We had a 1997 Lance 165 gave less than $2000, I put it on a 1999 f 250, I since gave it to my Grandson and his family. He uses it on a later model 1500 Dodge Pickup. He has air bags and the pick up handles it pretty good. The Tundra hauling that camper which is pretty close to the smallest I've seen around would be a stretch.
When retro fitting a pop up by pulling cabinets out and replacing with aluminum, and basically removing most everything does not sound like a good plan to me, I've rarely seen this work out to be satisfactory
It sounds to me like the easy solution would be to get a GM Dodge or Ford, bigger the better if you want a slide in camper, or if you want to keep your Toyota, then maybe looking at trailers, any thing from TAB, tear drop, well there are tons of smaller lighter weight easy to pull with a tundra trailers.
Can you find a camper for your Tundra, im sure there is some thing out there, but if you stay in budget that gets to be harder to find, staying with a truck camper you have many boxes to tic to make it work.
When I looked for a short bed camper it was hard to find, maybe out of ten campers to look at, one was for a short bed, then you gotta find one that in decent shape, out 20 camper for sale on craigslist maybe one would be what you could call "good" shape, and it goes on and on.
Im sure you are much luckier than Ive been looking for campers but its a long road.
