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1995 3.4L 5sp 4x4 Bajarader (Put the sawzall down)


bajadulce

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Looks like some thought was given where to make the cuts. What are you going to use for windows in the smaller openings. Glass or plastic?

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The old windows are going back, that's why I cut the cab where I did. The openings will just be expanded.

Not sure where the gas tank filler will go and what's legal. Haven't worked out how the camper frame will mount/secure to the flatbed as well? Kinda just designing this as I go..

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Very cool!

Are you going to make all the frame out of aluminum? I think Northern Tool has some trailer fenders that could be incorporated into the framing. Our conquest has nylon plastic fenders internally. I would put down sheet aluminum on top of the frame then foam insulation then 3/4 ply. Something like the original but more beefy with the 3/4 ply. The original on ours was bottom - aluminum, then foam core and 3/8 ply all glued together with the shell fiberglass-ed to the flooring. There is not much cross support in the original sunrader design. You have reduced the overall weight so much that a little beefy weight in the floor might be good. One thing though is frame twist when 4 wheelin. You don't want that to transfer up into the coach, could start it to crackin'. My envision would to have the coach and frame free floating on polyurethane bushing mounts so things could twist a bit.

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Are you going to make all the frame out of aluminum?
There are 2 frames involved in this design. The camper floor frame and the flatbed frame. Aluminum would be the professional choice for the flatbed, but I don't have any way to weld aluminum so prob will just be steel tubing for truck bed and redwood 1x's + plywood for camper.
I think Northern Tool has some trailer fenders that could be incorporated into the framing.
Thnx, I'll check that out. Pre-fab wheel wells for the flatbed would be great as I don't have much experience with bending/fabricating sheetmetal.
Our conquest has nylon plastic fenders internally.
I saved the fiberglass wheel boxes from the sunrader and will be putting those back on the camper half. Tho with the single-cab swap on the extra cab frame, the wheels are actually further back from the rear of cab than the original sunrader. I suppose this is a good thing? The rear axle would seem to carry less weight from the camper shell, but would now carry a bit more weight of the front of truck (i.e. cab + engine)?
I would put down sheet aluminum on top of the frame then foam insulation then 3/4 ply. Something like the original but more beefy with the 3/4 ply.
Some decent plywood sure seems like a good call and plenty durable especially if it gets a few layers of fiberglass. Unlike the original sunrader, this floor will sit on a honeycomb of floor joists (it has to support itself while not on the truckbed). So with the floor joists, should be able to get away with 1/2" plywood and still feel plenty solid. Definitely leaning towards redwood 1x's for floor honeycomb. The underside of the camper is of course easy to get to for maintenance (occasional painting) when off the truck. The shell's floor is also shielded from the road via the flatbed deck.
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I was thinking the flatbed and coach frame would be one in the same (only one frame to build), and would be attached via the polyurethane bushings to the frame. That would keep the coach section rigid and allow some flex for the frame. Polyurethane though might actually be too rigid. Rubber bushings would allow more flex maybe.

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I think making the frame as stiff as possibe and letting it float on the truck frame would the way to go. If you really get in to bad roads think about using bushing between the frame and truck and between the camper and frame. That way would get room for 2x the flex before it gets to your camper.

Bushings are cheap.

For a truck can you make a removable flatbed too?

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  • 3 months later...

It's been awhile since I posted here. Summer has been busy, but managed to do a few things. The floor was eventually made of a honeycomb structure made of 1x's and 1/2" plywood glued and screwed to it. This entire honeycomb was then fiberglassed as well as 3 layers of a decent matte glassed to the floor's topside. It was really cheap, extremely simple to fabricate and relatively light weight. Not as lightweight as aluminum framing or some fancy laminate composite such as Nidacore, but It should perform fine.

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I ended up moving a bunch of windows around and removing the front curved ones completely.

