45 foot T2000 Conversion with Camper
 

I have been collecting parts all year for my conversion and figured I should start my own post. My family drag races and we have a 34 foot tag stacker trailer that we haul our cars around in. When loaded the trailer is pushing 24k lbs. Because of this I have shyed away from a motorhome and decided it would be better to go with a truck chassis. My goal for this project is to be under $20k for the build but as we all know that usually doesn't hold true!

I started with a Kenworth T2000 with a 6 foot condo sleeper. I have bought a 30 foot fiberglass travel trailer with 2 slide outs that I plan to put on the back. I have seen some done in the past and some are pretty scarey looking and others not so bad. I am going to do everything I can to make it NOT look like I stuck a travel trailer on the back! My main reason for not buying a cargo box for the conversion is I really want to have slide outs in it and I don't want this to turn into a 5 or 10 year project from having to build the camper from scratch. The travel trailer I have had some water damage done to it but is a good start. All the electrical works in it, walls and ceiling are nice. Will just need flooring and cabinets built. The subfloor is in good shape, just the laminate and carpet were removed.

Currently I am using the truck as it was as an over the road truck to pull our car trailer. After our racing season is over I plan to start doing the frame stretch. I will be adding 10 feet infront of the drive axles and plan to have 8 feet hanging off the back. I am leaving the 6 foot sleeper on the truck and adding the camper to that. I plan to be right at 45 feet long. I am hoping before the weather turns I will be able to set the camping trailer on the truck frame. I know I will be pushing the limits of my front axle with a 30 foot wheel base but from what I have been reading as long as I put tires on there that are rated for the weight I shouldn't have any troubles with DOT.

I tried to mock up what it will look like in "paint" and attached that picture along with one of the truck as it sits now. The black toter is my father in laws that I helped him build last fall.

I am up for recomendations and criticisms. I know putting a travel trailer on a truck chassis is kind of dicey but I am hoping I can make it work.

Good luck with your build. I think you're making the right decision to stay away from a motorhome. There are only a couple of motorhomes that could come close to handling a trailer that big and heavy.

With all the stuff for sale on RacingJunk.com, I surprised you're building vs buying something already built.

Keep us posted.

I am on there daily! It seems like anything in the $20k to $40k range is a medium duty with a small CAT motor or DT466 motor. I also haven't found anything with a slideout in it for under $50k or so.

Thanks,
Steve

I think most of the early Kingsley Coach's were built in that manner. You might keep an eye out for those and if you see some close go look them over good for ideas that might help you.

I was not aware of that! Thanks for the tip.

Frame is stretched and Box is on
 

Plans changed a bit, what else is new! Originally I had planned on installing the travel trailer directly to the frame of the truck. After further review of the construction of the travel trailer I was not confident the travel trailer would stand up to the abuse of bouncing down the road on the truck chassis. So I have added probably another year or so on to the project and decided to put a 26' Morgan on the truck instead. Overall length of the truck will be around 43' now. I will now be building from scratch which I didn't want to do based on I didn't want this to be a 4 or 5 year project. I will just have to work on it twice as much now to make up for the additional work load!

I do plan on using the internals from the travel trailer I purchased however to help build the inside with. It has a 7' slide out that I plan to put in the back of the box in place of the roll up door. This will make my box longer in reality as the bedroom will be made just large enough for the bed when the slide is in and will "grow" a walkway when it opens up. Appliances, heater, AC unit, power panel and switches, some of the furniture, ect. Planning on using the tanks but I am a little concerned on the sizes. The fresh water is 45 gallon's, which I plan on adding an aditional one as I would like 90 to 100 gallons total. I will just have them tied together I think with a tube. The gray and black tanks are 35 gallons and I am not sure that is large enough? The gray I am not too concerned with as we usually are camping at a race track in the grass and can always leave that valve open, however 3 kids, my wife and I, I am concerned that the black tank will not be large enough on a 3 or 4 day camping trip? Any thoughts on that?

