redthies
Renaissance Redneck
That's awesome! I figured a low tree branch could really mess them up. Maybe just a cable "limb riser" would do the trick? It's looking really slick!
New Guy, '97 12 valve, Many, Many Adventures To Go!
- Thread starter GJStringert
- Start date
That's awesome! I figured a low tree branch could really mess them up. Maybe just a cable "limb riser" would do the trick? It's looking really slick!
TOYoverlander
Member
keep up the good work! this thing is killer
chilliwak
Expedition Leader
I love the look of the canopy with the aluminum going on. I glued mine on with construction adhesive. Seems to work fine for me. I do have some corosion issues because I used presure treated plywood. The alu does not like presure treated wood but its still holding up after 10 years. Check out my build thread in the link below...
http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/52844-Building-your-own-canopy-camper
Good luck with your build and keep us updated with lots of pics. Cheers Chilli..
http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/52844-Building-your-own-canopy-camper
Good luck with your build and keep us updated with lots of pics. Cheers Chilli..
GJStringert
Observer
Thanks folks! I'll be away for a little while, going on my "annual" saltwater fly fishing trip with my dad for a bit (actually I'm typing this from the airport haha!), but I'll be hitting the camper again soon enough!
Chilli, yep, I've read your thread, nicely done!
Talk to you later!
Graham
Chilli, yep, I've read your thread, nicely done!
Talk to you later!
Graham
GJStringert
Observer
Well I'm glad to see I'm holding your interest!
Unfortunately I don't have much in the way of updates on the camper
itself, but since this is the truck thread too, I can divulge a bit on
the love I've been giving it...
But first, a picture of me and a dorado!
We were in the Mexico side of Baja fishing for Dorado, rooster fish,
lady fish, and bill fish for 5 days. I caught over 40 of these in those
5 days, all on the same leader! Not too bad for being pretty new to fly
fishing. My father and I did have a casting competition, though, and
even though he can read the water and knows every knot in the book, I
can throw about 20' more line than him (and rest assured, I NEVER let
him forget it!).
In the last 3 weeks I probably have a total of 6 hours of work in on
the camper, pretty much just tidying up odds and ends and finishing up
the skinning. Really the only easily apparent "update" I have is that I
hung one more sheet of aluminum to finish the back stand-off portion.
Other than that it's been pretty slow going.
The big Dodge has been playing "daily driver" for about a month now,
for my 100-mile-a-day round trip to work, and I'm pleased to say that
even for its size and severe lack of top-end power, it's surprisingly
comfortable (that Dynamat is probably my favorite comfort-oriented
improvement to date, really helped quiet it down). Plus it's a
head-turner in the parking lot, always starting up a conversation,
which is kind of fun! As such, I've been finishing up several "kill
time" projects I had, like plasti-dipping the door badges,
putting a new grille shell in (if you look closely every picture on
here since January is missing the grille shell!),
doing "routine" things,
and finally, prepping the truck for some MUCH needed new headlights (I
put some nice bright bulbs in the factory lenses but they are so far
beyond fogged and yellowed that it's just not worth trying to save
them). I did a little research and thought it'd be kind of fun and
different to convert the 18-year-old rig to HIDs, so I ordered a 55W
digital kit, 5000K bulbs, new harness from LMC, and some nice smoked
clear lenses from eBay (I thought hard about projectors with halos and
angel eyes but decided not to, they look kind of goofy on this truck
after seeing pictures online).
Otherwise it's running beautifully and averaging just about 20 MPG.
Although all my common-rail buddies love to lord their quadruple digit
torque numbers over me, they'll never touch me for fuel efficiency! I'm
feeling pretty good about resisting the daily urge to go crazy with
power-adders, even if I can only go 70 mph... It's going in for window
tint next Friday, then just about all things exterior will be accounted
for!
And now to show you there's still a bit of civility behind that big
mean 6BT... Haha I'm not sure if these are really even welcome here but
Kaity and I had some pictures professionally taken last weekend for my
birthday and I love showing this one off!
