Help me pick a F450!

[girvin]

Hey everyone so I am building a new truck I’m buying a 2008 to 2010 F450 with a blown engine. I have narrowed it down to two options. One is a work truck fairly clean that’s a cab n chassis. The other is an F450 pick up and it’s a lariat. I was a little confused on which frame would be better for my purpose. I understand the cab frame will be flat and the pick up won’t but what I was wondering is which one will be better to put a custom flatbed on and a slide in camper I’m doing super singles 30/8 to 40s and plan on making this a long haul family Camper I don’t plan on taking this down the Rubicon I do plan on doing tons of beach, driving fire, roads, and all of Baja in Alaska. I didn’t know if one of the frames had better flex or worse flex for that kind of set up the lariat is about an 8 Hour Dr. away, either of them I plan on doing a 12 valve. Cummins swap and a ZF6 manual transmission swap. They are both 4 x 4. Thank you so much for the expertise here. Looking forward to your comments.

 

[girvin]

The C&C will have a foot longer frame with ~48" of that being a rear overhang aft of rear axle. So prob 9' deck at a min.

So, something to consider if your slide in camper is long and has a dropped floor section at the rear (designed to be lower aft of PU box) rather than the underside being on a single plane it's entire length. Just means the camper would sit higher on the deck.

Unless you're going to put the spare tire behind the cab in which case that will push the camper rearward at least a foot anyway so camper could hang over the rear of deck.

Being flat frame and not having the bump of the PU frame in theory you should be able to keep the deck height a bit lower with the C&C (1.5" ?)

Frame flex is a good question. Both PU and C&Cs were fully c channel. I bought a 350 C&C from that era and just happen to have some pdf specs for 2009MY. PU first then C&C

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Could have sworn at the time they were saying the F450 PU was a different frame than the 2/350s but regardless looks like the C&Cs were beefier (a lot beefier).

For long dist travel the C&C can add a 2nd fuel tank, usually midships. Not sure how that compares to a PU larger replacement tank.
Of course the PU fuel tank will be forward of the rear axle which helps a little bit with weight distribution.

There are a couple other differences but this should get you started.

Thanks that is great info. I will be building the camper as well so size won’t be a problem. If the CC is beefier I should probably just go that route.

 

[pappawheely]

C&C all the way. It's designed to do exactly what you want to do.

 

[rruff]

I don’t plan on taking this down the Rubicon I do plan on doing tons of beach, driving fire, roads, and all of Baja in Alaska. I didn’t know if one of the frames had better flex or worse flex for that kind of set up

The chassis will want to flex. Bolting or welding a stiff flatbed to the chassis would likely not be a good idea for the type of driving you plan to do... just a heads up that this will need to be addressed.