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I scrounged all over some local junkyards looking for a camper to salvage fiberglass from, but without any luck. Instead, I've made my own sheet out of this shower board (FRP) by glassing 2 additional layers of fabric to the back side (the textured side for this use). Here's a picture of the panel held in place while it's glassed to the stringers/camper shell from the inside.

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So that's where the project is at. Lots of fiberglass has been done, but still tons more to do. I've yet to do any welding, but have located 4 hydraulic corner jacks now. After the jacks are installed on the camper, the truck can roll back under the shell again to get a better idea of what needs to be done in terms of the flatbed.

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I have no idea where you could fine the parts and pieces, but back in the 70s good ol GM build some Nova and such like with a cloth sun roof. You would slide and fold the roof cloth back and open a BIG hole.

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That Nova sounds like a fun car for the beach. I always wanted one of those older VW bugs that had a cloth sunroof myself while growing up in SoCal. I think they went to the hard sunroof in 64.

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Here's some rudimentary pics of the jack system. A steel plate was added to each of the 8 ears. The plywood forms are glassed to both sides of shell inside and out. They were run a bit wild so they could be cut off plumb once all the glass set.

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I guess it's time to do some investigation as to what tires I should put on this. Right now I have 31's x 10.5 x 15. Once I get the flatbed legal, I'll be excited to weigh the truck w/ the camper and without it in its gutted state.

Alright thnx to all that have helped and offered opinions/feedback. I know my activity on this board is a bit sporadic and I disappear for long lengths of time.

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The VW roof design is what I was thinking of for your Moon Roof.

The easy answer for your tire is to run what you got, but change the axle ratio to 4.56. It would be within a percent or so of being correct and still give you ground clearance. It is also an easy tire size to find should you need a tire fast. Maybe check the build plate and see what ratio was factory and then check your truck, many times the P/O will have changed the ratios to keep from bogging down off road when the big tires were added.

I supposed that a camping weight is really needed before trying out new tires. The ones you have now are LT rated for 2200lb each.

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Block the truck so it can't roll. Jack up one rear wheel. Put a piece of tape on the drive shaft and rear wheel. Put trannie in neutral and turn the rear wheel one complete turn. Count the drive shaft turns. Then I forget :Poster_oops: either divide by 2 or multiply by 2 to get ratio. You will know which way to go.

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If you rotate your tire two (2) complete revolutions then the number of revolutions which your drive shaft made is your gear ratio. So if you turn the tire only one time, then you will need to multiply the drive shaft revolutions by 2 to obtain your ratio.

Note if you have LSD posi traction, you will need to raise both tires off the ground to enable you to spin the tire. Then only rotate the tire one revolution.

Here are two interesting links dealing with Toyota differential gear ratios:

http://home.4x4wire.com/erik/diffs/

http://www.off-road.com/trucks4x4/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=274535

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Thnx for the links.

The shaft seemed to go around 8 5/8 turns per 2 tire revolutions. According to Erik's link I wouldn't divide by 2 as I don't imagine I have limited slip (I only had one wheel off the ground), but this seems way off the charts?

Dividing by 2 as WME suggested, yields ~ 4.3

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Thnx for the links.

The shaft seemed to go around 8 5/8 turns per 2 tire revolutions. According to Erik's link I wouldn't divide by 2 as I don't imagine I have limited slip (I only had one wheel off the ground), but this seems way off the charts?

Dividing by 2 as WME suggested, yields ~ 4.3

Have you driven this truck yet, with the large tires? If you have a tach, What does it tach at 60 mph in high gear, not overdrive. So if it is a 5 spd manual, use 4th gear for this test? Looks like you could build yourself a monster truck!

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HUMMMMM. The books I have show 3.9, 4.11, 4.56, 4.88.

Get some help, jack up both rear tires and make 1 turn.

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HUMMMMM. The books I have show 3.9, 4.11, 4.56, 4.88.

Get some help, jack up both rear tires and make 1 turn.