Anyway, that's what I have! I am glad to see I'm keeping you guys
interested, always looking forward to hearing what you have to say!
I'll hit the camper really hard one of these weekends, I'm in the
process of gathering the beer (and the parts) so I can rally my friends
and we can slam a few all-nighters sometime soon.
Take care!
Graham
Unfortunately I don't have much in the way of updates on the camper
itself, but since this is the truck thread too, I can divulge a bit on
the love I've been giving it...
But first, a picture of me and a dorado!
We were in the Mexico side of Baja fishing for Dorado, rooster fish,
lady fish, and bill fish for 5 days. I caught over 40 of these in those
5 days, all on the same leader! Not too bad for being pretty new to fly
fishing. My father and I did have a casting competition, though, and
even though he can read the water and knows every knot in the book, I
can throw about 20' more line than him (and rest assured, I NEVER let
him forget it!).
In the last 3 weeks I probably have a total of 6 hours of work in on
the camper, pretty much just tidying up odds and ends and finishing up
the skinning. Really the only easily apparent "update" I have is that I
hung one more sheet of aluminum to finish the back stand-off portion.
Other than that it's been pretty slow going.
The big Dodge has been playing "daily driver" for about a month now,
for my 100-mile-a-day round trip to work, and I'm pleased to say that
even for its size and severe lack of top-end power, it's surprisingly
comfortable (that Dynamat is probably my favorite comfort-oriented
improvement to date, really helped quiet it down). Plus it's a
head-turner in the parking lot, always starting up a conversation,
which is kind of fun! As such, I've been finishing up several "kill
time" projects I had, like plasti-dipping the door badges,
putting a new grille shell in (if you look closely every picture on
here since January is missing the grille shell!),
doing "routine" things,
and finally, prepping the truck for some MUCH needed new headlights (I
put some nice bright bulbs in the factory lenses but they are so far
beyond fogged and yellowed that it's just not worth trying to save
them). I did a little research and thought it'd be kind of fun and
different to convert the 18-year-old rig to HIDs, so I ordered a 55W
digital kit, 5000K bulbs, new harness from LMC, and some nice smoked
clear lenses from eBay (I thought hard about projectors with halos and
angel eyes but decided not to, they look kind of goofy on this truck
after seeing pictures online).
Otherwise it's running beautifully and averaging just about 20 MPG.
Although all my common-rail buddies love to lord their quadruple digit
torque numbers over me, they'll never touch me for fuel efficiency! I'm
feeling pretty good about resisting the daily urge to go crazy with
power-adders, even if I can only go 70 mph... It's going in for window
tint next Friday, then just about all things exterior will be accounted
for!
And now to show you there's still a bit of civility behind that big
mean 6BT... Haha I'm not sure if these are really even welcome here but
Kaity and I had some pictures professionally taken last weekend for my
birthday and I love showing this one off!
Anyway, that's what I have! I am glad to see I'm keeping you guys
interested, always looking forward to hearing what you have to say!
I'll hit the camper really hard one of these weekends, I'm in the
process of gathering the beer (and the parts) so I can rally my friends
and we can slam a few all-nighters sometime soon.
Take care!
Graham
redthies
Renaissance Redneck
Nice Dorado Graham! Caught on fly too! Wow! Those are a seriously good eating fish too.
20 mpg is great. Hoping I can get that out of my new '94 2500. 6" lift and 315s seems like it would eat a lot more fuel? I guess the tall tires are helping out the 4.10s?
20 mpg is great. Hoping I can get that out of my new '94 2500. 6" lift and 315s seems like it would eat a lot more fuel? I guess the tall tires are helping out the 4.10s?
Last edited:
ftballman125
New member
I've got a '94 2500 4x4 5-speed with highway tires and no lift, camper shell in bed. Averaged 23mpg on a 3000 mile trip recently, hand calculated. I'm quite sure your '94 can do 20mpg as long as you keep it pretty mild.
