I'm a little premature for a build thread, I was going to wait until I was almost done, but there is some motivation here and I could probably get some great input here, maybe somebody could use a little advice too, who knows, all I know is my truck is being built for my needs and for North American adventure so here goes:
My truck is a 1996 Ford F-700 4x4 crew cab, it came withe a 429 gas, 5 speed, Rockwell T126 transfer case, Marmon MT10 front drive axle with 5.89 gears. The dump bed was removed and the frame extended 4 feet on the tail end, I replaced the outer rail all the way back to the cab to clean things up and get rid of all the holes. Next the 429 came out along with the 5 speed and I dropped a 5.9 Cummins in with a Fuller RTO4606 6 speed trans with overdrive. The transfer case was in good shape but a weakling T126 with the very ugly front output so I bought a rebuilt air shifted Rockwell T136 and mounted it in place, much nicer and less shift linkage. I replaced the front springs with a set of parabolic leafs along with all new hangers and bushed shackles, and to match the front I bought a used Peterbilt low air leaf rear suspension, rebuilt it, fabbed the drop bracketry and mounted all the soft riding stuff.
Now it was time to get the cab cleaned up but I found some hidden rust in really crappy places. So, I bought a mint 1996 F-350 crew cab diesel. I parted the truck out at a profit and now have a mint rust free fully loaded F-700, I even found a set of Lariat leather seats to make it a little sexier and comfy. The 5.9 is equipped with an air compressor so I mounted a 10 gallon air tank for a reservoir for the suspension and air controls, but also ran lines to front rear and center with quick couplers. I then fabbed a battery box to hold 4 Odyssey Group 31 dry cell batteries. It now runs and moves under it's own power, just some clean up left and paint the front end to match the cab.
Now the camper. I have 2 fantastic rugrats that are finding the beauty of the outdoors but they are still kids with a pretty short attention span so there will be some modern entertainment on board, in the cab and in the camper so those were some of my requirements. We built the frame as follows: Main sills are 6" aluminum channel, the crossmembers are 4" aluminum channel on 16" centers, the perimeter at the base and supporting the overhead is 2x4x.188 aluminum tubing, the vertical and roof perimeter is 2x4x.125 aluminum tubing, the wall "studs" are 1.5x.188 aluminum tubing, all the door and window radius's were laser cut from .250 aluminum and the whole works was fully welded, no loose ends. The camper will be mounted with shear plates at the rear and our spring loaded mounts along the remainder of the sill with a rubber insert on top of the frame rail for isolation. The roof and front are sheeted with DiBond composite panels and the rest might get done soon if my shedule permits.
That's all I have for now, here are some pics and I'll post a couple more later.
The finishing plan is to spray foam the entire unit then sheet the inside. I am using a 25 000 BTU propane furnace along with a propane stove, oven, and fridge. I know of the negative aspects of propane but we are using all industrial/oilfield rated fittings and lines rather than typical RV crap. What I do like about propane is the fast cooking, it works great on the permanently mounted swing out and slide out barbeque and side burner for the dinners outside, plus we have a 200 liter frame mounted tank that we can fill by the liter rather than get raped with cylinder fill charges. We have a 30" fullsized fiberglass 1 piece shower along with a toilet inside, along with an outside shower that is turning out really good. The rear is getting a queen sized bed for the wife and I, the kids are bunking in the overhead, all of the window are thermal with 4 of the incorporating escape hatches as well as 2 escape hatches in the overhead just in case.
Now here is something you can all flame me for, I am putting a slide in! There is a 72x36" slide on the driver side. I am building full bearing supported slide mechanisms along with a very substantial structure around the opening, I do not anticipate any other issues other than a huge increase in interior space. We build some pretty warm and cool airtight equipment that works from the Arctic circle and Alaska all the way to to the deep south of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
All in all this thing should give us all the room we need, we tow a Jeep along with a couple of bikes and sometimes a boat, depending on what we are up to so it will be nice to have the proper chassis to handle the load and get us a little ways off the beaten path. We have been off road camping for over 20 years and have a lot of experience there, we also spend a lot of time in remote locations on very rough roads for a living so there is quite a lot of experience being applied to the build.
