Hey all, my wife and I are the jerks who owns this piece and are trying to sell it. I want to start off by apologizing to everyone for my lack of education in the subject of off-grid camping rigs and what it seems appeared to be me trying to rip people off with a crazy over-priced rig. I won’t try to argue if you think it is over priced and further I might be a total idiot but I did in fact spend $128k on this thing. We sold our house last year and live in this rig full-time so as I was building it I was able to convince myself (and my wife, sorry about it!!) to drop some stacks since this was our new home. Now our financial circumstances have been impacted and we are just trying to get some of our money back out of this build so that we can get into a more affordable “home”.
To clear the air on the cost of the camper, it is not a base model slide in Grandby. This is the fully-loaded flatbed Grandby which cost us $55k and on top of that the norweld tray cost us $13k. So yes, that’s a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a camper and flatbed but there is $68k of the build right there without even getting into the cost of the truck or any of the work done to the truck.
We spent $15k buying the truck and the following is the list of stuff that we did or paid someone to do to the truck:
* 17x9 Pro Comp 97 steel wheels
* 35x12.5 BFG A/T K02 tires with ~5k miles on them
* Front u-joints
* Sky manufacturing high steer crossover kit
* Icon 2.5 shocks
* Custom track bar mount relocation
* Redhead steering gear box
* Front wheel bearings
* Inner axle seals
* 4.56 gearing
* Corsa muffler
* S&B Intake
* ARB air lockers front and rear
* ARB twin air compressor
* Custom welded on rock sliders
* Custom rear tire swing out with NATO fuel can holders
* Custom add-a-leafs made by Atlas Suspension to support the additional weight added from the camper, bumpers, etc.
* Trasharoo
* ARB Deluxe front bumper
* Hi-lift jack mounted to bumper
* Warn 12k winch with synthetic rope and Factor 55 flatlink
* Baja Designs LP9 driving lights
* Smittybilt defender rack with custom wind fairing
* Touch screen navigation head unit
* Rearview camera and custom mount on the rear storage rack
* Dash cam
* Edge CTS-3 monitoring system with every possible monitoring option
* Hydra tuner
* F650 dash
* 2008+ mirror upgrade with heated mirror switch installed in the rocker panel
* Water pump mounted to frame to easily transfer water from the Norweld tray 10gal water tank to the main tank in the camper
* Sound deadening added to the entirety of the cab (floor, rear wall of cab, and ceiling)
* Rear seat delete with storage options and the possibility to easily add more layers of storage
* Rear window net storage
* Brand new truck batteries installed on 5/31/2021
* Dynatrac ball joints (NOT YET INSTALLED)
* Differential fluid change front and rear
This entire list of stuff cost us $45k (I tallied up EVERYTHING so this value may be slightly inflated due to including costs of recovery gear and such) and I understand that if we could have performed all of the labor ourselves that we could have done it all for a lot cheaper but the reality is that we didn’t have those skillsets so a portion of that cost was sunk into paying others to do the work.
I don’t know if you all have experienced this on your own builds but the truck I originally intended to build was going to be much cheaper and not anything like what you see today but I got the bug and got carried away. So while it might have been a better idea to build this setup on a brand new F350 that’s just not what happened.
I personally have had a great experience with the 7.3L so far and actually haven’t had to do much at all in the way of maintenance other than oil changes since owning the truck. Basically all of the work listed above was done to make the truck better suited for the camper, not to fix anything that was broken. This is my first 7.3L and the first diesel I have ever owned so once again I am not as educated as you all here, but I had heard these were good trucks and good motors and my personal experience has seemed to reflect that.
All in all I would like to apologize again; I was never trying to screw anyone over by selling this thing at a high price but based on all the positive feedback we receive on the build when we take it out (we literally can’t stop anywhere without talking to someone about it), as well as the current market for these things (we all know the market is crazy right now but that’s out of my hands) I thought people would really be interested. I see now that is not the case, however I hope you all can understand my side now and see that I’m just trying save my current financial situation. I personally think that this rig is pretty sweet and super dialed in, and to the right person I think they would be willing to pay my asking price and I think they would be getting something really amazing for them, not getting ripped off.
Either way I am not here to change your minds just here to tell my side of the story now that my Expedition Portal account has been approved. I do sincerely appreciate getting some education from you all on the value of full-size popup camper builds since you all have been doing this stuff for so much longer than me and understand the market and value much better than I do. I also hope to be in something that is still “Expedition Portal worthy” after this truck sells (if it even sells) and would like to continue to be a part of this community if I haven’t already totally blown it! Thanks if you took the time to read this wordy message and I look forward to learning and growing more with this community!
