Casa Escarlata Robles Too said:
Monte another for your list.On our walk every morning I have noticed one
of our neighbors has a new pop up I haven't seen before.At a glance it looks like
the Project M from FWC but doesn't have the same rear door as the FWC.
Today I got a closer look at the name. It's a OVRLAN pop up camper out of
Flagstaff,Az.
Very similar to the FWC project M.It has a ton of options and claims weight
of 400#+/-.
Base price around that of the "M".
Haven't talked to the owner yet.
Frank
I have had an Ovrlnd camper on my 3rd Gen Tundra since February 2021. My wife and I really love it. We just came back from our fourth trip in it. This time it was a very rugged, and brushy off camber trail, and the thing was rock solid on it. They are very stout!
Things to know: these are built somewhat the way air frames are built. The construction is 1x2 1/8 inch aluminum welded frame with 1/16th aluminum skin bonded with VHB and riveted. There’s hardly any screws used outside. The workmanship is extremely good. However they’re slightly industrial looking on the outside. The roof is curved slightly front to back and side to side (no oil canning). These are made semi custom to fit specific trucks, and Jay (Wellman) the owner and designer is great about doing pretty much whatever you’d like structurally. He doesn’t typically do full interior builds other than some modular 8020 frame boxes that he makes as well. i’ve also seen him make these to fit older Broncos and other unique vehicles.
My camper with a number of options (half barn doors, side hatch windows, Maxx fan, additional headroom) weight is 362 pounds. That’s measured by me on a CAT scale having weighed the truck bone stock previously, and then the camper empty when new. I have since added some 8020 interior structure and I’m probably up around 450 pounds dry. Regardless, fully packed, 15 gallons of water, stocked fridge propane, etc, with my wife and me we’re still well under GVWR. Don’t really feel the weight off road or on the road, however the wind profile does create a little bit of a drag.
The bed slides out to slightly larger than full queen size (81 by 65) with about 3’ of standing and move around the room at the rear of the truck bed. With the bed pushed back, the full length of the truckbed is available. Also the floor of the bed space over the cab is a composite, so somewhat insulated. And at 6’2” I can stand fully upright with my arms partially stretched out to my elbows.
The two main criteria for buying this particular camper were 1) having the ruggedness to stand up to fairly heavy off-road use and pounding on washboard roads at higher speeds, and 2) at 69 with some back issues being able to stand up fully and stretch as well as having room on the floor to lay down and do some of my back maintenance exercises. We also particularly like that the camper is truck width, and does not overhang the sides of the truck which is a big plus off-road.
The only downsides are 1) this is a do it yourself camper. You have to want to build it out as you want it inside, but we saw that as a big plus having much of the set up from my previous off-road Tacoma that we outgrew, and not wanting to live inside the camper. And 2) because this mounts on the bed rails, the amount of dust you get in the camper is inversely proportional to how well you seal the truck bed. In our case we obsessively sealed the Tundra tailgate and underneath the Toyota bed rail system, which is full of intrusions. We also put in a Bedrug. And, there’s a positive pressure vent that we adapted from the marine environment and Jay installed for us. As a result we don’t get dust sucked into the bed, and it stays remarkably clean.
I should also say, that we very thoroughly investigated FWC’s. Came very close to buying an F250 and a Fleet camper. We also came very close to buying a built flatbed rig FWC on a 2012 Power Wagon. We really liked the FWC‘s, but even with the flatbed couldnt get our heads around the weight, the lack of floor space as well as the relative lack of nimbleness in the vehicle we felt was required to handle the weight. Coming from a heavily modified Tacoma that pretty much went anywhere, we were trying to keep some of the same functionality off-road. The Ovrlnd camper was the thing fit the bill for us. Horses for courses! YMMV …
