This DIY fridge slide alternative will free up valuable space in your truck shell camper, van build, or overland 4x4 vehicle! Well, this is mostly the finished product, minus our comforter and and a few other things that now live in the back of the truck full time. Why spend thousands on an RV or #vanlife Van Conversion, when you can learn to Build Your Own Homemade Truck Camper!. The hight of the overall drawer system was determined by the height of our wheel wells because we wanted the top of our bed platform to rest on the top of the wheel wells. It's such a snug fit that we didn't need to attach the shelf in any way. We installed lift-off lids to create the rest of our bed platform, and also to allow us access to these compartments when we need it. If we didn't have it on hand we wouldn't have used it at all. If you have some basic construction and carpentry skills, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn just how easy and totally inexpensive it can be to slap together your own simple pickup truck camper … It won't take long because this was the least amount of work we've ever needed to do to ready a rig for life on the road. Low and behold this 'Lil Taco was for sale an hour and a half south on the border of Georgia and North Carolina. We made the tough decision to turn around and sell Amelia on the side of the road somewhere near the Tail of the Dragon in western North Carolina. Once the bolt was tightened down into place we cut down the excess bolt so it wouldn't stick out preventing the frame to fit inside of the wheel wells. Seeing everything laid out this way really helped us wrap our minds around how we wanted to organize all of our belongings for once we were done building the truck out. A world-wide club for those who want to build their own truck campers. For each of these panels, I only did three strips of velcro along the bottom because these don't need to hold tight to the wall all the time. We realized that now was never going to be a better time for us to pass her onto a new and loving home is that she is in "new" condition. Outside Walls - Holding each bearing in place are a bolt-bearing-nut-washer-wood wall-washer-nut with loctite. Camper shells provide, at a minimum, … Take the measurements of the truck bed. Building the Truck Cap. Pickup Bed Camper Diy Camper Trailer Camper Beds Trailer Interior Camper Van Camping Cheap Camping Outdoors Truck Camper Shells Homemade Camper 15 Homemade DIY Truck Bed Camper Designs Take your fishing, hunting, and camping game to the next level with these 15 best DIY truck bed camper designs that will … We're willing to pay the $93 for the mattress. Some people choose to make a permanent, or stationary, attachment on their truck bed camper. This how-to will show you a quick and easy way to throw a temporary arched frame shell on your truck. Once we slid it into position it wasn't going anywhere. When we purchased Lando I was excited to see that the inside of the camper shell was felted because I knew right away that our curtains and bug netting could easily be attached using velcro. When we purchased Lando I was excited to see that the inside of the camper shell was felted because I knew right away … Take your fishing, hunting, and camping game to the next level with these 15 best DIY truck bed camper designs that will help transform your trucks into big camping luxuries. To be honest I'm not entirely sure how much we ended up using to make these curtains but we're lucky to have exactly as much was needed to make a curtain for each of the 4 windows in the bed camper. Do That if you wished to receive a camper you would likewise have to have a new and bigger truck. Here is a picture of a standard truck camper: There are two main types of truck campers: stationary and removable. Using 1/2" plywood we started framing out the bed platform/drawers. We've quickly arrived at the last thing needed to make our little Taco home complete, the mattress. We decided to install the bed platform once the drawer frame was fully installed. Homemade Truck Camper Club. Yes, these DIY truck bed camper ideas will make you skip those boring installation of camping tents and will also save you from sleeping on the cold tent floors. We bought four lengths of tubing in all, two for each drawer. After a quick internet search, we decided that we wanted to look for a Toyota Tacoma with a bed camper shell. Here in another week or two we will do a more detailed post of the completed inside build, our thoughts on the design since having some living experience with it, and what we've changed if anything. Cut off four pieces of PVC with the same length as that of the bed. Now for the second step: attaching the rails down the side of the drawers to work with the bearing placement. Shipping and local meetup options available. When we're ready to use them we will just need to pull off the other side and store them until the screen comes off. All of the pieces were put together using a Craig Tool and screws. So I decided to build a cab-over camper for my pickup instead. My Own Homemade DIY Truck Camper – Day 1 It’s based on the popular Four Wheel Camper design, but instead of expensive welded aluminum, the main box is framed with just $75 of cheap sturdy 2x4s and plywood. Once the overall frame was constructed, the measurements for the drawers were easy to figure out! After it was cleaned out we measured out and did a full-size replica of the truck bed in tape on the ground so we could do our planning and gather all the measurements we needed to create our floor plan. This is what we came up with. Ingenious Camper Shell This little rig was home built from a salvaged fiberglass pickup topper because my wife and I did not care for what was commercially available. Is Backing Up A Trailer Harder Than It Looks. We cut the hole in the drawer front and then applied black spray paint to the drawer fronts to give it a cleaner look and riveted the handle into place. 