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

I’ll add some more posts about how I built the camper. I have a lot of thoughts on what I’d do different if I were to do it again. I also have a bunch of time lapse videos I can put together.
I’m taking a short break now that the thing is functional. I’m a little burned out on it. I built it in 5 months with a month off after surgery in the middle. The last month was work 9-10 hrs at my job, come home and build the camper for 3-5 hours and work on it 10-12 hours Saturday and Sunday. I think I took one day off in the last month before going to Baja and then I worked on it a few hours a day down there. I think I have about 300 hours into it.
It still needs a tent for the wedge top, insulation, interior skin, a nicer floor, upstairs bed, another door on the passenger side, remake the main entry door (that’ll be the 3rd time), add a door on the driver side for access to recovery gear etc, figure out my my filler necks for both fuel tanks, a better place to store the spare tire, a roof vent fan, maybe a skylight, on board air, on board water, finish painting the exterior, paint bits of the interior, after/during that it’s re-gear to 4.88’s, maybe front locker and rebuild, install and all the joys of tuning a supercharger, transmission cooler and valve cover gaskets before supercharger. I also want to rig up my cpap machine so it exhausts my Breathing outside to limit condensation in the camper at night.

 

So you want my 4.88s and ARB's?i need some 5.29s in my life

 

DAMN YOU!!!

 

Your ARBs will still work with the 5.29’s, right?
Or are you 86ing then because you miss hammer down?

 

They still work with 5.29s. Lol. I still hammer down with them!

 

Okie dokie...so some details on how I built this thing.

I've been wanting to build something like this for a long time. Probably since about 2015. When I saw Phil's 1st flatbed camper I'd just built an aluminum platform using sheet metal and rivets. I thought "I can build something like this with sheet metal and rivets too!"

Early on I'd been looking at Flat bed campers in Australia. Over there they're called slide in yute canopies or campers. In particular I was looking at Tommy Campers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6c_-rmG31U

Later I found the AEV Outpost 2 and Maltec Campers -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHNCZTEG7Fw&t=274s

I really like the fridge and stove slide and then a door for kitchen stuff and the main access door all on one side.

After a shit ton of research I came up with making the frame out of 1/16 and 1/8 inch aluminum tube held together with brackets made from 2"x2"x.125" and then tape the sides on with 3M CV62F (commercial vehicle tape). I cut the Angle into 1" slices and then made a jig and drilled a bunch of holes in the brackets pretty early on because I had the bed of the truck off to POR15 as much of it as I could. I needed something to do in the meantime.
Brackets I cut on a horizontal band saw.


Next I had to make the base. I took forever to decide on this.
In the mean time I needed my truck to pic stuff up, but I was able to get the tube delivered.


I rented a Uhaul truck to pick up 5 4'x12'x.050" AL Sheet metal



The last thing I need my truck for was to pick up 6 sheet of 2" owens corning foamular 250


The very bottom would be three 1"x4"x1/8" AL tubes bolted to the stock bed mounts. They're bolted down with 1/2 bolts and fat washers with a stack of bushings in between and underneath.


On top the base tubes I decided on plywood. I still don't like this decision. I really wanted no wood, but plywood would be FAST. It was already July 13th and I'd just found out I was having surgery in a month and would likely be in the hospital for 3-5 days and would be out of commission for a month. My goal was to take this thing to Baja on November 15th for 2 weeks. The plywood would take a lot less time than a sheet metal and foam paneled bottom. But it'd be prone to ROT (bad!) At 1st I bought a sheet of 1/2" latvian birch plywood made with waterproof glue. It's in the pic above. Super nice stuff at $105 a sheet. I later decided to save this for other things. It's way too nice to hide!

I ended up going with 3/8" OSB. I butted two sheets together and sandwiched them between 6" wide strips of OSB that were glued and screwed together.
I think if the camper ever fails it will be here. I'll be able to replace the OSB if needed. It'll be a giant pain in the ass but it can be done.
This is the OSB butted together so see where I'd need to cut it, Gringas looking on in the background...-



Glueing the OSB with Loctite PL 8X...this stuff is crazy strong.


You can kind of see the sandwiched strips here.


