North Star 650

Definitely don't remove any of the structure that's IN the storage area. If you do there's nothing between you and the roof of your truck but the siding and a layer of particle board.

This may or may not be true on the Northstar, but on my Palomino the bed platform/lid for the storage compartment is quite a stout structure. It looks like it's designed to carry the weight of the people in the bed, and the structure under it is not.

I am trying to recall the situation of the underbed storage on my previous NorthStar pop-ups... but I would look very closely before removing any components that make up the storage area under the mattress... that is, it might be part of the cross-structural wood that spans from side-to-side.

It could be possible that the storage area is a result of the "beams" that allow for an upper "flat surface" on which to place a mattress. The flat sheathing below alone may not have enough integrity to support any load should those cross member be deleted.

I am not saying that the proposed solution will not work, but after inspection reveals the possibility then it still might be prudent to call the Factory to get their take on the revision.

If you remove the under bed storage, I suggest adding additional insulation or something like Hyper Vent between the mattress and base. You will have more temperature differentials without the storage and it may sweat.

Back in 2012, I took out a 9" mattress and put in a high density 6" foam mattress in our previous camper to give us enough head room. Liked it so well we moved it to our current camper when we purchased it. Worked great for us. Our camper didn't have under bed storage.