Here are a few pictures along with one of it hooked up to our car trailer. It's maiden voyage will be this saturday as it is opening day at the race track for us.

More proof that you should double your time and cost estimates for any self build project.

Looks pretty good with the box on there though. I think that will look better than bolting a camper trailer onto the frame.

My rig has 75 gallon gray and 25 gallon black. I thought that 25 gallon seemed too small when we bought it. But, after 5 years of use it has worked out just fine. We don't have as many people as you do. I'm pretty sure I can go over a week with the two of us and not fill the black up. I think my old Allegro rv had a 33 gallon black and it lasted pretty long between dumps.

I think most builders remove the cab air ride and bolt it down. I guess there's maybe too much movement between the cab and box if you don't?

Thanks for the input on the tanks. I have the cab air ride limit limited to 1 1/2 inches of travel which I believe the accordion boot will be able to accommodate.

As far as buy or build, I guess I will know when I am done what I would have should have done! I had a couple opportunities to buy some nicely built "back yard garage" units for $40k to $50k but could never find one close enough to the layout or options that I wanted. I know the money I will have invested will be less than that however the time invested is going to be scary!

looks great

Slow and steady, started getting some of the cabinet face frames built, fridge cabinet and furnace installed. Hoping to finish the shower this week and then get the toilet in. I need to start doing some wiring so I can start installing the appliances. I bought a wrecked camping trailer that I am using the appliances and such from. I also plan to pull the electrical panel and as much of the wiring I can from it. The trailer I bought as a doner is 27', and the layout was close to what I wanted. I am hoping to uninstall and reinstall in a similar fashion.

It is cold and snowy here in Wisconsin and my garage isn't big enough for the camper so I improvised! Should work out good for the winter. With the wood wall I built insulated, I think it is more sealed up than with the garage door down. I have radiant heat in the shop floor along with a forced air furnace. it is nicer working on now that it was all summer!

Steve

That looks cool coming out of the wall like that.

staying warm
 

I like the way you are working in a heated area. I did most of my interior with the motorhome in the carport, dry but not warm. Your cabinet framing looks great, keep the pictures coming.

Thanks guys. If I can work on it during the week, I only get an hour or two to work so it would be too hard to get the thing warmed up to work on every time I wanted to work on it. I keep the shop at 50 and doesn't take but a 10 minutes to be as warm as I need out there. So far so good. My goal is spring for it to be functional.

looks nice !

after spending nearly 2 weeks in ours (just got home from an extended stay in pensacola).....ive got a suggestion (seeing that your sink & stove top aren't mounted).

I WISH our (double) sink was an UNDER MOUNT sink....it would be much nicer (if when we had the covers on the sink) that it was one entire FLAT surface/counter top.

Our 3 burner (gas) cooktop is mounted below the counter top level such that when the cover is over the burners it forms one continuous FLAT counter top...until you get to the (damn) sink.

we've got (counter top) matching sink covers but they are raised (since the sink is mounted from the counter top and not recessed).

Thanks for the idea on flush mounting the oven/stove! I am going to attempt to under mount the sink as I bought a used counter out of a motorhome that has covers for it. I am still trying to find the correct sink for it. But before I mount the oven/stove I will have to look into lowering it so it will sit flush with the cover on. I like that idea! If you get a minute can you post a picture of yours? I would like to see how it was finished off on the edges.

Thanks, Steve

this one is LIKE mine (so close I've used it as an example).

Ours has an oven (used to cook in once, used for storage LOTS).
the Cook Top COVER is hinged in 2 places and folds up against the back wall.

you can see the dbl sink w/ covers on....ours is EXACTLY like this...covers are not flush & while you cant tell by the picture,
the cover stick up about 1/2 and inch (or more)....just a pain in but such that the covers aren't used much.

I'll get a better picture of ours later today if not the next couple of days.

https://www.truckconversion.net/attac...0a3b2f53f2.jpg

Thanks for the picture, that is really neat how the counter cover goes over the stove like that. It sure makes it nice having a solid smooth surface. The sink covers are better than nothing but I agree would be a lot nicer if they were flush as well.

