'91 K5 Four Wheel Camper

[campfire]

Nice!

I recently cut out the back end of my K5 topper. I was amazed at how much dust it generated, it was a whole lot thicker than a standard truck topper.

The camper is looking quite nice.

 

[ZooMad75]

Nice!

I recently cut out the back end of my K5 topper. I was amazed at how much dust it generated, it was a whole lot thicker than a standard truck topper.

The camper is looking quite nice.

Thanks Campy. I'm really happy with the progress we made. I was sweating how to make the Blazer top section work with the camper. The idea came pretty easy to us to get it lined up and trace a line. Pull the truck forward (for the 20th time) and mock the top section back into the line we drew and screw it down. Then we could drill the holes for the top bolts from the front to the back. We then put the camper back down and made sure the bolts fit. As per usual, one didn't want to play ball. So we spent a ton of time trying to get the hole to line up to the captured nut. Once we finished that we locked it down with some more screws with a bead of silicone around the perimeter. We will replace the screws with buttonhead bolts and nuts.

 

[GWeakland620]

Awesome stuff Rob! Looks like the well executed plan is coming together nicely!

 

[max 02]

Yeah! like said nice work!
I really like the look of that camper on your blazer.
Turning into one of my new favourite rigs on Ck5.

 

[ZooMad75]

Awesome stuff Rob! Looks like the well executed plan is coming together nicely!

Yeah! like said nice work!
I really like the look of that camper on your blazer.
Turning into one of my new favourite rigs on Ck5.

Thanks guys! I appreciate the feedback for sure. I can't wait to get it on permanently so I can finish fitting out the electrical and other goodies. Then it's going to get used!

 

[ZooMad75]

With a rare three day weekend and Larry's girls out of the house, Larry invited me over to have a day in the garage. No major plans except to reinstall my tailpipes, fab up a mount for my 12v compressor and relocate my tach from the column. All worked out good. I can hear myself think again with the pipes on and with the tach moved I can see my speedo and fuel gauge again.

Larry's HD was getting some final tweaking to an unexpected axle swap.

Here is my starting point to my compressor bracket. Found it in a 77 at the boneyard last week. It's just an aftermarket battery tray, but the dimensions were almost made for the compressor.

The rubber coating that was on the tray had half flaked off, so I stripped the rest off. We added a support bracket that Larry welded to the tray for extra support. The compressor mounted up easy. One oddity is the Smittybuilt compressor has an outlet all of its own. The fitting matches no normal standardized size. So I picked up a 3/8" x 5ft long whip hose you would add to an air tool. Cut one end off and slipped over the barbed fitting with a fuel injection clamp to lock it down. The other end threaded right into my air tank under the radiator. I didn't wire it all up with a relay, switch and pressure switch yet but I did test it out. Works well enough I found a leak at one pipe plug fitting I installed with the tank.

So I got tired of the tach being everywhere I didn't want it and since I had time it got relocated too. With a slight modification to flatten out the tach bracket and a slightly larger hole I used one of the bolts in the a-pillar I have the grab handle locked down with. It's back in a similar area I used to have it in my '75, but without punching holes in my dashpad. It's rock solid too, no vibrations at all.

Night light shot.

Since I had to remove the dashpad to route the wires for the tach, I went ahead and removed the GMC Sierra badge on the trim and replaced it with a solid used Silverado badge I found in a junk Suburban last week.

 

[ZooMad75]

Time for some action. We made our annual New Years Day snow run today. Only problem being we ain't got no snow down here. Our normal spot in Westcliffe is dry right now. We made some plans earlier last week for a run up Hayden pass, snow or no snow. Since Hayden is about 35 miles west of Canon City we decide to meet up at work at 8:00am. I've got Ian as my co-pilot again, John is running his TJ with his brother riding shotgun, Bill riding solo in is new 17 Taco and my tech Harlan and his wife with his trusty Tracker. Larry had picked up his family late that night so he was out. The others that had gone with us in the past all bailed for various reasons.

We did have somebody new riding with us in mine. My wife and I lost a dog recently due to cancer. We weren't planning on getting another but we got tipped off about a sweethart that was at a local no-kill shelter. She's a 6 year old cattle dog mix and quite the chill dog so we brought her home. Who ever had her, did put in some effort training as she is well behaved and responsive to commands. I've never had a dog quite as smart as this one, so I thought what the hell let's give her a try on a trail ride. She loved it.

So starting out this morning, loading up and warming up the K5.3 here's what the temp was:

Funny thing was, once we started up the trail and climbing the temps were in the mid 40's. Friggen heat wave!

Part of the gang.

As per normal, I don't have a lot of action shots of my ride since I was breaking trail. But I got a couple of John's TJ.

Storm, the new trail dog. I think she had fun. Only way I can tell is she's been knocked out sleeping since we got back.

She's giving Ian the stink eye for his PB&J sammich.

Coming back down looking back towards the Arkansas river valley below.

Airing back up with Storm keeping watch out of the back.

So we thought we could make it to the summit but we hit a steep section that had a deep enough snow bank to really make it challenging. I've got some pretty good video of the assult me made on this section with the 5.3 really singing a song at full boil for multiple attempts. I've got to edit the footage as I've got well over an hour and half of raw footage to pare down. It begs to be heard with headphones as I really got after it.

