1 Bored Clerk's Garage Built Camper

Sub'd

 

I can’t wait to get the filler neck relocated. Hopefully I don’t have to move the bed back to achieve that. Getting the fuel sorted all around will be HUGE for my mental state. I cannot tell you how upset I am every time I fill up and get gas on the truck and my shoes.

 

Wow. Awesome work on a very interesting project. Think I’ll hang around and see how this turns out.

 

Picked this up today:


$107. That sucks a little but it’s a small price to pay to be able to work on this while the truck is still drivable.


This is my general plan. Much better angle for the pump...it won’t have to be held in! And it gives me a tad bit more volume to play with while I’m tuning in the fill so it doesn’t overfill. I will have to move my bed back one to one and a half inches to fit this safely in here without worrying that it’ll hit the cab when twisting around off road. My guess is our frames don’t actually twist enough at the back of the cab to worry too much but 1.5” of clearance seems like a good minimum. I’m at about .75” here. I’d likely have to move my bed back a lot just to access the area to fit everything together and fit a right angle drill in there to mount this filler to the bed so it’s really not much more work to drill a few new holes for the bed mounts.

I’ll still be working on the camper but this will be my priority this weekend.

 

Big day today! Got the gas filler relocated. Took way longer than I had hoped but it seems pretty solid and I had to do a lot of fussy work to get it done.


Stripped the area free of all of its ‘stuff’. Removed fuel filler, both vent lines and front fenders from both sides. Also removed all of the bed bolts.


Slid the bed back as far as it would go without completely removing it.


There’s only enough room for a right angle drill. If you don’t have one of these, I highly recommend. I hardly ever use it but when I do, it saves me MASSIVE amounts of work and time.


Somewhere in the test fitting process.


I cut up both of the fuel fillers I had. Be very conservative with this! Cut as little off as necessary to test fit. Sneak up on your final cuts. Don’t want to scrap one of these at $107 each.


Decided I could get it done using some of the flanges already in the bed. No through holes into the cargo area.




I used P Clamps to mock everything up. Yep, looking good so far!


Had to make a little bracket. No biggie but this is the stuff that eats up time like you can’t believe. I ended up making two of these to get the position just right as I was changing from P Clamps to other clamp styles for a more robust mounting solution.


Ended up using a heavy duty P Clamp for the bottom mount. And an EMT clamp for the upper mount. The EMT mount was strong and held the filler more rigidly than the p clamp. I used a brass spacer I had in the toolbox that happened to be exactly the right size to fill in the open space on the EMT clamp. This let me pull the fastener up solid against the fill tube then just a bit tighter up solid to the spacer. It looks better than without and performs better too.


I attached the new soft hoses to the ends of the fill neck system but left them full length (3’). Then I slid the bed forward until I had 2” of clearance around everything. That ended up being 1” farther to the rear than I had the bed originally. I didn’t want to move it back at all, but this is totally worth it. Then cut the steel tubing from the original fill neck to put the hoses in the right place. Then I cut the hoses to fit over the old fill neck pieces. Looks good to me! Then I drilled the new bed holes and bolted it back together.


Looks pretty good to me!

I have a few things left to do: I need to pull the rear bumper to drill the last two bed mounting holes. Bummer but I’m also going to swap out the bumper bolts for stainless steel or cad plated fasteners. I like the black look but every bolt is already rusty and crappy looking. I also want to put some sort of loop around the filler neck at the gas cap. Not strictly necessary for function but I think it would finish off the area to make it look more intentional as well as offer some protection from branches and whatnot when off-roading. Lastly, I need to attach the gas cap tether to something. Not sure, yet, how I want to do that but it needs doing. Not a fan of loose filler caps.

So, I went and filled up the gas tank. It spit only a teeny tiny amount of fuel! I was so stoked! It used to spray a depressing amount of fuel on the ground, the side of the truck, my shoes, sometimes my shirt...it was F’d up. So, I’m almost there! I need a slightly longer vent tube inside the tank and I’ll be good. I’m not sure how much longer a vent tube I can get in there without lifting the bed though. So nice to have made such massive progress on this issue. I’m so close to perfection!

