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4500 Camper/Jeep Hauler Build

Bigboom338 said:
Theae 45/5500 chassis cabs are the bomb for truck campers. Did you happen to run across the scale fully loaded?
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I did, and we already knew our camper isn't light. The total with having just filled up both fuel tanks, 45 gallons of water in the camper, my wife, dog and I, probably 100 lbs in tools and various food and things in the camper - 17,740. If you back calculate the math to subtract water and all those other things in the truck, the camper is in the 4500 lb "dry" and 4800 lbs with the food/clothes/etc range which is in line with previous times I've weighed it. I would love to lighten it up by getting rid of things like the generator, but that will have to wait for the next camper.
 
Great looking work but the rear looks awfully heavy with the camper slid back that far. What is the weight distribution on the front and rear wheels and how far back has your center of gravity shifted?
 
ramblinChet said:
Great looking work but the rear looks awfully heavy with the camper slid back that far. What is the weight distribution on the front and rear wheels and how far back has your center of gravity shifted?
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Good question and the side shot is a bit misleading. In that shot the rear bags are essentially dumped and the hydraulics have the truck leveled out raising the front end up more than the standard ride height going down the road. The vineyard isn't quite as level as it appears.

The CG of our camper (at least as it left the factory) was dead center, 48". Since then we've added more weight to the front than the back, and the water tank is in the front, so it's forward from that at least to some degree. Our weights were 6k on the front axle, 11k on the rear.

As the camper sits if you go with a 48" CG that is directly above the rear axle, dead center. These chassis cabs are a bit misleading to look at compared to a normal long bed - not only do we have all the extra chassis length taken up by the heavy backpack cabinet, but the deck and chassis rails themselves have an extra 6" off the back. So our camper now has an additional 6" of support in the rear that would just be hanging in the air on a normal dually. I think a long bed is 56" cab to axle, this truck is 84" and then there's another 6" off the back too.

Another mildly interesting data point is that when empty, the truck has about twice the air pressure in the front bags than the rear. Keeping in mind that the rear has 4 bags total vs. just 2 in the front (other than that - all 6 bags are identical) - when the camper is on it's pretty much equal pressure on all 4 corners.

All very positive changes compared to our 3500 in my view with the same CG position.
 
Last project before heading out to the truck camper rally in a week. I picked up some of this adhesive boat deck / swim platform flooring.

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A bit of trimming later and the bike tray has a non slip floor.

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The bikes fit great.

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That's it - all that is left is cleaning, organizing and packing.
 
Will do - that’s going to be the next big priority and I’m probably going to have someone make them for me to save time.

The trip and rally has been a blast so far, it’s been a lot of fun meeting up with @buzzuti, @tmacneil (I hope that’s your username) and others to see all of their awesome rigs. Great to be back on the road after 2 years.

The truck drives like a dream so far. The only glitch has been my DRVM and dash cam both died on day 3. I tapped into the DRVM power for the dash cam ignition trigger, so i imagine something went wrong with that wiring. Something to fix when I get home - the view behind the camper was cool while it lasted.

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So cool. This gives inspiration to think about crazy ideas like adding on a truck cab extension section of some kind.

But I am not sure it would be as good as the setup that you did.
 
Ok, the truck is legit!
I can speak to it first hand as we got to see it this past week.
Phenomenal job, impeccable attention to detail. Very practical design and features.

Was awesome to get to see it in person!

Can't wait to see what's next!
 
Back home last week, although we came home to a windstorm and no power for several days. Truck still did great, no issues other than the DRVM wiring problem which I am sure I caused.

Lots of cleaning to do and I am working on getting some storage boxes built for under the bed. I'm going to outsource those since they are a bit more straightforward.

Edit: Wheelie pick of us camping in the driveway waiting for power to be restored.

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HarryN said:
Do you have a generator for your truck / camper ?
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The camper came with the standard RV Onan - we barely ever use it and our next camper definitely won't come with a generator. I think it has like 8 hours on it. We also have one of the small suitcase sized generators which we used to keep the fridge and furnace going in the house during the outage.
 
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