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I took the truck out last weekend on its first real shakedown run. I followed the Pony Express Trail route from Salt Lake City west into Nevada. This is the 425 mile loop shown in blue below. It's mostly a big desert area with a few small mountain passes to go over. Roads are all dirt with some...

Thanks man! The Alum-Line bed is growing on me. It's flat and square and yes, some of the welds are quite good. But, some of the welds on the sides right where you can see them are horrible. The patches over the two diesel fill holes they drilled in error also stick out. (They should have...

And a shameless plug for my aluminum TIG skills, or lack thereof. I'm at the point of the learning curve where they either turn out pretty good, or really really bad. It's anybody's guess which way it will go. Seems like half the time I spend more time grinding than welding -- like in the photo...

I love it when a project starts to come together. We're nearing the end of the truck build and it's starting to finally look finished. This past weekend I finished the aux water tank, aluminum TIG welded the tire chuck pockets and got the spare tire mounted. Thanks to @RAM5500 CAMPERTHING for...

LOL. Yep I know exactly what you mean. All this detail work just pours jet fuel on my OCD. I'm about 40 min north of downtown SLC near Ogden, UT. Some of the other builders on this list aren't too far either. We should start an annual "Drinks in the Desert" get together. :) That is assuming we...

Wow, that's a good looking rig! With all the trouble I'm having finding a camper, I probably should have kept my Arctic Fox 865 and gone the same route as you. It would have been a hell of alot cheaper an easier that's for sure. The only real drawback is height. I think having a taller front...

Started laying out the camper and thinking about what goes inside. Went with a nice little 6-gallon commercial water heater and changed the element to 12V 300W. Should heat up 6-gal 20F per hour. Thinking is that you turn it on while driving when you have plenty of juice from the truck. Once...

The camper power supply is finally done and working great! It turned out just awesome. After getting everything installed, programmed and load tested (1500W with my little heater) I can say I'm very impressed with this Victron stuff. Most all of the devices have a bluetooth connection to a...

Hey man. Sorry for the late reply. I've been busy with the build and haven't checked the thread in a bit. Seems that if you don't pop in regularly, EP stops sending you notifications... The bed area behind the tunnel box and spare is about 111" front to back and 90" side to side. It's not...

I learned from my old camper setup that you can't have too much water, power or truck. The auxiliary water tank finally came in. It's a 36 gallon heavy-duty 3/8" wall poly tank that will have a little Whale submersible transfer pump inside. When the camper tank is empty, I can refill it from...

Definitely a pop-up to keep the overall height down. I trimmed plenty of trees with my old camper setup. Mostly low hanging branches that I didn't see until it was too late. Been talking to Drew at Bison Overland. Many have seen his aluminum frame camper shells. He's now working to develop a...

Pretty much. I went looking for small automatic extinguishers and there are some out there, but dang, they're expensive. Finally settled on this thing called BlazeCut T200E. It's a tube filled with a modern version of Halon. A fire will punch a hole in the tube, releasing the gas. Pretty slick...

Lookin Good! Love the block heater switch INSIDE the camper. Genius.

CAMPER POWER SYSTEM Every slide-in or flatbed camper I've seen has a whole bunch of space devoted to batteries, inverter, chargers, fuses, wiring, etc. I have taken a totally different approach with this build. I'm putting it all outside of the camper in the tunnel box. I think this has a few...

Thanks man! Yeah, that would be nice. Unfortunately the only front fender options that I know of are AEV and Buckstop. Both have their issues.

Buckstop finally sent me the instructions for installing the front fender flares. Big thanks again to Clinton for helping me with that. Turns out I hadn't trimmed the firewall back near far enough. I also looked at the AEV flare recommendations and the amount of trimming is similar. No block off...

A few more pics. Here are the two airbags compared. New bag PN is on the right: New bumpstops. These may need to be trimmed or replaced with longer/bigger ones in the future. I'll get the fender flares on and then see where we are. Note there is a hole through the factory bump stop cup up into...

I think I may have finally gotten the front suspension dialed in this weekend. This a huge milestone in the build. If you remember, the Kelderman airbag suspension is NOT a lift kit. But, to run these tires with plenty of clearance you have to lift the truck, move the axle forward, trim the...

It's been a while since I posted an update. Things are still happening, but everything is moving slowly. Seems I spend most of my time waiting on parts. I got a few punch list items done to the bed like building some recessed air chuck mounts and adding a "conduit carrier" for long skinny...

Thanks for posting the AEV fender install pics. I think I'm going to sell my Buckstop fenders and go that route too. They just look so much better. Once you get done with your sheet metal work, try some 3M Dynatron 552 seam sealer on the joints. Stuff works great.