How to: DIY Wedge Camper

You could also make the cap only roof have an overhang so that it diverts water over the cap.

 

What clearance is everyone leaving between the wedge and the crown of the cab? I'm estimating I'll be just shy of 2".

 

I left somewhere around 6”. On account of a couple of reasons; I wanted shell to be tall enough to allow bikes in the box and the eventual addition of a roof rack.

 

Just shy of 2” for me as well.

 

What do you think of that gap? Too much? Too little? Goldilocks?

 

Mine is split underneath the hinges, it's a good spot to have the different pieces meet at.

 

I'm at about 1.25". I wanted it close.

 

yea. Close probably looks better.

 

I just have to keep an eye on the bed mounts to make sure it doesn't get closer and touch.

 

A lot of guys with vagabond and super pacific campers run prinsu racks underneath with less than 3/4” gap and dont have any contact issues

 

Great point!

 

I’m trying to keep mine as low as possible thinking 3/4” plus the bulb gaskets

 

I’d like to run it closer but I’m modifying my A.R.E DCU cap as the base and I don’t want to do more work than needed. So I’ll probably stick with 23” as the height of the frame and let gap be what it is (looking like 1-3/4” right now)

 

I am going to have mine a little higher, I don't park in a garage so I don't care what height I'm at. I also don't want to cut up my prinsu rack or buy another one. That said, I do think it looks better the lower it is.

 

Yea you could even go to 1.5” and be fine. My clamping method of the camper was a bit novel and I had no idea how much the thing would flex. It was pretty stressful hanging that over a new truck. When I first mounted it I drove around and put my hand out the window into the gap to feel it and it moved less that 0.5” up and down at the most. I noticed that the most movement was not off-road. It is when driving on the freeway at certain speeds where the suspension, air hitting the camper and the seams in the concrete all add up to a harmonic where you can feel it bumping a bit. A small rack/deflector is in my near future!

And yes it fits easily in the garage at this height.

 

Yea that is not surprising. The fiberglass bed of my truck (2019) is bolted directly to the frame so I am thinking the cab/bed are pretty darn tight.

I wanted to do this previously. I am going to put a scratch-gauge between the cab roof/camper frame and actually measure the movement on the road with the camper super snug.

 

Mine is just under 1” at the tightest point. No issues with contact. I stood on the edge of the overhang to see if it’d touch, but no problems there either.

 

cool I should have done that I put it on the locking handle. Hoping this solves all the condensation issues I’ve been having.

pretty easy install. The only difficult thing is the springs and doing it by yourself haha

 

Awesome!

It might help a little with condensation but where it really shines is the water coming in from the corners when it's raining.

 

I quickly measured cab/camper movement today by rigging this up and spurting around the neighborhood bottoming out the rear a few times. I measured 0.4” max deflection left, right, and up and 0.2” down. A hard front end hit might bring the camper a little lower but this is what I measured.