ITTOG's Truck Camper Build (was 6' x 12' Trailer Conversion)

[ITTOG]

Amazing progress in here lately. This is going to look so epic on the truck. I like the jack design you went with, super easy to remove and beefy.
Those Jeep clamps look really nice. Where did you get those from? dealer?

Why not just cut down a fabric reinforced neoprene sheet and use that against the double bulb seal? When clamping with that amount of force I would use similar durometer material for sure. You just really need a light positive seal, unless you plan on pressure washing the camper at point blank you won't have any water issues.

Thanks for the kind words. I have missed a few weekends lately due to Vertigo so it feels like nothing has been done. I can't wait to be done with the frame.

The clamps were from amazon. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N2L669N/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Double bulb seal!!!! Holy cow, I couldn't think of that for some reason when making my posts so I called it a B seal. Crazy. I think I will go back and fix it. Thanks.

So I have no experience with seals so this is all trial and error. This is my biggest concern with the camper. I fear water leaks from rain. I didn't know there was fabric reinforced neoprene so I will look into it. I also thought about just use the double bulb seal and nothing else. As long as I can get a consistent force around the camper it should be fine by itself. I have also thought about going back to the single bulb seal and finding a better adhesive for it. If that works then I think it is the best solution.

 

[Ducstrom]

Just make sure you use a soft bulb seal. I had to redo my door seal and will have to redo my popup seal eventually because the seal is not compressible enough and makes things difficult to close. I ended up ordering the door seal straight from Lippert. They were good to deal with. Sold it by the foot

 

[McCarthy]

Wow that thing is overbuilt. And that's a good thing!

 

[ITTOG]

Just make sure you use a soft bulb seal. I had to redo my door seal and will have to redo my popup seal eventually because the seal is not compressible enough and makes things difficult to close. I ended up ordering the door seal straight from Lippert. They were good to deal with. Sold it by the foot

It is not very soft so I was planning to build with that in mind. It is 1/2" thick and I will probably build with a 1/8" compression. I looked at Lippert for seals but couldn't find anything by the foot. Do you have a link?

Wow that thing is overbuilt. And that's a good thing!

Yes it is, especially the floor. Hopefully it doesn't cause any problems.

 

[ITTOG]

Vertigo continues to win the day, and week unfortunately. However, I did move the camper outside and temporarily installed some angle to keep the roof in the proper position. I then raised the roof and took measurements.

You can see the four vertical posts that are used to keep the roof aligned above the camper. You can also see the roof is very high. From the top tube of the camper to the bottom tube of the roof it is 37".


The reason I wanted it to be high is so I can sit up in bed without hitting my head. So from the bed to the roof is 41.5". Some of this will be consumed when I put the bed deck and the ceiling in but not enough to cause problems. I think I only needed 36" in order to sit up.


Seeing the roof deployed does make me wonder if it is too high and could cause problems, especially in high winds. So, it is a little concerning.


My plan was to build composite walls for the pop top but after seeing it I am thinking that may not work since I was planning on solid walls. The only way I think a solid wall would work is if I had hinges in the middle of it. So maybe insulated soft walls? You can also see the flip up door on the left. I haven't bought gas struts for it yet.


Here you can see my flip up bed. It is about 2' long and flips up because it is over the bed of the truck and I want to be able to use the entire bed while standing.


The bed is flipped up but the view is from the curb side.


Hopefully I can overcome this vertigo this week and do some work on it this weekend.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the internal height of the camper is 7' 5".

 

[Ducstrom]

Do you have a link?

I'll send you a pm.

 

[skrypj]

Wow! I didn’t think the eco boost would be that bad on mileage while towing. I think I get better then that and I tow a 23’ holiday trailer with a 2015 F-150 with a 5.0 and 3:73’s. I was debating a max tow F150 next time around cause my truck hovers around 2,500-3,000 rpm towing and I thought the eco would be better when combined with a 10 speed and 3:55’s.

8 mpg is really bad unless its a headwind. I get 9.5-10 mpg towing my 5500 lb 8' wide travel trailer @ 70mph with my 2014 3.5L. In poor conditions it will drop lower, but so would any other truck. I've seen as low as 6.7 mpg pulling across WY at 70mph in a 25-30mph headwind but that was effectively like I was towing at 95-100 mph. Show me a 5.0 that could do that at 7-8000' while pulling 7% grades.