Just a thought, if you have a friend helping, and if it is a "LSD, limited slip differential" / "posi traction differential" where as Eric suggests that one (1) tire revolution will supply the ratio results, http://home.4x4wire.com/erik/diffs/

Try rotating the tire ten (10) revolutions for better accuracy, while counting the number of turns / spins on the drive shaft. The results could easily be divided by 10 by simply moving the decimal one place to the left in the results.

39.0 = 3.90

41.0 = 4.10

45.6 = 4.56

48.8 = 4.88

52.9 = 5.29

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Have you driven this truck yet, with the large tires? If you have a tach, What does it tach at 60 mph in high gear, not overdrive. So if it is a 5 spd manual, use 4th gear for this test? Looks like you could build yourself a monster truck!

Well it idles nice. As soon as I fabricate a rear bumper, add some lights, and obtain a temp moving permit, I can take it for a test run.
Try rotating the tire ten (10) revolutions for better accuracy, while counting the number of turns / spins on the drive shaft.
That's a good idea. My first test could have been faulty as I didn't put a whole lot of energy into it to be honest. I put some chalk on one of the Ujoints and drew a line across the tire. The testing was pretty primative.

Thnx for the feedback.

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Ummm a 3:00 in the morning thought. After you find the rear ratio you might want to check the front ratio, ya never know.

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Ah, ya crossing fingers that the front diff matches. Sorry haven't done the 10 rotation test yet, so nothing new to report. I'm trying to get the truck street legal so it can be road tested and will report.

Progress:

Got a simple frame fabricated for the flatbed. It's a tad over 5 feet wide. I couldn't place the flatbed any closer to the frame as it actually rests on the frame rails at the highest point above the axle. The box bumper was salvaged from the Sunrader and cut down a bit in width.

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I'm hoping to add some LED all-in-one tail, stop, turn light assembly and found a decent deal @ vehiclelight.com that includes shipping. A quick peek at my wiring shows about 8 wires and the lights in this catalog have 3 wires. So some simplifying will need to take place.

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For the bed a sheet of 3/4" marine plywood. Use garage floor epoxy paint on all sides.

Don't forget a few flush D rings in floor to tie things to when its a truck. Also maybe some pockets on the frame sides to make a stake-bed to haul lots of stuff.

Your going to need some sort of alignment pin set up to things back together. I think that the tie down loads should be to the floor and not to the fiberglass sides.

I pull a trailer with my Toy and used a taillight converter to match things. I was replacing the convert every 2 years or so. I finally gave up and wired in another set of tail lights on the trailer so I didn't need a converter any more

Your taillight look like they are 2 hot and 1 ground. If you could add a single light as a running or an amber one as turn it would make things an easier hook up.

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I found myself with some extra 1/2 inch 5-ply sheeting. A friend in the waterproofing business gave me some scrap fiberglass matting, so I put 2 layers on the bottom side and if it lasts a couple of years great. Not like replacing the plywood is a big deal. I chose 1/2" because it seemed plenty thick enough for my application.

One issue I might have is one of the exhaust pipes is only 3 or 4 inches from the fiberglass laminated plywood. Should I shield that?

Some angle iron was cut into little L brackets and were tacked around the inside of the frame for carriage bolts.

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Thnx for the feedback/suggestions

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1/2" Marine Ply would be 9 ply. Its also called cabinet ply or Birch cabinet ply

On the exhaust make a simple shield like most Toys have over the catalytic converter. Just make sure there is also an air gap between the shield and floor. OR Summitracing.com and search exhaust wrap.

The only reason I said to use the floor as an attachment point is that your shell is a lot of pieces, wouldn't want to break it in half on a big bump. :Poster_oops:

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Ah cabinet plywood is referred to as marine plywood.

@ attachment points:

The camper is 7' wide whereas the flatbed is about 5', so the floor is the only viable solution it would seem anyways.

