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4500 Camper/Jeep Hauler Build

Mid-day progress report - one box is bolted on. Not on permanently, but it's properly attached to the bed.

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This box will be for tools.

Stablecamper knocked it out of the park with these boxes, I'm impressed. Glad I outsourced these to someone with a proper press brake.
 
Got the other two bolted on also.

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They fit great. The rear hydraulic legs even tuck right up under the boxes nicely.

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Now I just need to outfit them - the front driver's box has a lot of stuff to go in it. Plus I need to figure out how I am going to do the tailboard, if there is going to be a bumper, how to mount lights and the license plate/cameras/parking sensors...
 
McHenry2500 said:
Where and how are you relocating the taillights to?

Boxes look great!
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Thanks! Still working on that. They won't be the same lights, it'll be something nicer - but I haven't decided which ones or where they will live. I am leaning towards just putting them on the back of the boxes, but that depends on how I am going to fill in the center section as well.
 
Passenger rear box is done.

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The compact organizer that's sitting in there will mount to the side of the big box once my adapter plate arrives. Also two compact low profile organizers will sneak in on top of the toolbox.

The driver's rear box is also done, because I'm not doing anything to that box - it'll have towing stuff in it in boxes/crates.

The driver's front will have to wait until after our next trip since that's a big project. There's about 20 lbs of crap to fit in a 10 lb box.. I might even take it back off the truck so I can work on it on the bench.
 
If you have a chance next time you are towing a trailer it would be great to run your rig over scales to see how the weight is distributed. Some day I may pick up a travel trailer to use as a home base and it would be great to see how that additional 10-15% tongue weight impacts payload, how much weight is pulled off the front wheels, etc.
 
ramblinChet said:
If you have a chance next time you are towing a trailer it would be great to run your rig over scales to see how the weight is distributed. Some day I may pick up a travel trailer to use as a home base and it would be great to see how that additional 10-15% tongue weight impacts payload, how much weight is pulled off the front wheels, etc.
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I did weigh it when pulling the travel trailer, but it was a spur of the moment thing (stopped at a closed weight station in Oregon - they tend to leave the scales on) so the math is a little fuzzy comparing it to previous times I’ve weighed the truck.

Keeping in mind the following:

We only had 1/3rd total in our fuel tanks when I weighed with the trailer, previous weigh I am comparing to we had full tanks.

The towing setup was a 36” supertruss and a 1000lb spec WD hitch - both of these things probably added 150 lbs hanging off the back of the truck not including the trailer’s actual tongue weight.

The trailer is pretty tongue heavy in my opinion - I think Lance put the axles back a bit far, but what do I know. I weighed the tongue as 950 lbs with a hanging scale before the trailer was loaded with water or supplies.

With all those variables and keeping in mind it was a WD hitch, the trailer axles were just under 6k, the steers were 400 lbs lighter, and the drives were 1500 lbs heavier.

I haven’t weighed it without the WD bars hooked up but I have to assume they are transferring at least some weight forward.

You can draw whatever conclusions with all those variables but I wouldn’t hesitate to tow with that setup again, it was rock solid and the axle weights were all good.
 
Rockcrawlindude said:
What? Why? This makes zero sense. Truck has a spare and trailer should have a spare. Why on earth would they need to be the same? Surely you wouldn’t want to carry one spare to fit either…
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Actually I do and have a thread on it so won't go into it here.
 
dieselscout80 said:
What’s the link to it?
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H

Post in thread 'Trailer that has same tires as the truck'

Reality is that I have only had 4 - 5 flat tires in almost 50 years of driving, but I usually don't drive anywhere at all challenging.

Half of those were just a nail from being too close to construction materials, and one was a tire that I knew was marginal but was broke at the time.

For 98% of the driving that I do, if the trailer had the same size tire as the truck, I probably would not even need to carry a second spare.

Also if the trailer frame height was close to the truck bumper ball hitch height vs needing adapters, that seems handy.

The 1 -2 % of the trips that I would go...
 
Finished up some odds and ends today and built a quick taillight and license plate mount out of scrap that goes into the hitch. This'll do while I work out the permanent lights on the tailboard.

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The main T piece of this is actually the chunk of bed that I cut out for the spare tire pocket.

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Not attractive but it'll do for now.

I also took the front driver's box off so I can work on it on a table. The basic plan is to fit all of this stuff:

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In here:

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It will fit.. Barely. I am going to build a frame out of 80/20 so the weight is distributed across the floor instead of a bunch of point loads. That'll be the next project after I get back from camping.
 
Off for a few days camping. I'm loving the new boxes. Took the driver's front off as I mentioned as it'll be easier to get all those hose reels in it working on a bench.

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Should be some more stuff here next week to keep working on it.

BTW - sort of off topic and this is not a for sale post - but we will likely be selling the Lance 1062 later this fall. If anyone is going to be in the market for a very well upgraded extremely clean two slide camper - keep us in mind. I've looked at a lot of campers over the years and I do not think there is another two slide camper with this much floor space, and I have definitely never seen a truck camper with this big of a kitchen. If there is any interest please DM me - this thread isn't the place.
 
Been working on the two rear boxes, but nothing photo worthy. Mainly remounting them with some better hardware and getting the contents better organized.

After that I started on the front box that will have the cord reels in it. I want to mount the reels to a frame since some of them are pretty heavy and I don't want to be torquing/stressing the bottom of the cabinet bouncing down the road. I also want the frame to be a little adjustable since there isn't much extra room in this box. Plus I don't want to be welding inside the box since Stablecamper did such a nice job on them.

So I decided to use some 80/20 and built a frame that bolts together.

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That lets me pull it out of the box and work on the table for the most part. The water hose reel and it's floor hatch:

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And the electric reel and it's hatch:

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Still need to get the air hose reel mounted but it needs some tweaks first.
 
gprguy said:
The cable is a RP-TNC to Fakra connector, and then a fakra extension up to the camera. This uses the stock little adapter to the weird truck side connector. This let me build a cable to length instead of using the stock 50' or whatever it is cable. I 3D printed the cable clips out of ASA and a grommet out of TPU to go down through the camper bumper. The "docking station" for the cable when it's not in use is mounted underneath the camper.

Other than that, took the camper back off the truck so I can start on the deck trim tomorrow.
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Update to an old post - turns out the aftermarket cable is a bad idea. It worked at first, but it slowly got less reliable - the picture would fuzz out and then it would lose contact with the camera entirely. A really odd side effect is it would also be occasionally unable to display the camera in the CHMSL until the trailer camera was unplugged. Not entirely sure how those are related...

In the end I swapped the short aftermarket cable for the stock 50' cable, coiling up the extra under the back of the camper - and so far it is completely reliable. The stock cable is definitely thicker/stiffer, probably has a heavier gauge wire, thicker sheathing or better shielding.
 
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