Your truck is looking good, just be careful about the weight, things add up quickly, and having to drag around a lot of extra weight will add to fuel consumption and overall maintenance even if you can keep it under the GVM of the truck, lighter is always better. What is the maximum overhang you are allowed at the rear, check with vehicles standards people, over here in Australia it is 60% of wheelbase. I think Australia copied that from a European standard. Having the spare wheels on the back cuts down a lot on the usable camper box space.
Also, just wondering what you will be using the big hydraulic pump on the back of the gearbox for?
Hi Iain,
Weight is always an enemy when building something based on a road going vehicle. For living I am a mechanical engineer and building mining equipment based on truck chassis, so I am used to the problem... This is one of our latest builds, it's a "concrete robot", specially designed for spraying concrete inside the roof of tunnels:
GVM on my truck is 10600kg, but I will be aiming at somewere around 7,5 tonns.
Earlier it was the same here as in Australia with 60% of wheelbase as maximum allowed overhang in the rear. But the rules changed some years ago, now the only requirement is that the truck needs to be able to turn around a "standard EU-roundabout" (see drawing underneath for this roundabout, max. radius is 12500mm and min radius is 5300mm, btw the truck in the drawing is the same as in the picture above) and that minimum weight on front axle never is lower than 10% of total GVM.
So in reality you are allowed to have quite a bit of overhang now even if the wheelbase in the truck is quite short, as long as you have good turning radius and enough weight on the front axle. The overhang I plan to have on my box is aprox. 1850mm measured from center of the rear axle to the outside of the back wall on the living box. Total length of the box is 3800mm.
I am not sure at this moment if we will decide on one or two spare wheels, I just inserted two in the CAD-model since I thought it looked good:sombrero:
The hydraulic pump is a good question. I actually don't know what I will use it for... It was previously used for operating the hydraulic crane, but that is now long gone. I have a Warn series 15 hydraulic winch which I intend to mount in the front bumper, but probably the easiest thing will be to run it directly from the engine mounted hydraulic pump which already is prepared with tank for hydraulic fluid and operating levelers inside the cabin. So if you have any good ideas I am open for suggestions!