 

[Deleted member 9101]

8 mpg is really bad unless its a headwind. I get 9.5-10 mpg towing my 5500 lb 8' wide travel trailer @ 70mph with my 2014 3.5L. In poor conditions it will drop lower, but so would any other truck. I've seen as low as 6.7 mpg pulling across WY at 70mph in a 25-30mph headwind but that was effectively like I was towing at 95-100 mph. Show me a 5.0 that could do that at 7-8000' while pulling 7% grades.

That's what my dad gets in his Navigator with the 3.5 when towing a travel trailer.

His will jump to 11-12 if he does 60.

 

[VanIsle_Greg]

Following...

 

[ITTOG]

Date: March 7 and 27, 2021
Time: 8 hours
Total Time to Date: 171 hours
Rework: 2 hours
Total Rework to Date: 51 hours (not part of Time above)
Current Weight: 561 pounds (calculated)
Roof: 115 (112 + calculated 3 pounds)
Camper: 398 (309 + calculated 89 pounds)
Wedge Weight: 48
I need to weigh everything again due to a lot of work being completed since last weights.

Wow, a layoff of seven weeks and then three weeks. It felt like forever. It was good to get back to work on the camper. During the time off I decided to redo a section of the floor/wall. The below picis from the top looking down and shows how it was made. The yellow line represents the outside wall and shows how it introduced two turns, instead of just one. So I cut that out and changed it so it would look like the green line.


The next two pic's represent how it looks now.




In this pic I put the post back in, with magnets temporarily. I am leaning towards leaving them out permanently even though they will help with the transitions of the internal and external skins. Decisions, decisions…


Next up was fabricating the framing for the door handles. I am using standard RV handles, one on each side of the door, and they create some complications. They only work for wall thicknesses between 1.25" and 1.5". Given my tubing is 1.5" and my outside skin is 1/8" I had to trim the tubing. This is not a finished product but you can see how I had to trim the door frame and begin boxing in the handle with 1.5" x 1 1/4" tube I made out of 1/5" square tubing. These pics also show how most of the support of the tube was cut out. More on rebuilding to provide structural stability later.




These pics show the latch in the handle frame. As you can see I have sections of tubing to close up.






Here I have the boxes for the handles framed in and I have laid in a support post down the middle of the door to help reinforce the structural strength. If I go with this layout I will have horizontal bars from the middle post to the handle frames.


In this pic the door is back on the camper and the handles are in the door. You can also see, instead of one post down the center, I have two posts that but up to the handle frames and one horizontal post between the two vertical posts. This is a bit of overkill but definitely beefs up the door. Regardless of which approach I take, I will probably add some reinforcements (probably a plus or an x) in the top part of the door as well.


Unfortunately not a lot of work completed for the time spent. I am getting down to the smaller items but they are more detailed and taking much more time.

 

[ITTOG]

Date: April 2, 2021
Time: 3 hours
Total Time to Date: 174 hours
Rework: 0 hours
Total Rework to Date: 51 hours (not part of Time above)
Current Weight: 561 pounds (calculated)
Roof: 115 (112 + calculated 3 pounds)
Camper: 398 (309 + calculated 89 pounds)
Wedge Weight: 48
I need to weigh everything again due to a lot of work being completed since last weights.

Today is Good Friday and I have it off so I should have a full day of camper work ahead of me. First item is to complete the door framing. Where would a project like this be without jigs and clamps to keep everything square and flat. It seems I spend half my time doing this and grinding welds. Oh how I hate grinding!


All done. After cutting the outside of the frame for the door hanldes it lost strenth. So I reinforced it and realigned everything with two supports on the inside of the door handle frame. That solved any rigidity/strength concerns. I also put one in the middle of the top to balance it well and in case I every wanted to put anything on the door.


This is the door on the camper.

 

[ITTOG]

Date: April 26, 2021
Time: 2 hours
Total Time to Date: 176 hours
Rework: 2 hours
Total Rework to Date: 53 hours (not part of Time above)
Current Weight: 561 pounds (calculated)
Roof: 115 (112 + calculated 3 pounds)
Camper: 398 (309 + calculated 89 pounds)
Wedge Weight: 48
I need to weigh everything again due to a lot of work being completed since last weights.

I need to start working on this thing more often. Once every three weeks will never get it done. Today the work involved two things: fixing problems with the mating rails on the camper and roof and adding metal to help with skinning it, inside and out. When I say rails I am talking abou the 1.5" tubing. The camper is on rail on top and the roof was two rails welded to each other so it was actually 1.5" by 3".

