Eldgen
Builder of Dreams
Hello all,
This build is for my son's 10th birthday. Long story short, when I was a lad every fifth birthday was a significant family trip of some sort like Disney or Yosemite for a week and as parents we wanted to keep the tradition going with our son. He chose to tour the west coast so we decided to visit every major national park from Washington to Arizona and back in about 16 days. The Project has manifested several times from the original build plan, first I was going to use the original bed and building a cage like slide in, then my pops hooked me up with some truck boxes he had tucked away that added some complication. While kicking around some challenges I was facing he said "you should just build a flat bed" Initially I thought he was crazy given I only had about 6 months to build this thing out and didn't have that expense in the budget. After looking around I found an old dump body that someone had build for a one ton truck, I picked it up with no frame or hydraulics for $300 and planned on refurbishing and repurposing whatever I could. I'm proud to say the only raw steel I had to purchase was for the overhead rack and the rear support in the bed, the rest was leftovers from other projects or recycled trucks. I am still in the building stages, I will be sound deadening the interior, adding the wiring, switches, inverter, and ARB fridge etc in the coming weeks. Our vacation begins July so no time to waste.
This build is for my son's 10th birthday. Long story short, when I was a lad every fifth birthday was a significant family trip of some sort like Disney or Yosemite for a week and as parents we wanted to keep the tradition going with our son. He chose to tour the west coast so we decided to visit every major national park from Washington to Arizona and back in about 16 days. The Project has manifested several times from the original build plan, first I was going to use the original bed and building a cage like slide in, then my pops hooked me up with some truck boxes he had tucked away that added some complication. While kicking around some challenges I was facing he said "you should just build a flat bed" Initially I thought he was crazy given I only had about 6 months to build this thing out and didn't have that expense in the budget. After looking around I found an old dump body that someone had build for a one ton truck, I picked it up with no frame or hydraulics for $300 and planned on refurbishing and repurposing whatever I could. I'm proud to say the only raw steel I had to purchase was for the overhead rack and the rear support in the bed, the rest was leftovers from other projects or recycled trucks. I am still in the building stages, I will be sound deadening the interior, adding the wiring, switches, inverter, and ARB fridge etc in the coming weeks. Our vacation begins July so no time to waste.
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