1 Bored Clerk's Garage Built Camper

Productive evening!


Picked up all of my parts mid day.


Installed the front cross brace...backwards.


Rear cross brace

Before powdercoating, I marked everything with a punch so I'd know which cross brace went where and which side was which. The number of punches increase sequentially from 1-4. Easy.




Got everything loosely bolted together on the bench before moving it to the truck.





And there it is! All bolted together. I'll assemble and mount the fenders tomorrow. I love how shiny and new everything is. And I dig the contrast with the zinc fasteners.

I won't be able to get the camper mounted until I get back from vacation...but I'll need the truck to get me to the start of my vacation and home again. So I'll cobble together a fuel filler mount out of whatever scrap steel I have laying around.

Oh, one more thing.

This is the kind of stuff you need to think up when you're designing and problem solving on the go. I had to get four of these spacers between the front two crossmembers and there was no reasonable way to do it. Blue tape to the rescue! A few layers of folded blue tape made the arm stiff enough and a little tape wrap around the perimeter of the spacer held it in place enough to fish into location and get a bolt through it. Then just pull the tab and off it comes. Easy. Able to use the same tape arm for all four.

 

And just like that, the subframe is done! Fenders feel incredibly stout now that everything is bolted down solid. We'll see how it holds up twisting off road. I'm curious if I'll get any squeaks or if anything loosens up.

 

It has Australian-looking flair to it.

I am looking forward to seeing the camper on it.

I guess you are too...

 

Just had to share some hasty hillbilly ingenuity!



I needed a no camper fuel filler mount capable of making a 14 hour round trip freeway loop this weekend and again in a week and a half. Boom! A few U bolts and some scrap angle aluminum.

 

Wow. Just read all 105 pages and very impressed. Great work, keep it coming!

 

awesome work dig the new flat bed a lot

 

Thanks! There's seems to always be "the next thing" on the list.

 

The new camper subframe is cool. I can't wait to see if I notice a difference with the camper.

 

I would bet the thicker material helps a lot with denting from rocks and gravel being thrown up into the fenders. Having it thicker is probably in the long run better for durability I would think.

 

I am curious, and I'm sure you have though this out and possibly even mentioned it I can't recall, maybe it isn't even an issue. Were you going to do any kind of gasket or anything between the steel parts and aluminum parts? I don't know if the powder coat accomplishes this or not but I have always heard, don't mount steel to aluminum because you end up with weird corrosion issues. Not sure where I heard that or why it stands out in my mind but I was thinking that if you had steel components bolted to aluminum you would need some sort of gasket between them to prevent corrosive reactions. Anyway, awesome build!

 

The flatbed I had was bare aluminum on cad plated steel and built the same way I'm doing it here. So,I think it'll be okay. We'll find out! If this was a saltwater boat, this would be a no go.

 

Finally back from both vacations and getting over a summer cold...


I wasn't happy with the surface flatness I was seeing so I sanded it back much farther than I normally would between paint coats. This should build up much nicer with two more coats of paint. Shooting to have those two coats on this weekend. One on Saturday morning and one Sunday morning.

I've been thinking about putting some channel aluminum rails on this front face so I could slide a table in. I don't have a table and I don't really want to make a table and I really want the camper back on the truck. Just trying to be smart while I have the camper off. I would move the camper electrical input down if I did that then seal up the current hole. I don't know...seems like a lot of hassle for something I may not even care about. There's just enough room between the camper and cab because of the fuel filler that it seems like I could use it for something. A sliding rack with a couple of rotopax would be cool but there isn't that much space...of course.

I also may need to send part of my subframe back out to be re-powdercoated. There is a small area on a weld that is showing signs of rust. Maybe my weld was too porous around there or maybe the powder didn't get in there as well. This hasn't ever happened so I'm not sure. Luckily the part is easy to remove and replace while the camper is off.

 

I may have just screwed myself over with this coat of paint. I bought a new quart then saw that I had a half a quart already in the garage. So I started with that. Mixed in some performance enhancer (helps with toughness, fading and shine) and started painting. I immediately felt like something was off. The paint was behaving strangely. Once I was done, it hit me. I think I had already mixed performance enhancer into that paint three weeks ago! The pot life is down to a recommended 12 hours or so once you mix the performance enhancer in. Plus I then mixed in a whole additional amount of the stuff. Ugh. I usually mark the containers when I do such a thing but I somehow neglected to. We'll see what happens. I may have to completely sand this down and start over. That would be annoying.

 

Love that color

 

I love it more every day!

This paint is really surprising. Pretty darn tough, easy to touch up when you do chip it or need to alter something because it doesn't seem to fade much. Not the smoothest finish but it's perfect for this...for me.

 

Okay, I finally sanded this thing down ONE MORE TIME. Took the time to sand it smoother than it's been since I filled in the window. Now I'll get up early tomorrow morning when it's cool and probably no wind and get a good coat on there. The last coat. I can't believe how much of a pain it's been to get a decent coat on here. I think it may be due to painting later in the morning when it's already warmer and less humidity. It seemed like the paint was drying too fast. I was coating small areas (1/4 at a time) and tipping each section out. I think I'll roll on a good coat on the entire surface and tip it out at once. It's a balance between getting sags before curing and having it dry too fast. This was so easy in my garage. Like REALLY easy. Fingers crossed.

 

Well, of course it's been breezy since early in the morning. Temps were cool though. I waited for a window of relatively calm wind to get a coat of paint on the camper. I only rolled it. I didn't fuss with it more by tipping it. Figured I'd just let it be. It's not my best fairing and paint job but I think it'll do the job nicely. Hopefully not too much crap blows into the paint before it cures

 

Wow, look at that reflection of you truck cab. Nice job.

 

From afar, my friend.

 

Well, I have rental camper jacks reserved for tomorrow. If all goes well, the camper will be back on the truck tomorrow. Hopefully all the measurements were correct and it's a quick process. I can't wait to get it back on there.