Tuesday, Nov 05, 2013 at 10:04
As Pete has mentioned below, there is an earlier thread that covers a bit of detail for you.
Vikki and I purchased a new Palomino Real Lite Slide on in the US last year. It was mounted on an ex utility company F250 Super Duty we purchased at the auctions in Toronto. Ours was a pop top unit so was a good deal lighter and somewhat more streamlined than a hard top, cab-over bed model. Weight is a key concern and needs to be measured carefully in your decision.
We loved the camper and the prices in the US made it actually cheaper to buy one than hire one for our extended Holiday there. The appointment was good but they are made for the Americans idea of touring. Ours tends to be a little more interesting and rougher as far as roads and tracks go. Only weak spots were the finite size of the inside
toilet and shower. I'm a big bloke and could not fit in it. (Make sure you have an outside shower, it's infinitely more useable) and also the table was a bit poor. Easily replaced with a better, swinging mounting system. It handled everything we threw at it
well enough including the Dempster & the Top O' the World Highways and some back-country roads in Alaska and Canada.
I own a 2010 VDJ79 Toyota Cab Chassis (V8 diesel model). Standard
suspension will be too soft for the slide on. You would need to ensure you upgrade the
suspension pretty much straight away and this should allow you to up the GVM to the maximum allowable which I believe is 3920kgs. I’d also supplement this with a set of airbags for levelling purposes.
We considered importing ours back to Australia (and I still wish I had) but ours was a big unit (9 foot floor) meaning it jutted
well over the back of the tray. This is not an enviable situation as it puts a lot more strain on the rear
suspension.
Depending on your budget, another alternative is to undertake the mods I did to my ute in having the chassis extended as part of the GVM upgrade. It will add another few thousand to the cost but allows you to add up to 500mm into the chassis rails with additional strengthening and a GVM upgrade to suit. This would allow you to customise the tray by up to an addition 700 mm (added length plus 200 extra past the rear axle). The added chassis length will ensure a much better load scenario for your slide on and give you a ute tray that will be the envy of all your mates heh heh. It will also give you some flexibility on the size of your camper and this is important.
I don’t know where you are based but Multidrive Technology in Geelong did the work on my Car (Darryl is the go too man). They cut and stretch about 20 utes a week for emergency
services as part of their GVM packages (200mm insert and a 400kg upgrade – fully engineered and certified with secondary compliance plate) so I simply asked them to insert the maximum their engineer was happy to certify.
I’ve covered this exercise in the first entries of my ute build blog so that should give you an idea of the process involved. Cost then was about $7K. Sounds a lot but that included a GVM upgrade which would cost up to $4K in the first place.
Creating the dream off roader
Palomino Bronco on a Toyota Ute
Hope that’s of help to you.
Regards
Mick
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