Basin Deranged
Senior Member
I must say at the beginning that the folks at All Terrain Campers are a joy to work with. They are very willing to do custom work if it makes sense: When my ideas didn't make sense they set me straight.
Why a flatbed? The short answer is "Usable space."
It will take me a few days to post the entire build, but feel free to ask questions and make comments as we go along.
We actually owned the flatbed before we bought either the truck or the camper shell. I was looking for all three at once and found a used Ute flatbed that Marc at XP Camper was replacing for a customer with one of his very nice aluminum flatbeds...
So We had to buy a truck to bring the flatbed home.
Out with the old. In with the new (only the "old" was new and the "new" was old!)
Here's a photo for those of you who always wondered what a pickup looks like without its bed.
The flatbed went on pretty easily. As you can see I have a very spacious workshop, though it is missing a little bit in terms of protection from the elements.
The only tricky part of fitting the flatbed was cutting down the fuel filler pipe and its vent and overflow pipes then patching them back together with suitably sized fuel hose. Because the space for the filler under the flatbed is so much lower than on the stock bed the filler ends up at a lower angle than stock. This causes problem at about 10 percent of the fuel pumps I have used. In those cases I end up holding the gas nozzle at the proper angle to fill the tank.
With the flatbed installed it was time to take my drawings and visit the guys at All Terrain Campers for a fitting. I had put together a set of drawings showing inside dimensions and locations for wiring, windows, propane, and water. Jeff made suggestions for improvements which we incorporated into the drawings.
I had plenty of work to do to the truck itself while waiting for them to build the shell.