Camper pod on Land Cruiser Ute.

Plenty of good ideas about George but again it depends on budget and knowing exactly what you want.

I've spent a lot of time designing and building mine so you may pick up a few ideas here;

Building the dream off-roader



Cheers Mick

There is a bloke at expedition portal doing exactly what you propose can check it out here

ultimate aussie camper

G'day George,

I have a Landcruiser ute that has a RHS framed lockable camper that I built myself many years ago using much the same construction methods that sound very similar to what you used for your trailer mounted unit. I was originally going to make it a slide on setup until I weighed the steel tray and although it was way too long ago for me to remember the exact weight I know it was a fair bit over the 200 kg mark. I then added mounting feet to a RHS frame, attached the camper to that and bolted the lot to the ute chassis in place of the tray. Not sure about the legality side but I don't see why it should not. Anyway, mine has been like that for many a trip and never been questioned, well not so far...lol. Mine does not pop up but we have a full canvas annex that attaches to the side and that provides us with stand up room for cooking, eating if the flys are bad, general lazing about and getting dressed. When we did the CSR many years ago the wife and I could have our lot down and stowed long before the mate with a roof top tent was half done.
As you noted aluminium sheeting seems to be priced as if it was gold plated. I used gal sheeting for mine but would not use as heavy a gauge next time. You live and learn. I have replaced the sheeting on the doors with an aluminium sandwich style product that is used for street signs. It comes in from memory 3, 4, and I think 5 mm thicknesses. Less than half the weight of the galv sheeting I used and about a quarter (literally) of the price of standard normal aluminium sheeting of much thinner gauge. The one problem is that it doesn't lend itself to being bent like galv does, however you can buy aluminium extrusion sections of whatever length you like to join the sheets at an angle. I haven't tried it but I think you might be able to get away with a bend by cutting through the inner part of the sandwich along the line you want to bend and only bend the outer layer. Maybe, not sure??
I have a full roof rack on mine for spare wheels and other stuff we didn't want to be packing and unpacking all the time. I had the cab extended on my ute enough so that my 40 lt Engel and a 100 AH deep cycle AGM battery plus extra storage is behind the seats. The battery and fridge are very well secured to the floor for obvious reasons. I have an 80 watt solar panel that I recently acquired but haven't rigged up yet.
That rig that Mick O has is the stuff of dreams to me but the bank balance, in my case anyway, says "dream on" (:-)))

Cheers
Pop

I have drawn up what I would like to build, Obviously its not going to be very off road capable and quite top heavy, but I live in my Troopy for long periods of time and intend on doing the same with this design, just more comfortably. so its not going to be something I just use on long weekends, so I don't mind the sacrifice.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzWAjaWcDzxLQkhJVkcxRWRkOTQ/edit

Hey George, did that s
heila in the coffee ad crack on to you?