@ camper breaking in two:

Didn't Herbie the love bug cross the finish line in two halves in that famous Disney Movie? :)

I'm not too worried about the sides failing at their seams. They have heavy weaved glass fused to both sides as well as the roof and floor adding additional perimeter support.

Gas Filler:

I ended up having to temporarily lower my gas tank by about 2 inches as there didn't seem to be enough slope with the filler tube below the frame. Will have to come up with something better in the future.

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Really starting to look good!

What about a larger 26 gal tank? Fill it up before you cross the boarder? Normally the filler is up into the shell of the coach. If there was a way to create a quick disconnect for the filler, anyhow my point is that it would be nice to keep the tank high for rock clearance. Is that the filler I see directly above the jack?

Another question, what year is the truck. Our 91 2w drive has the exhaust coming out on the drivers side. I recently installed a larger exhaust system from the cat back. A kit from JCWhitney. Also available from Summit Racing. Chose JC as they pay return shipping if it does not fit. Only mod I really had to do was add a extension to the end. The end does not extend out far enough past the coach side. I sawzalled off the chrome tip and welded in a piece between the two to keep the chrome tip. The system used all the original toyota hangers which I feel is a huge plus! Sounds great and I do have more power. Can not really say if the extra power would be there for all because someone had scabbed on smaller than OEM pipe from the muffler back the the end.

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Thnx Greg. Yes, you sure like your exhaust mods! I've never had one till now, so will be anxious to test out the truck.

26 gallons would be a nice mod.

The truck originally was a 94 extra cab. The new single cab I have no idea what year exactly, but somewhere in the 89-94 generation. The flomaster exhaust system actually has 2 pipes. The kid I bought this truck from must have spent some good coin on this. Looks like a newer cat, OXY sensor, chrome tips etc.

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Yes, that's the filler above the jack. I'll definitely have to invest some time in this gas tank project in the future, but it works for now.

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I would think the tank filler would need to be at least 6 inches above the top of the tank, just a guess.

On Portola is Genos wreckers, they have a bunch of 4 runners and some pickups and get them in on a regular basis. Got a bunch of my AC parts there. They want $75 for a tach dash and I am considering getting one. Only concern I have is the mileage on one. All that I looked at had 130K plus and mine has 85K. Not sure if there is a way to change that. Anyhow much of the 4 runner stuff will swap over but not all.

That exhaust looks really nice, I would keep it! You might though consider extending the ends to get them past the edge of the coach to keep the nasty fumes out.

Your flatbed frame looks really nice!

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My Escaper has a fill hose made up of Gas filler hose and prebent exhaust tubing.

Maybe a couple of 90 deg bends and you could bring the filler out forward of its present path.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Update:

Got a new temperature sensor today and got it smogged! It's now registered, insured, and has 2010 tags! Oh and some new shocks too. Still haven't got it on the freeway or out of 3rd gear yet. Some fenders are in order now.

Extra:

Haven't gone off the tangent in a long time, so here's some more fun filler for the thread. I don't do facebook, twitter, blogs, or any of that stuff and I don't watch TV, so I post here for fun when I'm bored out of my mind. :)

Just a little over 20 years ago, I ventured to baja as a 19 year old in a little 1963 6volt red VW bug and stumbled on a man in his mid 40's (my age now) boondocking at a remote wind swept point. Glen Horn is a surfer/shaper, environmentalist, craftsman, and an all around mystical shaman-like kind of guy that has that certain aura that is hard to describe. As a 19 year old rookie getting slammed by the elements of this harsh environment in my flimsy tent, it was Glen's home-built converted step van that inspired all of my past campers from VW buses, to V8 dodge chinooks, and even a trailer. Glen's 1955 stepvan camper has changed a bit over the past 20 years, but it is still the same red beacon parked at the same spot it has been every winter. Considering that the salty sea spray a mere 20 yards away, pummels this car for 4-5 months a year for the past 20 years, it is a testament to the dedication to the rig and how simple handcrafted and well built things far outlast the shiny and new that eventually fall apart and fade away.

