Thread: Sitec's Truck......

Now I had the back face made, it gave me a base to which I could build on. With the backplate tacked/clamped to the bench I built from there. Sides on first.

Chassis Mods 46.jpg

With the sides on and wheel wells in I could infill the rest of the 'box', building in a cutout for the mast and a scallop underneath to allow access to the tow bar and recovery points.

Chassis Mods 47.jpgChassis Mods 48.jpg

With a nice big 'box' taking shape, it seemed silly to not make it usable space, so I had the local engineering mob fold up some doors to match the style of the ones made on the rear lower lockers. I could then fold the surrounding sheets in sections at work on our small bender to form a door frame, giving me two hidden doors to access the rear bumper locker.

Chassis Mods 53.jpg

Aren't those doors going to hit against the side lockers behind the rear wheels or have I got the placement of the bumper wrong in my head?

Bloody great work by the way.

Originally Posted by Corgie Carrier

Aren't those doors going to hit against the side lockers behind the rear wheels or have I got the placement of the bumper wrong in my head?

Bloody great work by the way.

Nope, you are on the money! Your placement is spot on. The doors are going to be part of a pair of hidden lockers, that can only be accessed with the wheel carrier in the lowered position... It'll all make sense in a post or two.

With a bumper all but complete, it was time to tack it in place and see if it fits...

Chassis Mods 54.jpg

It does! It was a lot of work, but at this point I was pretty happy, as it fitted well! Here's a pic of the underside which shows the center cutout, allowing access to the towbar (on which we plan to tow the Tdi powered Series 2 SWB .

Chassis Mods 55.jpg

With the bumper tacked in place, I could finally look to mounting the twin spare wheels. Here's one of the support plates I've made, which will be welded to the side of the 'mast'. I used a pair of front wheel trim rings with a plate welded in the center and some pinch weld around the outside to hold the wheels on the carrier.

Chassis Mods 56.jpg

Lastly, here's a pic of the bumper, pinned in place, with both wheels mounted in their carrier positions. At this point the truck hadn't moved for about 6 months, so I was unable to lower the carrier to the ground to test it all out, as I've relocated the air tanks.... but was yet to tackle the boring job of refitting all the air hoses and tidying them up!

Chassis Mods 57.jpg

So, after a few months lull on truck progress, I finally found some more energy to get back into it. Several nights spent under the truck re routing the airlines, removing some decidedly average joiners, and neatening up some air line runs with fresh air line and fittings sourced from the donor truck, it was time to fire our truck up for the first time in a while. Naturally it wouldn't go... Well, it fired instantly and ran for all of 3 seconds then stopped. After some choice words and a bit of fault finding, it transpires the lift bump hand primer has seen better days and is letting air into the system, allowing the diesel to run back to the tank. It wouldn't even pull fuel back up from the tank. Time for some assistance in the form of air. I removed the return line from the tank, and fed some regulated air into the tank whilst the bleed screws on the filter housing were cracked. Soon fresh fuel was running out and I had the truck running. once aired up I was able to turn it around and drive it back into the shed. Here's a better view of the rear of the truck.

Progress 6.jpg

And here's a few pics of the wheel carrier in the lowered position. Corgie Carrier, these should explain how we access the doors you mentioned earlier...

Progress 7.jpgProgress 8.jpg

Originally Posted by Sitec

With a bumper all but complete, it was time to tack it in place and see if it fits...

Chassis Mods 54.jpg

I do love that, even though you are 1000s of times better at fabricating than I can even dream of, you also use milk crates as part of the construction process...

Originally Posted by PWat

I do love that, even though you are 1000s of times better at fabricating than I can even dream of, you also use milk crates as part of the construction process...

Milk crates are great for everything! I've got three cable tied together as a set of steps too!

So, The time has come to make the body look like it's part of the truck. There are lots of Overlanders floating around with nothing on top of the cab, or with a basic basket on top, then there's the other extreme with the Dakar truck style with a full roll cage wrapped around the cab.... I want something half way between the two. I was never happy with the basket I drew on my first scale sketch, so thought about it for a while while I worked on other stuff... Here's the first sketch of what I came up with.

Roof 3.jpg

This was what I originally drew (to save a few from scrolling back through the thread)...

Roof 1.jpg

And this was the revised drawing I overlaid onto the original, which also included the cab lift.

Roof 2.jpg