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My truck is a 1996 Ford F-700 4x4 crew cab, it came withe a 429 gas, 5 speed, Rockwell T126 transfer case, Marmon MT10 front drive axle with 5.89 gears. The dump bed was removed and the frame extended 4 feet on the tail end, I replaced the outer rail all the way back to the cab to clean things up and get rid of all the holes. Next the 429 came out along with the 5 speed and I dropped a 5.9 Cummins in with a Fuller RTO4606 6 speed trans with overdrive. The transfer case was in good shape but a weakling T126 with the very ugly front output so I bought a rebuilt air shifted Rockwell T136 and mounted it in place, much nicer and less shift linkage. I replaced the front springs with a set of parabolic leafs along with all new hangers and bushed shackles, and to match the front I bought a used Peterbilt low air leaf rear suspension, rebuilt it, fabbed the drop bracketry and mounted all the soft riding stuff.
Now it was time to get the cab cleaned up but I found some hidden rust in really crappy places. So, I bought a mint 1996 F-350 crew cab diesel. I parted the truck out at a profit and now have a mint rust free fully loaded F-700, I even found a set of Lariat leather seats to make it a little sexier and comfy. The 5.9 is equipped with an air compressor so I mounted a 10 gallon air tank for a reservoir for the suspension and air controls, but also ran lines to front rear and center with quick couplers. I then fabbed a battery box to hold 4 Odyssey Group 31 dry cell batteries. It now runs and moves under it's own power, just some clean up left and paint the front end to match the cab.
Now the camper. I have 2 fantastic rugrats that are finding the beauty of the outdoors but they are still kids with a pretty short attention span so there will be some modern entertainment on board, in the cab and in the camper so those were some of my requirements. We built the frame as follows: Main sills are 6" aluminum channel, the crossmembers are 4" aluminum channel on 16" centers, the perimeter at the base and supporting the overhead is 2x4x.188 aluminum tubing, the vertical and roof perimeter is 2x4x.125 aluminum tubing, the wall "studs" are 1.5x.188 aluminum tubing, all the door and window radius's were laser cut from .250 aluminum and the whole works was fully welded, no loose ends. The camper will be mounted with shear plates at the rear and our spring loaded mounts along the remainder of the sill with a rubber insert on top of the frame rail for isolation. The roof and front are sheeted with DiBond composite panels and the rest might get done soon if my shedule permits.
That's all I have for now, here are some pics and I'll post a couple more later.
The finishing plan is to spray foam the entire unit then sheet the inside. I am using a 25 000 BTU propane furnace along with a propane stove, oven, and fridge. I know of the negative aspects of propane but we are using all industrial/oilfield rated fittings and lines rather than typical RV crap. What I do like about propane is the fast cooking, it works great on the permanently mounted swing out and slide out barbeque and side burner for the dinners outside, plus we have a 200 liter frame mounted tank that we can fill by the liter rather than get raped with cylinder fill charges. We have a 30" fullsized fiberglass 1 piece shower along with a toilet inside, along with an outside shower that is turning out really good. The rear is getting a queen sized bed for the wife and I, the kids are bunking in the overhead, all of the window are thermal with 4 of the incorporating escape hatches as well as 2 escape hatches in the overhead just in case.
Now here is something you can all flame me for, I am putting a slide in! There is a 72x36" slide on the driver side. I am building full bearing supported slide mechanisms along with a very substantial structure around the opening, I do not anticipate any other issues other than a huge increase in interior space. We build some pretty warm and cool airtight equipment that works from the Arctic circle and Alaska all the way to to the deep south of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
All in all this thing should give us all the room we need, we tow a Jeep along with a couple of bikes and sometimes a boat, depending on what we are up to so it will be nice to have the proper chassis to handle the load and get us a little ways off the beaten path. We have been off road camping for over 20 years and have a lot of experience there, we also spend a lot of time in remote locations on very rough roads for a living so there is quite a lot of experience being applied to the build.