The last section had us pulling cable to get to another dry patch, but Shane did hike up few hundred feet ahead to find frozen waterfall across the trail. There were no trees nearby and was sloped to the downhill side which made it look sketchy as hell. We decide it's too risky to proceed and back down to the rest of the group and have some lunch.

We head back down the mountain and make it back to town with daylight to spare. Stay tuned for video footage.

 

[ZooMad75]

Still processing video, but here's video from my buddy John looking forward at my K5.

 

[TREA18]

Great video. Can you explain what went wrong at about 36 minutes?

Sorry I figured it out.

 

[ZooMad75]

Great video. Can you explain what went wrong at about 36 minutes?

Sorry I figured it out.

Sliding backwards down hill on ice with the Toyota right behind him. Scared the hell out of all of them. Pretty funny the way they all reacted though.

 

[ZooMad75]

Got the video processed and up on youtube now.

 

[ZooMad75]

With the balmy weather here for January, we figured a camper work day would be better than watching football. Or at least more productive. We had a couple of tasks to get through. One skin the wood exterior with aluminum sheet and the other is get the framing for the cabinet going. I picked up a roll of aluminum from one of the guys in our body shop. We had just enough to do both.

For the cabinet John happened to have some solid oak doors that came off something else. Rather than let them go to waste we decided to recycle them.

Some quick saber saw action and the door was deconstructed.

We'll even use the rails and stiles to form the face of the cabinet.

Shane started framing it out and got the end for the propane enclosure roughed out and the bottom side of the counter top.

With Shane going to town on the woodworking, John and I tackled the sheetmetal. After measuring multiple times I cut out the cab over portion with some electric sheetmetal shears. We laid out our screws with dry erase marker and squeezed out enough construction adhesive to make sure it stayed put. We went ahead and locked the sheetmetal in with screws front to back.

For the front cab wall we had to use two chunks of aluminum since the remaining section of aluminum was not wide enough to cut one part. This worked better as it wasn't as much of a pain in the ass to hold up and attach. We did remove the fiberglass section to skin the wood though. This allowed us to run the aluminum in a wider section as it would have been a royal pain to attach it with the fiberglass in place. I had grabbed some 3/8" bolts at the farm store to allow us to bolt the fiberglass to the camper and aid in clamping the aluminum down to the wood.

Another good amount of progress today for sure.

 

[campfire]

Nice works!

 

[GWeakland620]

It's coming together nicely!

 

[ZooMad75]

If the weather keeps up like it has we might get it all fitted out before spring. I know this, the weather will turn and it will stop our progress since we are working outside. But we will try to take advantage of the good days when we can. Shane might actually go over during the week and get some done on the cabinet. If we can next weekend we are going to bench test the furnace and rough in some of the electrical or reskin the inside of the roof and add higher r-value insulation.

 

[Capt Ron]

Does Larry or Bill...? use his furnace when you guys do your desert trips?

 

[ZooMad75]

Does Larry or Bill...? use his furnace when you guys do your desert trips?

That first night on the Devil's racetrack on last year's run was cold enough I know Larry had his furnace running. Ty did in his camper and Bill was running a Mr.Buddy in his tent. I froze my keister to a slab sandstone all night in my tent. The rest of the week, we had gone south far enough heat wasn't needed at night. I slept in a hammock on 2 of those nights.

It just depends. On our mountain runs, the furnace is awsome. Except for it to be helpful, one has to close the back door and shut the roof vent. I was staying in Larry's camper when we went up to Ivanhoe lake above Leadville and might have had a number of frosty ones before bed. He had already called it a night and was tucked into his 0 degree bag in the upper bunk. I hopped into my sleeping back and had my teeth chattering in 30 minutes. Had to wake him up because I couldn't remember what I needed to do to turn on the furnace. He kicked it on at the t-stat and fell back to sleep. Took me an hour to warm up. Next morning Larry got up to take a leak and found the door open and the vent wide open too. Probably killed a good chunk of the propane bottle that night.

I'm sure I'll use the furnace. Maybe not as much in the desert, but totally in the mountains. Plus I'll be able to run later into fall if I want to just because I'll have the furnace to keep me toasty at night.

 

[GWeakland620]

Plus I'll be able to run later into fall if I want to just because I'll have the furnace to keep me toasty at night.

We used our camper up until November last year since we had the heater. It got to 27* that night but the family was nice and toasty.

 

[ZooMad75]

We used our camper up until November last year since we had the heater. It got to 27* that night but the family was nice and toasty.

I'd love to be able to run later into the season. Less jeepys on the trails in the mountains then. Only problem is going later puts you smack dab in hunting season. Might need to pick up some safety orange gear!

 

[ZooMad75]

Taking advantage of the weather while we got it good, John and Shane got some work done Friday afternoon getting the cabinet more roughed out.

As usual it's the smaller spaces that prove to be more tricky. The front corner was recut to make it easier to face with the oak over the curved shape we had before. So we didn't loose all the space we configured a couple of small enclosed spaces. The bottom area will be accessible from both the inside and out and will house the main electrical hub. The upper area will be storage for small items.

As @NorCal69 pointed out in my last minute bid for MPW points, the cabinet is built like a brick sh*thouse. The boys have been liberal with the use of PL400 and glue lined staples. But, considering all the shake this will be exposed to we figured we had to do everything possible to keep it together.

Close up shot of the cubbies. The upper cubby is actually deeper than it looks, as it drops down to the level of the top of the lower cubby. We still need to face out the entire cabinet with oak and hang the doors. Going back to do some of that today.