I ordered my Ovrlnd in March 2020 and got it installed end of Jan ’21. I dithered about putting it on my built 2009 Tacoma or buy a fullsize (Tundra, F250/F150). I did and still want to do more technical trails at times. I went with the Tundra for the reliability, Toyota familiarity as well as the fit for me. I’m 6’2” and I have some back issues and I really need more comfort in both seating as well as to stretch out in the back. I’m extremely happy with the Tundra and the camper.
I''m gonna make this an abbreviated build post(s) and try to focus on things I did a little different than I've seen elsewhere. Happy to elaborate if there's questions.
The truck: SR5 21' Tundra. I looked and looked for a late model used double cab so I could have a 6 1/2 foot bed, but to no avail. That was partly because I insisted on having a 38 gallon fuel tank and the upgraded SR5 seats. In the end I bought a new 21 a year ago with all of that using Costco‘s buying program. I got a good enough deal then to afford to do all the suspension upgrades and add lockers and 4.88s (next week, FINALLY, yaaay!). Glad not to be buying now!
The main mods that relate to the camper to call out are: HD Deaver spring set with 3/4 in shackles (spec'd for a 1000lbs in the bed), compression adjustable shocks, ARB twin compressor under the hood with a chuck at the rear bumper, and a back seat platform minimalist drawer. The stock springs were just OK, but the Deavers and shocks make it handle great with a loaded camper and give me a much better departure angle due to the lift. The compressor is super helpful, yes for air ups/downs, but even more so for blowing the fine dust off the barn doors and keeping a *******ton of dust out. Here's how it sits now:
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The camper: So far, it's been through one minimalist set up which we rushed to get done in Feb and March, before the heat was too bad in Phoenix and a more finished build this fall. That allowed us to get a few shakedown trips under our belts and figure out what else we wanted. We've spent 20-ish nights in it so far with about 300 miles or so of offroad travel, which has helped give us a good idea. It's pretty hard to figure the full layout before you use it some, even though we used our Tacoma similarly and swapped in some components (eg, the fridge and our slide out minimal cooking counter (AKA a board
). Here's the evolution.
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Sort of a mess, right? At this point we'd dustproofed things and insulated with 1/4' closed cell foam faced on both sides with radiant barrier. This stuff is as easy to work with as Relectix and as light, but seems more durable and certainly is more insulating. I put it up with VHB, and it’s held up really well so far. The nice thing is you can VHB it to the frame members and leave an air gap to the skin, which is important for the radiant barrier effect and avoid some thermal bridging problems. I covered it up with white chloroplast, except for the ceiling and we really like it. You can find this on Amazon, which is where I first ran into it, but it’s mostly 3 mm foam core, which to my mind is not thick enough. I just ordered 5mm core straight from US Energy Products, and they have a lot more options in sizes and lengths.
We put in a Wave 3 heater (configuration borrowed from Wrathchild's build). We love and use the windoors a lot, but they do limit wall space a bit for permanent installs. A DFG fridge slide (15 lbs and very well built) was mounted as close to the P-side wall as as it would fit on top of the Bedrug and two 1/2" one-slot 8020 rails on top of some spacers drilled into the bed. The point of this was to allow us to slide in and out our pullout "counter" of 12mm Baltic birch for storage.
Did I mention my wife was short?
Actually, she's only had to do this once where there was a bit of a drop off. I'm a photographer, so always have my tripod and we used this system for years with our Tacoma.
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The other major things we did at this point (spring '21) were to put in our electrics (Nat'l Luna Power Pack with a 100 AH Battleborn LiFePo, a Bluesea switch panel, some lights) and build this platform for gravity feed water. It was stout enough to leave the Scepter can strapped in there on rough off roads. We use a Scepter flexible spigot, but extended it about 5' to give us on demand water at the tailgate. Not shown here, but you can see it hanging off the tailgate in the very first picture of this post. You can also see our through the wall external power plug to the right above the mini Maxtraxx and to the left high up on the cab side wall is our positive pressure vent ( more on both and the electrics in a future post, especially the vent)
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Finally, here's how it sits now. I'll address that part of the build in a later post …
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