Traveling in rural Oregon and Washington, having a extra fuel can take the stress out of exploring. Along with a tire repair kit and tools, extra fuel means more freedom. The Toyota Tacomas are a great rig, but the v6, manual transmission and extra weight do not lend themselves to great fuel economy. I get about 250 usable miles per tank. Having a few extra gallons available will let us play in the country longer before we have to come back to reality.
I was inspired for this mount by Mali Mish. I believe he is a member here, but not very active. I follow his youtube channel. This is the video where he talks about his gas can mount:
https://youtu.be/cIhCtVlG4Do?t=4m3s
Taking into account the options and stresses, I decide to mount to both to the jack mount and to whatever vertical framing member I could find. And I got lucky.
Here's how I did it:
Mounting the flat bar to the jack mounts I used several washers and the newer jack mount bolts. The new bolts are a bit too long, but they work.
I drilled new holes in the jerry can mount to bolt through to the aluminum bar. The original holes were too far from the bar to be useful. These bolts were 1/4" x 3/4" stainless with nyloc nuts.
Dry fit of the flat bar before marking for holes. I reused the entrance holes so I could re-mount the entrance handle with new through bolts. I then drilled two new holes for a total of 4 holes, two for each of the left side of the flat bar. EDIT: I forgot to mention the washers. There are several washers between the flat bar and the skin of the camper. These bring the bar out so it set level with the ridges of the aluminum skin and the mounting screws of the jack bracket. It's hard to get a good photo of this in action. We'll try again in better light.
This is probably the first thing I did to see if this mounting idea would work: I removed the entrance handle and looked inside the screw hole to see if could drill straight through for mounting. Sure enough, this Fleet has a vertical framing member at this location. Without hesitation, I drilled a 1/4" hole straight through. After the inside paneling chipped, I hesitated on drilling the rest of the holes.
I used blue painters tape to keep the drill bit chipping to a minimum.
Inside view
A note about the Smittlybilt jerry can holder: This thing heavy and it's steel. The welds are good, paint is decent, but the entire unit was not square. I spent a few moments trying to straighten it out, but decided that mounting it would likely pull it square. And it did. It looks fine.
Supplies:
1. (2) 1/4" x 3" x 22" Aluminum flat bar from Metal Supermarkets in Portland $18: https://www.metalsup...s.com/portland/
2. Smittybilt 2798 Jerry Gas Can Holder from Amazon $35: http://a.co/6dZKnlp
3. Scepter 05086 Gas Can, OTC Military Style, 5-Gal. from Amazon ~$20: http://a.co/hla8XKZ
4. various stainless hardware, 1/4" bolts, washers and nyloc nuts etc. Reused existing jack mounting bolts ~$15.
This weekend we are heading out to bigfoot country up in Washington. I'll report back on how the mount fared (and if we see any bigfoot).
I hope this helps someone else! Let me know if I can clarify anything.
Tod.
Edited by todgru, 10 August 2017 - 05:47 AM.
