zman-az wrote:
This is an awesome build. I wish I would have seen it earlier. One thing that concerns me on your build is the overhead bunk. Don't know if it is strong enough in the long haul. I have a 4 wheel truck camper, granted its a popup but I like the way they placed that large alum bar for the bed way back into the camper. You may want to consider doing something similar if you still can. Maybe you can fit some 6" x 1/8" flat bar on the inside for some added strength. BTW, your welds are awesome.
Thanks zman. We did run the two bottom beams of the overhead bunk into the 2nd stud of the main cabin and we have triangle bracing. You can see some of this in the earlier pictures and CAD drawings. There is also some rigidity provided by the aluminum skin plus the internal 5mm plywood skin. I can hang by the outside end of the overhead bunk and not cause any sag. Will this be enough when on the road? Not 100% sure. We have considered adding some form of dampener support between the Isuzu cab and the overhead bunk if needed. What I may do is mount a force/distance sensor on the cabover and log some data on a few drives. If I see that the cabover is bouncing up and down 3 inches, then seriously think about adding a dampener/support somewhere.
