truck platform ideas

CR,
Stoked for you!

The tires I’m using came with the truck; Coop­er Dis­cov­er S/T.  I haven’t noticed any prob­lems at all, but haven’t real­ly paid atten­tion to them.

Regard­ing build­ing the back plat­form, the first thing that **** did was to ask me what I want to use if for, so, what do you want to use it for?

My guess is you’ll be doing the same things you’re doing with your cur­rent truck, (hunt­ing, fish­ing, ski­ing, Nor­ris hot springs) with a lit­tle less empha­sis on long term com­fort and a lit­tle more empha­sis on gas mileage and nim­ble­ness.  The fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions are based on that assumption.

If I were sin­gle, or planned on sleep­ing singly most of the time and want­ed con­stant “work/head” space, I’d divide the bed on the long axis, not the short.  Not sure if I’d divide it exact­ly in half; check how much space to sleep you want/need, but it’d be nice to always be able to sleep and to throw in a deer car­cass or ski poles etc with­out mess­ing up the bed.

I like the alu­minum legs, even if they are a bit more expen­sive.   I’d try and find some­thing a lit­tle thin­ner (and lighter) than the 3/4″ I used.  If you use angled met­al you can prob­a­bly put a cou­ple slats across it and get away with 3/8″ wood.  Not super sure about that, I just always want to build with the min­i­mum amount of mate­r­i­al pos­si­ble both for cost and aesthetics.

For tak­ing it in and out and fas­ten­ing the wood to the met­al I like the wing nuts, but if you’re not going to pull it out once you put it in, go with a lock­ing nut and loc-tite com­bo or some­thing com­pa­ra­ble.  ****‘s idea of mak­ing sure if you roll noth­ing knocks about is a good one; every­thing should be secure­ly fastened.

I love the pull-out box­es under­neath, they make it very easy to stay orga­nized.  Maybe get three small­er instead of two larg­er and have a dry clothes box, a kitchen box, and a wet box.  Make sure they’re secured under­neath the platform.

5″ is too thick for a mat­tress, I’d prob­a­bly cut it down to 3″, check with your local foam deal­er.  If you come through SD on your way back there’s one right down the street from our place and they did ours in about 3 days.  Mine is super com­fort­able but a lit­tle thick­er (and more expen­sive) than nec­es­sary.  For hold downs I’d see about extend­ing the met­al frame to form a lip on the cen­ter side of the plat­form to hold the mat­tress in.

As far as a cap, if you can, get the one with the fold out screen win­dows and seal it up against leaks…mission crit­i­cal in your neck of the woods.  I’d also look into one with a slight­ly raised back end for the extra head space, although that’ll affect gas mileage.  Check for lights in there.

Cheers,
NFH