FWC HAWK fit in 1999 Super Duty

[dino2000]

Bought a 1988 Hawk for our SD and I have a fit challenge. The cabover part of the camper is resting on the cab of the truck. The solution seems simple, put some thing in the bed to set it down on. But what?
I was thinking a 2x4 frame with a piece of plywood screwed to the top of it. Let me know what you guys may have done in this situation.

Thanks in Advance, Dino

 

[docdave]

How much height do you need?

 

[dino2000]

I think 2" would do it. Just need to get the camper off of the cab (see pic).

 

[SuperCal]

You could always screw the frame right to the bottom of the camper so you wouldnt have to worry about them shifting individually from each other. Two inches or so should probably be fine although i think my Hawk on my F-150 has closer to four inches. A little tighter would probably help aerodynamics a bit, but honestly unless you plan on driving well over the speedlimit all the time you probably wouldn't notice the difference. I'm only off by abt 1 mpg if i keep it under 70-ish compared to not having the camper on.

 

[OutbacKamper]

A common solution to this problem is to add a couple of sheets of styrofoam insulation between the truck bed and camper. It comes in 2' x 8' sheets, R10=2" thick, R12=2.4" inches thick. The benefit is that it is very light weight and insulates the floor of the camper, which is only 3/4" plywood.

 

[Maximus Ram]

I think slo had the same fitment problem and a solution here

http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/38813-Budget-Skamper-Fix-Build

hope this helps

 

[ExpoMike]

FYI, for that era of Ford Superduty trucks, FWC make a higher cab over version to clear the taller cabs. The Grandby we bought is one of these models,

See how much taller it is over the Dodge cab.

That said, not much you can do about the model you have outside of raising the camper up. The above options are all good ones. Just need to pick a method and go with it.

 

[JCMatthews]

You could sell me your Hawk and buy a Grandby. The Hawk would look great in my '05 Tundra.

 

[dino2000]

went with a hybrid of my orginal idea and Outbackcampers foam suggestion. It brought me up almost 4 inches in all. I screwed three 2x6 length wise to a sheet of 1/2" ply wood. Set the foam on top of it and the camper on the foam. My thinking was to create kind of a pallet so that any water that got into the bed would flowout between the 2x6 "skids" and not have the bottom of the camper in a pool.

I think it may a little tall but we will give it the trial run this weekend and see how it shakes it out. pics when i get home

 

[cnynrat]

We have the same issue with our 1999 Bigfoot C2500 10.6 and our 1999 F350. I think Ford had a design requirement that a driver as tall as a 90th percentile male could wear a cowboy hat in the truck, which led to a very tall cab height. :sombrero:

Anyway, our first solution was to build a platform out of two pieces of 3/4" plywood built around a core of 2x2's. We had the whole thing coated with Line-X. We set that platform on a rubber bed mat, so the whole thing probably gave us somewhere between 3.5-4" of height, which turned out to be more than we really needed. The platform was so heavy we simply stored it in the bed of the truck (our camper is only on the truck when we are using it). Eventually the bond between the Line-X and the wood failed, and we moved on to a simpler solution.

Version 2 is two sheets of 3/4" marine plywood glued and screwed together. They sit directly on the bed, and the rubber bed mat goes over the top of that. This gives us about 2" of additional height, which is just about right for our application.