Oh boy. -NOW a build thread

[ericvs]

Not sure if you have heard of these guys, but they make flatbeds that I think you might appreciate.
Would be a good replacement for the Bradford.

https://sherptek.com/

 

[deminimis]

Thanks. I actually know Ryan. Nice beds.

 

[deminimis]

Well, wife wants to re-tool. I thought she meant a new husband. Anyway, going to put up the Ram and Okanagan for sale soon. Not sure how I feel about this.

 

[Cascadian]

Bummer, just buying a place in Baja instead?

 

[deminimis]

A few things in play. Kid #1 off to college, so we don't need as big a camper. In fact, she only camps with us when traveling to Baja. Really, pretty much the same story with Kid #2. Teenagers, geeszch. Also, I have a long-term plan (talking a decade) to get a catamaran. To even realistically start dreaming about such a thing, I need to start clearing the books. Finally, since I have a new TRD Taco, we're thinking we'll just come up with a plan for that (perhaps a pop up TC, perhaps a RTT, perhaps a small trailer, or any combination of the three) and give up living large. Damn, mentioned it to a friend and might already have a buyer.

 

[deminimis]

Finally restored that old hay wagon I picked up ($1k+/- later). I still have to make a couple of tweaks, but will be able to move the camper in and out of the shop with relative ease soon. Plus, can't think of better way to store and support a camper when not on the truck.

 

[deminimis]

I may as well finish out this thread. Sold the Ram a few weeks back. As shown above, I restored a really cool hay wagon for the camper. Worked great, super stable, level, easy to move the camper around, etc., except for one problem: The works were still too tall to get the camper into my shop. Soooo, I picked up an old, home brewed (but for the nice drop axles) horse trailer. Yes, that is an old Massey Ferguson combine cowl repurposed as a roof. Mud fences ain't got nothin' on this thing:

New tires/wheels and great axles, so this will work for its very limited purpose (if I had built from scratch, then it would road worthy with the camper attached, but not my goal -I just wanted low and stable enough for storage and some moving around the driveway). So first step was to bring out the plasma torch:

Installed a good trailer jack (along with some 1/4" plate I had to make the jack assembly bombproof as this was important) and bam:

Camper CoG sits nicely between the axles and just slightly forward of the center of them. This worked out perfect (for storage) as the works are self-supporting/level without actually having to use the trailer jack. I re-installed the orig camper jacks as the new jacks I have are approx 3" longer and would drag when moving it around.

Works, although looks crazy:

Due to the low door header in the storage side of my shop (only 11') and the tall AC unit, I had to dig a couple of trenches in the gravel floor to clear (storage side of the shop is gravel). Fits with ample room to spare:

Have a bit of cleaning up (shop) this weekend so I can move the camper further back as I have some stuff that needs to go back in there. Come late Winter/Early Spring, I'll sell the camper and that will be a wrap. If wondering what was taking up space on that side of the shop before the camper (for way longer than planned... about eight years longer than planned), it has moved up to the front of the Winter projects line:

The end.