Buckstopper
Adventurer
I have been planning on posting my build as soon as I have some spare time. Well, on a non-roughing it trip to SoCal with my wife without the truck and figured this is as good as its going to get for time to post. My truck is about 80 - 90% done at this point so this will retrospective to some extent.
I will start at the beginning I was driving a 2001 F350 that I purchased used from the good folks at Buckstop Bumbers. They had used it as to prototype vehicle to develop their bumpers for that series of trucks. That is where my handle came from...it is really the name of my old truck - the original buckstopper. The thing was a beast and had a hard side camper on it an was a very capable off road rig. A friend of mine asked if I would sell it to him and I figured it was time to start a new project. I sold him the truck and camper and started the search for a different way to travel.
What I wanted:
- Good off-road capability but didn't need to be a hard core rock crawler. Most of my off-road is Forest Service Road type travel in summer and mountain snow travel in winter. We like to travel to various places to ski - mostly in the Cascades so I spend more time in 4 wheel drive in the winter than in the summer.
- I wanted to be able to park in standard parking spot. We would pull into Bend or Sisters in Oregon with the old Buckstopper to grab food and have to find a vacant parking lot to park and hike to the restaurant or store. This was a cause of grief from my wife. The new truck needs to park anywhere.
- Along with parking it needs to maneuver well. The F350 had a roughly 4 block turning radius and getting around in parking lots was a challenge - especially when they are covered in snow.
- I want to keep it as stock as possible. The Ford was lifted, chipped and aftermarket parts from end to end. it all worked pretty well but I am to the point in my life that I want to simplify and keep in simple. My DD is a Porsche 914 converted to full electric power and it has some quirks. This is ok if you are able to call AAA for a tow home. Not so good if you are out in the boonies. This one is going to stay stock.
- Diesel. Nuff said.
- Along with keeping the truck stock, I want to construct the bed and camper with as many stock components as possible. With the current economy we seem to be one disaster or crisis away from some sort of meltdown and I figure that it will be easier to liquidate a commercial truck with standard bed and camper components than it would be to sell a dedicated RV.
- I also want to procure as much as possible used. Why pay full price for new when you can get good solid stuff used at a fraction of the cost.
Thats the initial design outline. I stumbled onto the expedition portal before I started to work on this and have to say that some of the posts of various rigs here were my inspirations for this project. I looked at Sprinter conversions and thought that would be good platform but 4x4 was not much of an option in the US unless it was an aftermarket conversion. At the time Mercedes was taking a hard line on aftermarket conversions and voiding warranty. Sounds like that has softened a bit but the conversions are really spend. I looked at Unimogs but wasn't thrilled with the highway capability. If I had to choose between highway and super off-road I have to say my diving needs lean more towards highway with snow and some off-road. The reality is that I am likely never going to leave NA with this rig.
I landed on the FG because factory 4x4, small size, economy from the small diesel and it is a commercial vehicle so it is designed and built to take much worse than I will ever dish out. I figured that if I could find a decent used one I could always sell it for what I had into it. A crew cab would be nice but not going to happen in the US. I started watching Craig's List and Truck websites and soon discovered that used FG's are a nearly mythical thing in the US, especially the west coast. I finally saw an ad for a 2005 SWB flatbed in Montana (read - no rust) so I called the dealer and locked the truck up sight unseen. I was able to have it checked out by a local mechanic who turned out to have serviced the truck previously and he gave a good report so I flew out to Montana with a check and drove it home...empty, I might add.
Once I got home and had my back straightened out at the Chiropractors I got to work on it. It had been used as a oilers rig by a Montana excavation/landsape business so it had seen plenty of off-road use but only had 75K miles. The bed was a heavy steel flatbed with a 100 gallon transfer tank and various tool boxes. It was also pretty well beat up and full of holes where compressors and welders and whatever had been mounted. I figured that the bed should go and that I would replace it with as much aluminum as possible to lighten things up.
I'll post this much now and add some photos shortly...if I can figure out how.
I will start at the beginning I was driving a 2001 F350 that I purchased used from the good folks at Buckstop Bumbers. They had used it as to prototype vehicle to develop their bumpers for that series of trucks. That is where my handle came from...it is really the name of my old truck - the original buckstopper. The thing was a beast and had a hard side camper on it an was a very capable off road rig. A friend of mine asked if I would sell it to him and I figured it was time to start a new project. I sold him the truck and camper and started the search for a different way to travel.
What I wanted:
- Good off-road capability but didn't need to be a hard core rock crawler. Most of my off-road is Forest Service Road type travel in summer and mountain snow travel in winter. We like to travel to various places to ski - mostly in the Cascades so I spend more time in 4 wheel drive in the winter than in the summer.
- I wanted to be able to park in standard parking spot. We would pull into Bend or Sisters in Oregon with the old Buckstopper to grab food and have to find a vacant parking lot to park and hike to the restaurant or store. This was a cause of grief from my wife. The new truck needs to park anywhere.
- Along with parking it needs to maneuver well. The F350 had a roughly 4 block turning radius and getting around in parking lots was a challenge - especially when they are covered in snow.
- I want to keep it as stock as possible. The Ford was lifted, chipped and aftermarket parts from end to end. it all worked pretty well but I am to the point in my life that I want to simplify and keep in simple. My DD is a Porsche 914 converted to full electric power and it has some quirks. This is ok if you are able to call AAA for a tow home. Not so good if you are out in the boonies. This one is going to stay stock.
- Diesel. Nuff said.
- Along with keeping the truck stock, I want to construct the bed and camper with as many stock components as possible. With the current economy we seem to be one disaster or crisis away from some sort of meltdown and I figure that it will be easier to liquidate a commercial truck with standard bed and camper components than it would be to sell a dedicated RV.
- I also want to procure as much as possible used. Why pay full price for new when you can get good solid stuff used at a fraction of the cost.
Thats the initial design outline. I stumbled onto the expedition portal before I started to work on this and have to say that some of the posts of various rigs here were my inspirations for this project. I looked at Sprinter conversions and thought that would be good platform but 4x4 was not much of an option in the US unless it was an aftermarket conversion. At the time Mercedes was taking a hard line on aftermarket conversions and voiding warranty. Sounds like that has softened a bit but the conversions are really spend. I looked at Unimogs but wasn't thrilled with the highway capability. If I had to choose between highway and super off-road I have to say my diving needs lean more towards highway with snow and some off-road. The reality is that I am likely never going to leave NA with this rig.
I landed on the FG because factory 4x4, small size, economy from the small diesel and it is a commercial vehicle so it is designed and built to take much worse than I will ever dish out. I figured that if I could find a decent used one I could always sell it for what I had into it. A crew cab would be nice but not going to happen in the US. I started watching Craig's List and Truck websites and soon discovered that used FG's are a nearly mythical thing in the US, especially the west coast. I finally saw an ad for a 2005 SWB flatbed in Montana (read - no rust) so I called the dealer and locked the truck up sight unseen. I was able to have it checked out by a local mechanic who turned out to have serviced the truck previously and he gave a good report so I flew out to Montana with a check and drove it home...empty, I might add.
Once I got home and had my back straightened out at the Chiropractors I got to work on it. It had been used as a oilers rig by a Montana excavation/landsape business so it had seen plenty of off-road use but only had 75K miles. The bed was a heavy steel flatbed with a 100 gallon transfer tank and various tool boxes. It was also pretty well beat up and full of holes where compressors and welders and whatever had been mounted. I figured that the bed should go and that I would replace it with as much aluminum as possible to lighten things up.
I'll post this much now and add some photos shortly...if I can figure out how.
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