Our DIY Hilux camper build

[Jara]

After lurking for the past year, we’ve finally decided to get some opinions and share our build. We’re half a year in, but better late than never.

For our abridged story, we’re Cara and James and planning on running off to explore Europe and Africa in a DIY fiberglass, solid-side camper, mounted on the back of a Hilux.

Why
We have backpacked and lived abroad before, but our thirst for adventure has only grown. We wanted to be free to go anywhere, and always toyed with the idea of a van conversion.

However, we didn’t want to be stuck on the tourist trail and panel vans with good 4x4 credentials were beyond our budget - we’re aiming to keep the build under £10k (that probably won't happen). Somehow, James (always the confident optimist) convinced me that a DIY truck camper was the way for us and if all goes well will be off on our way by the end of May.

The truck
We purchased a 5th gen 4x4 diesel Hilux about 6 months ago for £2k. Having lived half its life as a working farm vehicle it was in surprisingly good nick. Not the prettiest thing, but chassis was much better than all the LHD vehicles we looked at in our price range. We’ve stripped it back, de-rusted and painted with glass-reinforced chassis paint (Corroless, would recommend). There are a few mods, including an engine heat exchanger for an external shower and a snorkel, but otherwise, it’s mostly stock.

The unadulterated truck.

Getting the back off - saving about 120 kg right there.

Coming to terms with what we're doing.


The camper
Our trip is expected to last at least two years. We wanted security, simplicity and a relatively high level of comfort in our home, which for us ruled out soft sides, pop tops and tents. This means the thing is tall so it’s not a ‘serious’ off-roader, but hopefully capable of African back roads.

Inspired by boats, a couple of French guys [1, 2] and a Californian couple [3], we’re making the camper with plastic honeycomb panels (Nidaplast or Nidacore) laminated in fiberglass. This should produce a robust living box which is lightweight. There is only about 1 tonne of capacity to play with so weight is everything.

Here are some snaps of progress so far, we’ll try and keep the post updated.

Building the floor - we added a recessed section where the fuel tank protrudes which lets us mount the whole thing about 15 mm lower.

Floor meets truck.

Lots of jigs and clamps to get everything (essentially) straight.

Floor and three walls assembled! - progress so far.

Thanks for reading!

[1] casa-trotter.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=54
[2] construction-d-un-massif-de-voyage.over-blog.com/
[3] thesupercamper.blogspot.com

 

[Loubaru]

Building the floor inside!? That is awesome. Makes me feel better about my "small" 2 car garage turned into a shop. My wife would kill me if I tried doing something like that. Build so far looks very clean and well thought out so far, great job!

 

[Jo_Duval]

oh that is quite similar to what i have in mind for our next build. I will be following your build

 

[zelseman]

This is really unique , props for jumping in on a project like this!

 

[Jara]

Building the floor inside!? That is awesome. Makes me feel better about my "small" 2 car garage turned into a shop. My wife would kill me if I tried doing something like that. Build so far looks very clean and well thought out so far, great job!

Thanks! We started in the garage joined to the house but the smell was so strong it permeated the walls! We did the rest of the fibreglass work in an outbuilding, but if we were starting again we'd cough up and rent a workshop; laminating, cutting and sanding fibreglass produces an epic amount of mess!

 

[s.e.charles]

"where there's a will, there's a way" constructioneering at its finest!

Q: any chance of a side picture? this box looks HUGE.

 

[Jara]

Update #1

A quick update on progress this week. The weather has taken a turn on us and it’s raining pretty much every day, so we are keeping the whole thing under tarpaulin and working on the exterior in the sunny intervals. Until the final layer of finishing resin goes on the skin it can’t be considered watertight; if there are any pinholes or under-saturated areas then water can wick in and weaken the laminate, so keeping it dry is important.

Despite this we’ve got the roof and front on and fibreglass over the seams inside and out!


Working under tarpaulin to get the nose on.


Sliding the roof on.


Left side.


The right side, obscured by the surplus pickup bed.


Inside view showing the bathroom wall on the right and crawl through to the cab.


View from the bed, an unfortunately dingy photo but you get the idea. In retrospect we could have shaved a couple of inches of the height and it would still be comfortable.

As s.e.charles said, the box is huge! Inside it’s 1.9m tall, 1.9m wide and 2.5m long, not including the over-cab bed which is an extra 1.2m. This makes the whole thing about 2.9m tall, which is slightly terrifying. We based a lot of the design on this Landcruiser Bimobil and have kept all the external dimensions smaller than that.

The design has all the heaviest items mounted below the floor which will help lower the centre of gravity. We created the whole thing with CAD before starting, I'm not sure how you could do a project like this without it!


The outside with a rough approximation of the cab.


Birds eye view minus the head-height cupboards. The spare wheel is being relocated to the back to free up space under the floor for a water tank.

Thanks for reading!

 

[DzlToy]

Bump for updates; interesting build.

I did not know that BiMobil built boxes small enough for a 70 series pickup; that is also a cool truck.

EDIT: Spelling error