I had issues where the top rail of the camper and the roof rails. The top rail was drawn down in one spot on each side due to stands that were too short. The roof rails were warped, I assume due to heat. First up, is the stands that were too short. You can see below after cutting the two stands the gap popped up to about 1/4". About 1/16" of that was due to the cut off rail so it was drawn down about 3/16". This was an issue on both sides.


In these next few pictures you can see the top rail of the camper, which is actually the bottom rail. It is pretty straight, within 1/32" along the 12' span. The top two rails are part of the roof. As you look, you can see gaps primarily between the top two rails. The roof was in bad shape so I cut the two rails apart.

In this pic you can see the bottom rail (which is the top rail on the camper) and the middle rail are pretty much touching with no gap at all. The top rail is a different story. This gap is about 1/4"


Same as before but a different area.


This is from the other side of the camper. Here you can see I have a little gap between the camper rail and the middle rail as well. The gap is about 1/16". I will probably leave it as is and let the weather stripping account for it. Clearly my biggest issue is with the top rail so I will most likely scrap it and use completely new tubing.


In this pic you can see my middle rail is bowed up some as well. It is about 1/8". I am planning to cut that rail from the bottom side up and then draw it down and weld it. Kind of like a kerf cut. Hopefully it will work.


At the back of the camper it flares out once it exits the bed of the truck. In order to skin it, I needed to do a little framing on the top that matches the flare at the bottom. This pic shows the flare out at the bottom and the start of the support at the top for the outside skin.


The long rail at the top is the rail that sets on the bed rails of the truck. Here I have tacked on two pieces of tubing to help with skinning the camper on the outside and inside.


This picture is from inside the camper. You can see it is two stacked tubes. The two tubes are required for the inside. The outside will just use the bottom tube.


I also welded in the last supports that go around the wheel wells. I have a bar across the top and two on the side to ensure the new support is aligned with the two in the front.


This picture is on the other side but before I add the support. The support would go on the bar that looks like it is above the fender.

 

[ITTOG]

Date: May 8, 2021
Time: 0 hours
Total Time to Date: 176 hours
Rework: 4 hours
Total Rework to Date: 57 hours (not part of Time above)
Current Weight: 561 pounds (calculated)
Roof: 115 (112 + calculated 3 pounds)
Camper: 398 (309 + calculated 89 pounds)
Wedge Weight: 48
I need to weigh everything again due to a lot of work being completed since last weights.

Today was all about fixing the issues with my roof. If you look at my previous post you can see how the roof was warped and I had a lot of gaps between the bottom rail of the roof and the top rail of the camper. These gaps would obviously create sealing issues. The roof is made with two 1.5" 16-guage tubes welded together. Thus the outside frame of the roof is 1.5" wide by 3" tall. Once I split the two rails I discovered the top rail of the roof was fairly straight and most of the problem was with the bottom rail. So, I rebuilt the bottom rail and have begun attaching it to the top rail, which needed minimal work.

This picture shows the roof, which is the top two rails, and the top rail on the camper. As mentioned the top rail needed a little work and you can see in this pic how I cut it so I could align the top rail to the new bottom rail. This cut is on the bottom, top, and outside of the rail. I left the inside section and bent it a little to align the two rails.


In addition to cutting the top rail, I had to cut three of the four cross bars which can be seen in this pic. These had to be cut to release stress in the metal that prevented me from straightening the outside rail. As you can see, I will have to cut these rails again to relieve the stress in the crossbars.


Here you will notice the gaps are gone and everything is laying within 1/32" or less.


An example of the top rail cut on three of the four sides.


In this pic you can see I had to cut the top rail of the camper and both stands to straighten it up . So the issue wasn't only the roof. But like I said, all this rework has ensured the tolerance between the camper and roof is 1/32" or less. Thus I should have no problems with sealing.


It sucked to have to cut all these straight pieces but well worth it to straighten everything. This was a big learning experience about heat causing the bar to bend and keeping stress out of the steel.

 

[ITTOG]

Unfortunately it has pretty much been raining every day since the work above. So hopefully I will be able to get back after it in June. I am so tired of rain. I feel like I moved to Pittsburgh.

I still wonder if I need to create a gutter on the campers top rail. Are the seals enough to keep water out when going 85 mph down the freeway. I plan to protect the front seal with a wedge but no protection on the sides or back. I previously showed the wedge if you want to go back and see it.

 

[Redline61]

Nice work man. Keep up the great work!