Custom Truck Bed Build Options

[pawleyk]

 

[Advmoto18]

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Great work on the bed/body! I need a place to safely store all my recovery gear and tools and your design/ideas look ideal!

Please don't interpret the following as a critical statement...not such at all! More my inquisitive nature as I decide if I want to go the flatbed route or come up with a bed such as yours.

Would it have been feasible or even a good I idea to have flared the side panel boxes up and outwards so they would have met and been flush with the outer/bottom edges of the camper?

I'm quite envious of the Baja trip this time of year. We are heading down in March.

Bill

 

[pawleyk]

Great work on the bed/body! I need a place to safely store all my recovery gear and tools and your design/ideas look ideal!

Please don't interpret the following as a critical statement...not such at all! More my inquisitive nature as I decide if I want to go the flatbed route or come up with a bed such as yours.

Would it have been feasible or even a good I idea to have flared the side panel boxes up and outwards so they would have met and been flush with the outer/bottom edges of the camper?

I'm quite envious of the Baja trip this time of year. We are heading down in March.

Bill

Hey Bill,

You're totally right about the bed. You could easily build it to meet the width of the camper. In fact, it would probably be a lot easier than all the bending and angles I put into mine. You would also gain quite a bit of storage that way. It would look a lot like a standard utilitybed+camper combo.

The camper is almost exactly the width of the truck at it's widest point, so it wouldn't be hard at all to square it all off.

For some reason I wanted to follow the lines of the truck so the bed wouldn't look quite so square with the camper off. I was shooting to make it look as stock as possible. Looking back, it's not going to look stock no matter what so I'd maybe just run the bedsides straight up like you're describing.

Sorry I've only got one pic up, I'll try and get a few more with some better detail of the bed and other mods shortly.

 

[pawleyk]

Boxes open, sides down; we can really fit a lot of stuff behind those folding sides

 

[pawleyk]

Our camp spot for the Baja 1000 and my ViAir compressor nestled under the bed.

 

[pawleyk]

Just doing a little work in my "shop", inside the locking fuel door and the air fittings/switch for the compressor and airbags, and a camper-less shot on just another beach in Baja.

 

[pawleyk]

Over a year later and everything's still going well! We're still really happy with the bed and couldn't imagine living full time in a FWC without it. It just makes organization so much easier, and we actually have extra space without any boxes on the roof or back end.

We've gotten it twisted up plenty and at my last inspection a week ago in Medellin Colombia all I could find was a giant hole where the rear left shackle bolt has worn a hole in the rear left box. I guess the 3/4" of clearance I built in wasn't quite enough..

 

[kmacafee]

That looks great. How did you secure the camper to the bed -- did you use FWC's turnbuckles or did you bolt it down somehow?

 

[klahanie]

I just used 3/4" marine ply set into the perimeter frame as a bed floor. It's just bolted to the stringers, so it's easily removable for access to repair items (fuel pump and tank specifically) below the bed, which is a huge plus for me. I ordered some roll-on rubber from Amazon that I'll completely coat the ply with to seal it up from the elements and give the camper a bit more "squish and stick" sitting on the bed. My hope is that it sits well enough that I can eliminates the large heavy stall mat I've been using.

Removable floor is brilliant. Stall mat, yup my rubber is 100lb - crazy.

Oh, and the completed bed with all the boxes weighs right around 300lbs.

That's terrific. I figure my AL deck with sides is twice that. Of course it's a function of material used but you are in the UTE LTD range. Theirs, an absolute minimum tray - yours, with so much more going on.

Dynomite !

Thanks for sharing

 

[pawleyk]

That looks great. How did you secure the camper to the bed -- did you use FWC's turnbuckles or did you bolt it down somehow?

I did actually just use the stock turnbuckes. I like that they're proven, and I like that I can loosen one corner in the really twisty stuff to give things even more flex. I can also remove the camper really quickly since I can reach all four turnbuckles from outside the truck. I was originally planning to bolt it on, but the only real advantage I could think of was that it would gain me a bit more space.

So far they've worked great, but I'm not married to the system. There's always a chance I'll do something different down the road if I think something up.

 

[pawleyk]

Removable floor is brilliant. Stall mat, yup my rubber is 100lb - crazy.

That's terrific. I figure my AL deck with sides is twice that. Of course it's a function of material used but you are in the UTE LTD range. Theirs, an absolute minimum tray - yours, with so much more going on.

Dynomite !

Thanks for sharing

Thanks man! I never really compared it to the weights of those others, I couldn't really afford the nice aluminum trays and they weren't exactly what I was looking for so didn't do that much research into them.

It's cool to hear my weight comes in so good in comparison to those guys. I'm sure those trays are much burlier than mine, but my thought process was that the stock steel bed wasn't all that beefy and that was never a problem, so my goal was to be around as tough as the OEM bed I took off. What I built is stronger and more dent resistant than the original, but nowhere near as heavily built as most true flatbeds or trays out there.

 

[cherbinger@frontiernet.net]

Maybe try Aluminess rear bumper with swinging boxes. Look them up online

 

[pawleyk]

Maybe try Aluminess rear bumper with swinging boxes. Look them up online

A-l-u-m-i-n-e-s-s you say?

Sounds expensive. Plus I'm way too lazy to swing boxes out everytime I want a beer from the fridge.

 

[cherbinger@frontiernet.net]

They stay swung away when stopped. Holds 2000 watt gen easily with lots more room. No prob getting at your beer. Look them up. Aluminess. They are expensive but super nice.