 

Looks good!
+1 on the right angle drill. Mine is a cordless Bosch. Saved me a ton of work!

 

Awesome job. I was thinking something very similar after doing the breather pretty much the same way. Thanks again for the great info.

 

Will that set up give you any issues when you have to smog your truck? Looks rad, btw

 

Hopefully not! Truck is still new enough I don’t have to smog it yet. Most of it will be hidden when the box goes under the flatbed in that spot. I may put a sheet metal cover over all the tubing between the cab and bed too. Just to clean it up. When I’ve had cars smogged in this area before, they just plug into the OBD2 and run their diagnostic and that’s it. There isn’t a comprehensive visual inspection. They just want to know if all of the emissions systems are working properly. The OBD2 gives them that. Besides, this doesn’t remove any of the factory components for vapor recovery.

 

Thats what they did with mine recently. Literally just plug it in and thats it. Even for the safety and e-test, thats all they did. with all the armour and everything I had zero issues. As long as you have nothing on the dash your fine. Even my TPMS I had the PVC pipe bomb and it worked great.

 

Tonight was a garage reset night.


This is what my life had become. After a few other projects, working on the camper became impossible. Time to deal with that.


An hour and a half later and I have a clean-ish workspace! Blew all the dust out, threw away a bunch of little crap that had piled up, and put away every tool, nut and bolt.

Now I’m ready to get back to work on the camper!

 

What size hose did you go with? I think there is 3 lines that need to be either extended or re-routed. Also, where did you get. Having a hard time finding fuel hose locally. Its mainly all hydraulic line which they don't recommend for fuel purposes.

 

1/4” fuel line for the breather, 5/8” fuel line for the evap box, 1” fuel filler hose for the fuel fill. You should be able to get 1/4” fuel line at any auto parts store. I had to order the other two sizes. I ordered them from www.fillernecksupply.com very fast shipping. I will say that the 5/8” hose is a very tight fit. I had to lube it up a bit to get it over the evap metal line. But, it’s on there now! And, yes, it all needs to be fuel rated. Not high pressure...just rated for fuel.

 

Planning to work on the door hinge tonight. I need to get that done so I can wrap up the exterior of the camper. Stay tuned.

 

Well, I started on the door hinge yesterday. Not sure I’m happy with how it’s going.


I cut these lengths of marine grade plywood then drilled the holes to match the hinge. Then oversized them and filled them with epoxy. The plan is to come back through and redrill the holes to the correct size for the stainless furniture nuts. Ideally, the column of epoxy would fully surround the furniture nut so no moisture could get to the plywood but I’m not sure I like how this is going. Ill take a look when I get home. I’ll need to sand all of the epoxy down flat to the plywood and see if it’s serviceable. If it is, I’ll carry on with my plan. If not, I’ll figure another way around.

 

Wow man, lots of progress! I commend you, it's too cold down here to be working that hard after being in this weather all day at work, lol.

Interested in how this part turns out...

 

Thank you.

 

I’m going to start over on these. I don’t like how these turned out. It’s a viable solution, I think but these didn’t do it for me. It’s pretty quick to bang out another set.

 

So, I cut and drilled two new hinge plates this morning. I didn’t like the holes in the first set nor how thin they were. I can always cut these down if I want less width.


Drilled the holes a little oversized and filled with epoxy to seal the wood. I’ll come back when it’s cured tomorrow and redrill the holes to the correct size and set the stainless furniture nuts. Then I’ll bolt the hinge up and make sure it all works together!


I also have all of the fences set for routing out the recess for the hinge plate. I’m going to hold off doing the routing until I’m sure the hinge plates will work. But, having the fences set and the router all set up just make that easier when it’s time.

I could simply set some plywood into the camper wall then pre drill the hole for a wood screw, fill with epoxy and use wood screws into the wood to hold the hinge on. But that seems kinda flimsy for long term. Maybe I’m just making tons more work for myself for no reason. We’ll see!