2019 Four Wheel Camper Flatbed and Australian-made Aluminum Norweld Tray on a Kitted Out 2017 4x4 V8 Toyota Tundra

[trabs00]

In that video you can see that he was heading into the setting sun, and probably driving way to fast considering that he was blind. He hit something hard enough to bash in the skid and radiator as well as kink the rear of the frame. The kink is right at the forward bed mount where the frame starts bending down, which is also at the very front of the flatbed. This location is on the weak and flexy open C part of the frame (everything aft of the forward leaf mount).

I didn't see any evidence that the frame was reinforced. He shows the truck with the bed off here:

View attachment 748777


and in the next post a few days later the Norweld tray is on. Welding on the frame would require removing everything... and on the shortbed Crewmax you'd need to remove the cab as well if you were boxing all of the open-C part. Major job.

The Norweld tray is very stiff torsionally, while the part of the frame that it is mounted to is designed to flex. This increases stress quite a bit at the transition, which is at the forward bed mount on this rig, which is not a strong location. In fact I've heard that truck frames are designed to collapse at that point to reduce deceleration in rear-end collisions.

Thanks for the info
Interesting catch, that would seem to make sense from the timeline. I saw in the comments section in a different photo on their instagram where the guy said something about the frame being reinforced, I must have misinterpreted. If he did, didn't specify what / how so your point about making a new weak point still stands.

Regardless, Just makes my head spin even more about building out expedition rigs and when your mods can go against the manufacturers Engineering of the vehicle.

 

[rruff]

I found a video on youtube where he shows the X bracing on the frame. No idea when that was done... but it isn't going to help anything. The farthest forward part isn't even past the axle. And no way in hell are 3200# wheels the weak point. The rear axle rating is 4150#.