Seabass
Idiot
Just spent an hour reading your build thread. You are a talented man! I love your truck and what you have going on with the camper there. I had a 24v dodge in a dually for years and drove the crap out of it. But I wanted more room so I switched to a OBS crew cab ford F-350. But I miss the cummins grunt. I love your air compressor set up- simple and it works. I gotta do that. Good luck with the rest of the build- I'll definitely be watching.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
GJStringert
Observer
HID's, Window Tint, 12K XRC Winch, Still No Camper Work (Sorry!)
Hey folks!
Sorry I haven't been on in a LONG time, this summer turned out to be about 15.5 times as busy as I thought it would be (that was a tough calculation...), I just haven't had any time to get at the camper. What little work I have been doing is trying to track down a little electrical gremlin: two of the jacks stopped lifting, but I can hear the relays click when I use the remote, so I have to find a wiring issue somewhere. Still working on that. Also, I have been working on, yet another, roof re-design, I'm not liking the shape of the single tent leg pointing straight up, so I have two ideas in my head that I'm going to try in order to resurrect this shape:
I have an upholstery company tee'd up for the tent top, whenever that is!
I got the HIDs in. The housings were ordered from eBay, and I got the HID conversion from Retro Solutions. They make some GREAT kits: just a couple crimped wire connections, a couple zipties to make it clean, and you've got some honest to goodness HID sweetness! Wish I could say the same about the housings (and I was warned about this), they are nice to LOOK at, but the reflectors/optics in them are very poorly made. They pretty much just throw light everywhere, and now I find myself making every effort I can to NOT drive at night. I feel really bad for all other drivers, both the ones in front of me and the ones coming at me. The worst part is the housings aren't even amiable (that is, there's no little indexed aiming screw to aim them down), so I'm pretty much blinding everybody, EVERYWHERE. Researching solutions for that in my free time...
Ok next up, window tint! I had 20% done all the way around (over factory in the rear), admittedly, it's just a tad illegal, but CO is pretty lax on the regulations, so far I haven't had any trouble (granted I've had it for like a month and a half). I haven't noticed a dangerous-feeling absence of usability with my mirrors, it seems like everything is still fine. Looking through the back window, which is now practically limo-dark, is a different story.
(I also added those little stick-on deflectors for the windows. They go pretty well with tint and add a neat brow-effect to the side profile haha!)
Next, after a little weekend romp in the mountains for the 4th of July (Kaity's idea, great girl huh?), it became apparent that I: 1) needed a more powerful winch (I had my old 9,500 lbs Superwinch on a multi-mount cradle), and 2) needed said winch to be hard mounted inside the bumper. The idea of a multi-mount is neat, let's not get me wrong, but wrestling that thing into place once you need it has proven to irritate me, and my 22-year-old back (pretty pathetic huh?). Further, I've noticed that every time I've needed the winch, I've always preferred to have it in the front, whether using it to fell trees or for recovery, etc. Ok, enough babble, I scored a 12K Smittybilt XRC winch about 2 months ago from the local shop, and when I told the owner I was fabricating the mount for a bumper that was never meant to house a winch, he threw in a Jeep mounting plate for $20 for me to cut up and customize. Nice fella!
Old Multi-mount setup:
New stuff!
You can see in this picture how I took a little section out of the top plate of the bumper to sneak the control box through. It cleaned up REAL nicely.
BAM! All done!
I am EXTREMELY pleased with how this turned out. I don't know how I got so lucky, but I managed to get the winch and everything mounted, and re-mount the bumper about a half an inch CLOSER to the radiator (those of you with diesels know how limited clearance is when you have a radiator, intercooler and A/C condenser all smashed together in there). I'm thinking about adding a bit of the mesh back in, but the motor and clutch stick so far out both sides of the winch that I'm thinking those themselves might work fine for pushing any stray branches aside. As always, field trials will tell.
Ok that's about all I've got for now. As soon as I have some time I'm going to roll the camper out and get some serious work going on it, I promise. I'm working on cleaning my garage up as I type this so it'll be a little less threatening to start back up on the camper!