Next I cut out the wheel wells.
I had to waterproof the OSB. I looked into different kinds of deck sealant, paints and bed liner. In the end I coated the whole thing in 3 coats of garage floor epoxy. This took forever...about 2 weeks.
YOu can kind of see the glossiness of the OSB here. I also cut the wheel wells and PL8X'd a perimeter of tube and started to build the wheel wells. I would later remove this wheel well and make another. These weren't right. The sides of the camper have a 3 degree slow. I made the wheel well vertical with no angle.


During this whole process I was trying to use a router with a flush cut bit to cut the aluminum. It just wasn't working. The router bit would grab and kick back every time. I'd broken 4 router bits at $20-$30 each.

I finally bought a harbor freight electric sheet metal sheer. It works well for flat sheet metal with no curves and that's it. Sucked.

I later figured out I simply didn't have the router speed fast enough. I'd read the slower the RPM's the better because it'll just melt the aluminum at high speed. Bullshit...faster RPM's are better. Just push the router through the sheet metal fast enough and it works great. If the router moves to slowly it melts the sheet metal and gums up the bit. Also, I found using cutting wax on the sheet metal helps a lot too.

 

This is awesome. Keep on with them details man.

 

After I felt pretty good about the base I started on the back. This actually took awhile. I didn't really know how to make the joints. I'll get to that later.

I had a good idea of how far I wanted the rear overhang to go....about a foot. I decided on 45 degrees because I thought it looked nice.

I made the distance from the back of the wheel well the back of the camper 36(?) inches because I was entertaining the idea of buying a tear drop camper door.
like this -

And then I decided screw that, I'm gonna make my own door 1st and it if sucks I'll buy the premade door. Also they're hard to come by with the latch on the other side.


For a little while I was like "Fuck it...I'm gonna stick my $45 Amazon tent on it and call it done!"



And then I got back to work.


I'ts sorta got a shapely ass.



My slowly growing collection of M18 tools.


Taquito helping out as a saw horse.


This is how most the frame is held together. Self drilling, self taping screws and the brackets I made.



And these brackets. The sheet metal skin cut to fit and screwed together with some glue.


Here's one of the jigs I made...or in this case it appears I'm in the process of making it.

Here's a time lapse of using the jig. Actually the video might be a different jig. I made a few. But whatever, you get the idea of how it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XR-sKwz4vE&feature=youtu.be

 

Shit...probably wouldn't work. I have the factory E locker...that's an 8" ring gear. I think your's is an 8.4" ring gear.

 

After I got the back part mostly finished I stopped work for a month.
when I came back I finished the back.

I kept the garage floor epoxy coated OSB covered because I'm pretty sure that stuff is not UV stable at all.


Next was put the top of the bottom on. It's 1"x4"x.125"Aluminum tube glued and screwed together with PL8x and self drilling self tapping screws. For the screws I'd pre-drill a hole slightly smaller than the screws. Otherwise nothing would line up very well.

 

The 8" and 8.4" diffs used the same housing in the first gens. It would fit no problem. You could take a flap disk grinder to the housing and clearance the hole for the ring gear a little if you're worried about it not fitting, but it should be fine even without.

 

Oh okay...I'd have to get an ARB locker...correct?
Edit..or some kind of locker.

 

Yes, but you'll have to change out the whole diff. The 8" diff were built for the e-locker only. The 8.4" diff is originally an open diff, so you can put whatever locker you want in it.

 

Yeah, I gotta change the diff to go to 4.88's anyway, right? Just not sure the extra expense of changing to an ARB locker from the factory E locker is worth it. Being able to engage/disengage anytime without rolling does sound nice. But I'd much rather put that toward a front locker...if I even decide to do that at all...still being indecisive on that. I'll probably decide at the last second.
Without core charges ECGS is just under $1600 for 3rds. A locker adds on a whole lot more.

 

You can regear with the factory e locker. The e locker isn't bad per say, it's actually pretty good, but ARB builds a much better and much more reliable product IMO.

 

Yeah makes sense. I'm just thinking how to make a swap with @Fernando to work. Sounds like it could but I'd have to replace the e-locker with an ARB. Agreed, the ARB is super nice but the locker I have works very well.

 

I was just throwing it out there before i saw you are TRD

 

Just from an outsider perspective, either you or ferny would need to source a stock 8.4 so ferny could get another arb out back. It would be a lot easier/cheaper for just the two of your to regear the diffs your guys you currently have. Just my 2cents

 

That's what I'm thinking as well.

 

I took a while figuring out what angles I wanted on the sides.