2014 Truck Camper Building From Scratch

mkirsch wrote:
Is the "chin-up bar" your design compromise to have a full height door in the rear?

What's the deal with the open rear overhang with the half-doors and the tailgate inside the camper?

Looks like maybe you fold the tailgate down to make a semi-enclosed porch. Seems like you made huge sacrifices to gain a tiny amount of space up front, but wasted a TON of space in the rear.

I heard a TC manufacturer say that it was not possible to have full size doors because of instability. The bar keeps the back sides from spreading out and also is great for grabbing for safety. That makes it possible to omit the usual structural piece over the door and allows many possible door designs. I'm surprised manufacturers have not utilized a similar strategy to allow a better rear end design. My design is obviously primitive, but hopefully a TC designer will come up with something better.

The doors are three pieces on each side. The bottoms fold up and can sit on the tailgate while driving. The top pieces fold down when the top is lowered.

When camping: Tailgate goes down and a small sliding floor piece goes over the tailgate to form the floor extension.
Two side pieces fold up from that movable floor piece to form the back sidewalls. The three piece doors click together and become 2 big doors.

The inside is then a full size completely enclosed 8 foot length camper, because the previously open ended rear is reclaimed as interior space.
The goal was to have full size double rear doors on an 8 foot camper and leave the tailgate on and up while driving.
It works, but I still need to make it simpler and I have some idea's for improvements.