think I'd need to get different coils for that regardless.

Damn I just got unlucky I guess, something must be different with mine. Seeing your build is actually when I opted out of installing the stiffeners! Thankfully its stopped on that side, and oddly hasnt moved at all on the other.

Thats good to know!

Sweet, thats good to know. Im excited to see how different they feel.

How specific of weight did you send them for your new pack? I've tried to get my daily load to within like 10lbs to be as accurate as possible, and then hoping that will handle my camping loadouts with the extra 250ish lbs. How much does your weight vary? I'm also thinking I might have Lew make me an additional leaf now to add when I eventually get a bumper so I dont have to wait when that happens.

My current Dakar pack is so damn slammed with my camping load. Hoping it holds up for the next month and a half. Can anything bad happen with overloaded leafs?


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On another note, apart from some little finishing touches, I think I'm done with my build for this year. Kind of tired of thinking about it and buying shit haha. Have been camping the last 3 weekends so its a little dirty and there are some weird fitment things, but here's my layout. Just simple and useful things really.

The little bit of boat decking foam was a proof of concept to see if it would stick on the rather awful coats of Herculiner I did. Essentially just a soft place to stand/kneel, but the girlfriend is pretty adamant about me putting some fake grass in there. The practical side of me that doesn't want to clean it says no, the part of me that likes dumb aesthetics says yes..

Someone said they wanted to copy the bike rack idea, and by all means please do, but DM me if/when you do. There's just enough play in the slider that the bike wobbled more than I'd like, so I essentially had to create a shim dock that the slider locks into at the back of the bed. And that's a grandiose way of saying that I superglued washers together and to my baseplate. Trying to figure out how to lubricate the damn thing still though.

Biggest dilemma right now is water. There's no straightforward place to keep my jug, and its a pain in the ass to get it out from the side of the fridge where it currently is. I want to get a bumper really bad, but I'm struggling to find someone locally who can make me one with a swingout with a 2" receiver, 2 jug tray, and fold down table. Also $$$. I hated the idea at first, but I've started looking at RIGd Ultraswings, but to get all the above features its such an insulting amount of money. Quality of life would be drastically improved with those things though.

I know absolutely nothing about wiring, and only have a vague understanding of how the camper is wired. My brake light isnt working so I need to try to troubleshoot that but dont know where to start. And in addition to that to help learn how to wire things, I want to try to wire a 12v cigarette port into the wire tray that goes into an anderson connector for my Goalzero.

 

For water you could quite easily build out the jerry can like one of the portable shower designs and then just use it to dispense water for drinking and general use. The nice thing with that is you don't have to move the jerry can to get water from it, and when it's time to refill, it is light and empty. Though putting it back in place it would be full. This is basically what I did, it was a very easy build. I typically keep a 1 gal plastic water jug for general use and refill that from the jerry can every day or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aOeKUOG0Us&t=2s&ab_channel=DoingStuff

 

Dang you put together your interior quick! Looks great!

 

I would run what you have if you get a bumper and see how it feels. Coils aren't hard to swap out.. it is a sketchy operation to compress them and the (search "Macpherson spring compressor") ~$100+ tools give quite a bit more confidence than the $20-40 tools.

A place like this might have a water tank to fit beside your fridge slide and fill up the pocket. https://www.plastic-mart.com/category/33/rv-water-tanks 12V pump to a quick connect port, large enough opening that you can clean it and getting one clear enough to see level is about all you need to start. The more capacity the better imo, but everyone's needs are different. Definitely a permanent mount is better than moving jugs around. Mine is stuffed up by the cab underneath drawer flooring.

Electrical is pretty easy, with just a lot of details and doing everything safely to keep the electrons inside. There are a lot of tutorials on YT and threads around here for dual battery setups or the big electrical thread. You don't need to buy a third party kit for any of this, just start with a breaker near the starting battery and get some 6-10ga snaked back to the drifter. Pay attention to wire size vs length and amp charts. Protect the wire to not rub against sharp things, ensure it doesn't move, and put fuse protection on your devices. Use a multimeter with extreme paranoia of your work. Buy quality tools and components. Learning this gives you some freedom and some ability to troubleshoot issues in the field. Cruiser Outfitters is a good local place for advice and seeing examples, as is probably Wasatch Cruisers.

 

Has anyone done Hell’s Gate on Hell’s Revenge with a Drifter, or (dare I speculate) the escalator? I’m not asking about the trail in general, just those two features.

 

Hell's Gate is doable- many stock rigs do it. Just keep uncomfortably right until you have to cross a bit left toward the top. Escalator gets inch tight and things can go wrong in a hurry. I wouldn't run that with a drifter even with good spotting, and especially with water in the bowls. Doesn't seem worth it to bend up aluminum. It can be done, but not unless you've done it a few times prior and know the spots.

I've done the former in this, which is basically stock with a lower 1st gear and 33s (no lockers).

And both with this, which is locked, 200:1 crawl ratio, 4w discs, caged and generally overbuilt. It has run a lot of the hard classic trails (pre-BFE era) all over the West. Note the custom bodywork on it (I swear most of it was before I acquired it )

 

Your setup is looking really good! To answer your questions... I completely loaded my truck, full fuel tank, full water tank, full propane, full fridge and all the gear. I took it to a truck stop and had it weighed. I put the front half on the scale and then the back half and got independent weights for front and rear. The rear weighed in at 3400 lbs. The stock springs are rated for 2100 lbs according to Lew at Alcan. So the springs will carry approximately 1300 lbs over stock. My unloaded weight is probably several hundred pounds less. I also told him that I have some bias on the left side. The OEM gas tank is on that side, plus I have approximately 150 lbs of full time weight on that side compared to the right side. He took that into account. There is no doubt a fair amount of load range built into the springs, so that the truck can vary with load (up to a point) and the springs will take up the slack so the truck sits level throughout the range. If you have a wider range (loaded vs unloaded) you'll need to share those numbers with Lew. Another important consideration is your desired lift height over stock and whether you will use extended length rear spring hangers (shackles) or not. Extended shackles will provide assistance to the springs and typically add some amount of lift over stock. So it's important to figure that in unless you're going to keep the stock spring hangers. My truck is about 2.5" of lift and the shackles provide about 1" of that for the rear.

Can anything bad happen with overloaded leafs? That depends on the leafs. It is possible for one or more to break but they will probably just do the inverted bend for some time without breaking. Driving it slowly through the whoops will help Carry some ratchet straps and/or extra u-bolts/nuts just in case.

 

I was about to do Hells Gate with my Drifter but ran out of time. Next time I’m going to make sure to do it first.

Escalator no way. Unless you want body damage.

 

An original
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/free-camper-for-short-bed-tacoma.764569/

 

Are you guys hard mounting your awnings, or using the STS quick release brackets?

I’m worried the STS brackets would make the awning easier to steal + not support the weight of the awning.