Hi All,

So for the long delay between posts, it’s been a busy couple of months.

Lots of interesting progress on the truck though…

Tulsa finished with the chassis & 4×4 conversion, they did an amazing job. I cannot recommend those guys highly enough.

Then we drove the truck up to Indiana for some final measurements for the camper shell design. We had been working off of guestimates before, but now that the chassis frame rails are actually where they are meant to be, we were able to lock down the interface points with the camper, and starting to figure out how everythin is going to fit. (or not fit in some cases!)

…Then we drove it up to Northern Michigan to the guys at Alton Truck.

Larry, Nick and their crew are:
-stretching out the cab to make more room for the growing family
-adding the air-ride system for the cab
-cutting the pass-through for the camper
-installing some cool custom tanks (more on that below)

Here are some initial pics of their work:

First: Take one F-650 and make it a convertible. OUCH!

Next: Stretch it all out by 22″ and fill the seams with lead to stiffen it all up.

Then: Add doors, and you’re almost done!

Just like the cooking shows on TV!

Pretty cool, eh?

With the additional length in the cab, there is now about 36″ between the back of the fuel tanks (75gal on each side) and the rear wall of the cab. Rather than adding more fuel (I reckon 150gal is plenty) we’ve decided to make some custom tanks behind the fuel cans to hold:
– Passenger side: Fresh Water in a stainless steel tank powder coated
– Driver side: Next Gen 5.5kw generator, plumbed directly to the fuel tank

This should help to free up some room under the camper for ‘stuff’, and move some of the vibration further away from the living area.

Stay tuned for more developments on the cab & the “final” designs on the camper…