I'll leave you with a few pictures from our little 4th of July outing, and the truck rescuing Kaity's roommate's car after the water pump died. Big thanks to my buddy Evan for loaning me the gooseneck haha!
Take care everybody! I'll check back later, hopefully with some camper updates!
Graham
Hey folks!
Sorry I haven't been on in a LONG time, this summer turned out to be about 15.5 times as busy as I thought it would be (that was a tough calculation...), I just haven't had any time to get at the camper. What little work I have been doing is trying to track down a little electrical gremlin: two of the jacks stopped lifting, but I can hear the relays click when I use the remote, so I have to find a wiring issue somewhere. Still working on that. Also, I have been working on, yet another, roof re-design, I'm not liking the shape of the single tent leg pointing straight up, so I have two ideas in my head that I'm going to try in order to resurrect this shape:
I have an upholstery company tee'd up for the tent top, whenever that is!
I got the HIDs in. The housings were ordered from eBay, and I got the HID conversion from Retro Solutions. They make some GREAT kits: just a couple crimped wire connections, a couple zipties to make it clean, and you've got some honest to goodness HID sweetness! Wish I could say the same about the housings (and I was warned about this), they are nice to LOOK at, but the reflectors/optics in them are very poorly made. They pretty much just throw light everywhere, and now I find myself making every effort I can to NOT drive at night. I feel really bad for all other drivers, both the ones in front of me and the ones coming at me. The worst part is the housings aren't even amiable (that is, there's no little indexed aiming screw to aim them down), so I'm pretty much blinding everybody, EVERYWHERE. Researching solutions for that in my free time...
Ok next up, window tint! I had 20% done all the way around (over factory in the rear), admittedly, it's just a tad illegal, but CO is pretty lax on the regulations, so far I haven't had any trouble (granted I've had it for like a month and a half). I haven't noticed a dangerous-feeling absence of usability with my mirrors, it seems like everything is still fine. Looking through the back window, which is now practically limo-dark, is a different story.
(I also added those little stick-on deflectors for the windows. They go pretty well with tint and add a neat brow-effect to the side profile haha!)
Next, after a little weekend romp in the mountains for the 4th of July (Kaity's idea, great girl huh?), it became apparent that I: 1) needed a more powerful winch (I had my old 9,500 lbs Superwinch on a multi-mount cradle), and 2) needed said winch to be hard mounted inside the bumper. The idea of a multi-mount is neat, let's not get me wrong, but wrestling that thing into place once you need it has proven to irritate me, and my 22-year-old back (pretty pathetic huh?). Further, I've noticed that every time I've needed the winch, I've always preferred to have it in the front, whether using it to fell trees or for recovery, etc. Ok, enough babble, I scored a 12K Smittybilt XRC winch about 2 months ago from the local shop, and when I told the owner I was fabricating the mount for a bumper that was never meant to house a winch, he threw in a Jeep mounting plate for $20 for me to cut up and customize. Nice fella!
Old Multi-mount setup:
New stuff!
You can see in this picture how I took a little section out of the top plate of the bumper to sneak the control box through. It cleaned up REAL nicely.
BAM! All done!
I am EXTREMELY pleased with how this turned out. I don't know how I got so lucky, but I managed to get the winch and everything mounted, and re-mount the bumper about a half an inch CLOSER to the radiator (those of you with diesels know how limited clearance is when you have a radiator, intercooler and A/C condenser all smashed together in there). I'm thinking about adding a bit of the mesh back in, but the motor and clutch stick so far out both sides of the winch that I'm thinking those themselves might work fine for pushing any stray branches aside. As always, field trials will tell.
Ok that's about all I've got for now. As soon as I have some time I'm going to roll the camper out and get some serious work going on it, I promise. I'm working on cleaning my garage up as I type this so it'll be a little less threatening to start back up on the camper!
I'll leave you with a few pictures from our little 4th of July outing, and the truck rescuing Kaity's roommate's car after the water pump died. Big thanks to my buddy Evan for loaning me the gooseneck haha!
