Vic, et al,
The idea is to create a space to get the tools, leveling blocks, firewood, spare fuel, spare oil, shovel, axe, extension cords, roll up table, screen tent for the table, and whatever else I can get out of the camper and out of the way.
I am going for a clean look on the outside so that the fold down panel will not be obvious and the whole job will look factory instead of looking like a work truck. We shall see how close I get.
I love the idea of utility cargo beds but they look clunky and they are very heavy. I stumbled across a couple of consumer aftermarket cargo beds a couple of years ago that had contours to match the OEM vehicle contours and shape but those companies had already stopped making the beds for one reason or another by the time I found them (or they do not make them for Dodge trucks). The only way to do this now is custom.
Cutting the metal is easy. Cutting the metal straight and in the right place takes some skill. The guy doing most of the work is very experienced and skilled at the welding and the metal shaping. I am helping him and overseeing his work but I am mostly his go-fer in between making real time decisions on tricky cuts and shapes.
Cost may not be too bad. He took this on as fill in work so he gives me an hour or two a day while he is waiting for a paint job to dry or whatever.
So far it seems to me that building a bed from scratch would probably be much more expensive. There are lots of little hidden pieces of various shapes in these beds that that make them rigid and which we do not have to make but which one would have to make if building from scratch.
I am making an effort to assemble a sequential photo history of the build in case someone else has interest in doing this or something similar. I need to figure out a better process of getting the photos moved from my iphone to the computer and then saving them in the right format and file size (I do not have any photo editing software and have been using powerpoint and Adobe Acrobat to cut and paste, save and convert images. I can get the job done but it is not efficient.
Cost may not be too bad. He took this on as fill in work so he gives me an hour or two a day while he is waiting for a paint job to dry or whatever.
Edited by ckent323, 28 June 2018 - 08:30 PM.