Recently I was "surfing" the net and came across an article in a surfing journal about Glen. I thought about all the recent full timer threads I've read here and about how some have wished they had larger motorhomes; that 20+ feet just isn't enough room. I think it's a matter of a being more creative in the way we carry all of our junk. The thing that makes Glen's camper so unique, is that it is designed to live around and outside of as much as it is inside. Well I could go on and on about Glen and his camper, but I'll just leave some pics from the article itself. You might be able to read some of the article if you squint a little.

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BajaD,

That is "livin' the dream"! Thanks for sharing Glen with us.

s

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My pleasure. I think Sadie would fit right in here as well.

Here's a few more pics of Glen from a local Santa Cruz photographer named Boots Mcghee. Boots is a professional photographer and you can check out more of his fantastic work @ this site:

Boots @ Flikr.com

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10x6.5 gallon containers = the 65 gallons of water mentioned in article.

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Story Tellin time.

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Got through the whole thread, looks like a fun project. I've been under the assumtion that I would need to find an old one ton truck to transfer a camper on to (hence all the questions about dually's etc) but you have used a regular old 1/2 ton(?). Any worry about the bearings being able to handle the weight? Sounds like your not the first one to do this. Could see the advantage of the Tundra axle, but it's still a 1/2 ton axle.

I like the Chinook conversion idea as an option, at least as an easier intro into these projects. Keep up the good work and keep us posted.

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Sounds like your not the first one to do this. Could see the advantage of the Tundra axle, but it's still a 1/2 ton axle.
I don't know the specifics on the tundra axle other than what Monty said:
The Tundra axle is a nice width and offers a weight capacity close to that of a full floater
So whatever that means. One thing about Monty's camper is that his wheel base has been extended beyond the stock 122" as he kept the extra cab. What that does to the re-distribution of weight I am not sure, but his camper looks long and it's probably close to 20' which is pretty cool.
I like the Chinook conversion idea as an option, at least as an easier intro into these projects.
The Chinook conversions look great and seem like the best option in terms of offroad handling. If you want a 4x4 that is going to get you way off the beaten path, a Chinook or other type of pop-up, would seem far superior to a standup camper such as my project. Even better would be to build a camper shell from scratch using modern composites. Chinooks might look light, but they aren't.
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Monty, would love to pick your brain sometime about camper swaps and axle weight concerns. Very new to this, but ready to jump in with both feet. Drop a line anytime you get a chance. Thanks, Kevin

I was just reading this thread and saw that you were interested in swapping your sunrader camper over to a newer chassis. I actually have done this. i put an older 18' camper onto a newer generation 4wd extra cab pickup. i lengthened the frame to do so and kept the extracab. For the rear axle i used an axle form a Toyota Tundra and run 31 inch tires all the way around. The Tundra axle is a nice width and offers a weight capacity close to that of a full floater. It also uses the same bolt pattern as all the older Toyota 4x4's so one spare will fit everywhere. The truck rides and handles great. It worked out far better than i ever imagined. If you have any questions let me know. I also have several pics from the swap.

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Ya his camper looks great. I wish he didn't live so far away, I'd definitely be interested in checking out that rig.

Was thinking a bit more about my gas tank filler dilemma and thought about adding a second saddle tank to combat this issue?

The project has to be suspended for a few days. The boss says we gotta paint the apartment we built before the rain hits + it will be easier to do now before we get a renter. Nevermind our camper has no roof! So the camper is serving as scaffolding right now. :) It's real easy to move. The new camper jacks work great as stabilizers too.

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Took the cutting wheel to the last of the overlaps in the back which really helps with the lines and eliminates all the rusty screw penetrations. The 2 halves are now fused into one all the way around. No more screw penetrations and no more trim to deal with.

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