Take care everybody! I'll check back later, hopefully with some camper updates!
Graham
GJStringert
Observer
(Camper) Tidying up electrical, beginning corner bead, and the new shop dog!
Hey folks! My girlfriend and I have spent the last few days doing an epic deep clean on my garage, and it is now a WHOLE lot easier to work on the camper in there haha! Now I can actually work in the garage and the only reason I have to move it out is to flip the top.
Speaking of, I'm still working on another roof redesign, so that'll be on hold for a while. But I have been able to start working on the inside of the shell now that I can find all my tools (messy garage) and I know the exterior is close to being done.
I began by sealing up the plug "sockets" (trailer light harnesses) at each corner jack. They're finally mounted permanently and shouldn't need to be moved or removed for the rest of the project.
Then I got all the junk out of the way of the "subfloor", gave it a good vacuuming, and hung the wires up nice and neatly.
All wires, for jacks, appliances, HVAC and AC outlets collect at my "master electrical panel", currently written on the floor in sharpie.
I began wiring my AC outlets but had to stop when I figured out I bought the wrong receptacle boxes and they won't house any of the sockets I'm using. Dumb.
But there was still daylight so I began my corner bead on the exterior edges!
And finally, Kaity and I welcomed a new member to our small family a few days ago:
That's Riley Red Dog playing shop companion for the day!
That's what I have for now.
Take it easy everybody!
Graham
Hey folks! My girlfriend and I have spent the last few days doing an epic deep clean on my garage, and it is now a WHOLE lot easier to work on the camper in there haha! Now I can actually work in the garage and the only reason I have to move it out is to flip the top.
Speaking of, I'm still working on another roof redesign, so that'll be on hold for a while. But I have been able to start working on the inside of the shell now that I can find all my tools (messy garage) and I know the exterior is close to being done.
I began by sealing up the plug "sockets" (trailer light harnesses) at each corner jack. They're finally mounted permanently and shouldn't need to be moved or removed for the rest of the project.
Then I got all the junk out of the way of the "subfloor", gave it a good vacuuming, and hung the wires up nice and neatly.
All wires, for jacks, appliances, HVAC and AC outlets collect at my "master electrical panel", currently written on the floor in sharpie.
I began wiring my AC outlets but had to stop when I figured out I bought the wrong receptacle boxes and they won't house any of the sockets I'm using. Dumb.
But there was still daylight so I began my corner bead on the exterior edges!
And finally, Kaity and I welcomed a new member to our small family a few days ago:
That's Riley Red Dog playing shop companion for the day!
That's what I have for now.
Take it easy everybody!
Graham
coastal616
Adventurer
Looks really cool! That camper is going to be sweet.
ftballman125
New member
One note... it looks like you are planning on using single strand copper wiring for your AC current? I'm not positive on this, but I think you may not want to use that... it's not really built for mobile applications as I understand it.
GJStringert
Observer
Thanks coastal616.
ftballman125, I have had a hell of a time finding concrete yes or no answers for using single strand copper in a mobile application. You're right, it's really meant for household use, but honestly, I can't think of any harm it would do? (Besides being a pain to work with, since it's so stiff). The other idea I have is, since those wires for the plug sockets will be going straight to an inverter, I thought I would just buy some extension cords and hack those to shape, and splice new ends on them. Really the only reason I kind of wanted to implement the yellow romex is because it was free, I just had it laying around. Hmm, maybe I should switch to the more pliable extension cord idea while I still have the floor off? Ideas?
ftballman125, I have had a hell of a time finding concrete yes or no answers for using single strand copper in a mobile application. You're right, it's really meant for household use, but honestly, I can't think of any harm it would do? (Besides being a pain to work with, since it's so stiff). The other idea I have is, since those wires for the plug sockets will be going straight to an inverter, I thought I would just buy some extension cords and hack those to shape, and splice new ends on them. Really the only reason I kind of wanted to implement the yellow romex is because it was free, I just had it laying around. Hmm, maybe I should switch to the more pliable extension cord idea while I still have the floor off? Ideas?