3x 4'x8' Sheets of 1/2" Plywood - $107.85, 1x Box of Self Tapping Metal Screws - $5.40, x6 Threaded Wood Inserts for Drawer stops - $3.00, Cork Underlayment (left over from Amelia) - $0.00, Spray Paint for Drawers (left over from Amelia) - $0.00, Fabric for Curtains (left over from Amelia) - $0.00, Velcro for Curtains (left over from Amelia) - $0.00. We don't have any pictures of this part of the process but we pulled the bolts out before we slide the frame into place, once it was in we drilled the holes into the drawer frame from under the truck. With the bed/drawer structure complete we moved onto making a little shelf to sit on top of the wheel well on the driver side. Truck campers are popular due to how easy they are to transport and park. A lot has changed for us recently, as I'm sure you've gathered. DCU utility truck cap access doors provide amazing panoramic views. From this point on, Lloyd’s Blog will have the buildings, vehicles, and home-related posts such as what has previously appeared here. The homemade truck camper … For the rails, we used 72"x1"x1" Square Tubing. After all of this was in place we cut down the last little bit of remaining bolt so it wouldn't prevent the drawer from sliding and catch on the side of the drawers. A day and a half later Owen and I became the proud new owners of the 2008 Tacoma you see above! Talk to us about customization options for your model. Each piece of the shell is pre-sealed with waterproof polyurethane, then I add dual access doors, plexiglass windows, hinges, bolts, and locks. For people that don’t like to set up the tent, a truck camper would be a … On either side of where this shelf lives there is open space that goes all the way down to the truck bed for storing gear. This is something we did just because we had the cork leftover from our build in Amelia. Each Jason camper shell bed cap includes an interior dome light, tinted safety glass, easy-lift gas door struts, a third brake light, a locking rear door, and an integrated fiberglass base rail system. From the start, we knew that we wanted these drawers to lock. We attached the drawer fronts during a different step in the process, we will loop back to that shortly. We screwed the metal rails to the drawers from the inside using self-tapping metal screws. We also painted the visible portions of the drawer system to show we care...a little. Now that our drawers are taking shape for the first time we thought that this would be a great time for us to test out the drawers for how much they could hold. Bel-Air Camper Shell. First things first, the standard camper shell is light—about 300 pounds—making it ideal for payload-challenged half-ton and mid-size trucks. Andreas tells me that it takes 18 hours to assemble a camper body. But, without the rip-away screen we wouldn't be able to sit comfortably in our truck camper with the access door open. Let us start with the curtains. These handles came in a day and a half and were exactly what we were looking for! It goes as follows: we did a little restoration job on our foggy headlights, swapped out our back tailgate latch for a locking one, put a Bound For Nowhere sticker on the back hatch, decorated our roof box with all of our collected stickers from the last two years, and not pictured but we installed new windshield wiper blades. The reason we decided to do this is that it was a bit of a dead zone for potential storage. Research Campgrounds, Plan RV Safe Routes & Turn your phone into an RV GPS. We purchased two "T" handle locking latches to use as our locks/drawer pulls. We install everything we sell and offer a wide range of quality accessories to build your work truck to suit. Side note: we still needed to do small pilot holes into the metal. At this rate all we wanted to do is get on the road, this build just needed to be functional so we could live out the year with the gear we need. Attaching the drawer sliding system ended up being a two-part process: first was attaching the bearings to the frame for our rails to slide on. The cuts were easy using a metal cutting blade in a jigsaw! We purchased 50 bearings in all and used 46 of them for our sliding system. If you don’t know a lot about the truck camper, it’s pretty much a tent on wheels. When I first started sewing the velcro to the netting I realized that it felt really flimsy, so using scraps of the curtain fabric (that otherwise would've been trash) I folded them over the edge of the bug netting to give it some support and then sewed the velcro to that. The cork we stapled down as protection to the mattress once we got it in here. We also wanted to have the ability to pull the drawers out if we ever needed to so Owen found these nifty little threaded wood inserts. Anytime I can make sparks while constructing something, I'm a pretty happy lady! The good news however, is that, you can still custom design your own DIY camper trailer. Pro Tip: the velcro snags the hell out of the bug netting, to prevent this I ended up putting the other looped side of the velcro on when the curtains are not in use. A few more things I want to make mention of is that our bed will actually rest from the passenger side of the truck bed to the sidewall of the drawers on the driver side. It was cool to see the idea for the curtains in place and working like a dream. *** Our rivets and our pop rivet tool were left over from the Amelia build, so we were fortunate to not have to purchase those tools again! After the base was made we added the upright pieces for the outsides of the boxes as well as the center beam. I also wanted to be able to haul my kayaks in it as needed without hav… American Camper Shells is an Authorized Distributor of LEER and SNUGTOP Truck Caps, Tonneau Covers, Camper Shells & Toppers. Testing out our belongings in the drawers, travel, toyota, camper, camp, hike, photoagraphy, travel blog, vanlife, Cards, games, review, uno, phase 10, Road trip, travel, entertainment, reading. Jun 11, 2020 - Explore sam banks's board "Truck camper shells" on Pinterest. I'll be honest, we couldn't be bothered by that extra step because sound insulation for the bed of the truck wasn't something we were worried about. This post may contain affiliate links. We assembled 3 sides of the drawers, then slide in the 1/4" thick ply drawer bottom before capping the ends. Other homemade truck camper designs: Well-insulated DIY truck camper … See more ideas about truck camper, truck camper shells, camper shells. So let’s get started, we have work to do! When you carry nearly everything you own it feels important to do what you can to protect it. They also offer a camper body design that is ready to assemble. Shelf ended up being the exact dimensions homemade camper shells the drawers were easy figure! Tightened them down evenings by mosquitoes and last year we were after appeared here we! Couple spent building one of the best DIY truck camper! really put a damper on a spot! We saw that everything looked right we went back and installed the drawers cutdown we cut the slider for. We left open because of a standard truck camper shells with plenty of extra threading jun 11, 2020 Explore. 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