Thanks for sharing the picture.
Steve

I've got the under mount sink and we really like it. I have the flat convection cook top. I have mixed emotions on it. Sometimes I like it....sometimes I wish I had gas. It just depends on how big of a pot you are boiling corn in. :)

personally i prefer the gas based appliances (including the fridge).....it means i don't have to run the generator (except if i need air conditioning).

I don't think we've ever used the oven, maybe once and we very rarely even use the gas stove/cook top....if we do, it's as John says....to boil a pot of water.

we cook on the grill (outside) - which i plumbed to a quick disconnect to drawl off the main rv tank.

I counter to Don about the oven. My previous Allegro class A had an oven. My wife makes cookies a lot. My present t/c didn't have an oven. She tried to use the convection microwave to make cookies and never liked it one bit. So I had to do some major counter/cabinet re-working to get an oven installed. She's sooo much happier. And the guys at the race track are much happier too.

and i concede to Bob....he might be right about the oven....but I'm still not baking cookies at the track. :D

i think for extended travelers / full time folks an oven would be a nice item to have.

My wife has used the oven in our fiver a few times, but we found out that with the pilot lit it stays warm enough to season a cast iron skillet real nicely!

Hi Steve,

I have searched the Internet over for months and haven't found someone doing this except you! We are wanting to stretch a tractor and mount a 36' reefer trailer onto a day cab frame. Watching your progress is helping me to envision this finally! Thank you for posting! Please keep the profess documented and posted here. And can you detail how you mounted the box to the frame and what your accordion seal looks like and who you bought it from? Thank you so much!

Scott and Heather

Hey guys, thanks for the post. The box/van body I bought was made to mount to a truck frame already so I was able to mount the box the same way they mount them on medium duty trucks with u-bolts. I put down 3/4" thick oak between the frame of the truck and the frame of the box and then u-bolted them together every 4 feet. The boxes or van bodies usually have "I" or "C" frame rails that run front to back under them. Depending on if your reefer unit has those you would probably want to add them. I think most trailers only have left/right I beams every 12 inches or so? If the rails weren't going to line up on my box/van body I was going to add my own "I" or "C" beams to the box/van body where they needed to be. They are just welded to the left/right beams. Wouldn't of been that difficult.

As far as the boot that goes between the box and the truck cab I haven't bought that yet but have sourced it from: https://www.accordionboot.com/
We put one of these on my father in laws toter and the only advice that we learned is buy the extra wide one. It is more money but we bought the regular one and couldn't get the boot on the right way because it wasn't wide enough. Really need the box to be about an 1" no more than 2" away from the cab to make work.

Take care,
Steve

Completed the frame work for the bathroom vanity and stained it along with the kitchen cabinets. Had some trouble with staining the kitchen cabinets. I usually work with Oak but wanted to use a different material for this project for cost and looks. I went with Poplar 1x material and birch for the paneling. That was the closest match to the Poplar. Normal process is to sponge sand with 220 grit and then stain and clear coat. It would appear the grain is much tighter on the Poplar as I could not get the stain to soak into the wood. After a couple coats and the color turning orange I decided to sand everything off I just did. I then used wood conditioner and then stain and it came out much better. The bathroom vanity I palm sanded starting with 120 ending with 220 and then used wood conditioner and then stain and really turned out great. When I make the doors and drawers I will be sure to follow the more aggressive sanding process as that seems to be the key.

I am looking for suggestions on ground clearance. I picked up a really nice set of power stairs that were more intended for a bus where the entry door is in front of the steer tire and would have a "kneel" mode. I say that because if I mount these stairs so the first step is a reasonable distance off the ground, 10 to 12 inches (no air in the suspension), the frame work of the stairs will be an inch lower than that. This means if I have the stairs so the first step is 10 inches my ground clearance is only 9 inches. I gain about 2 inches when there is air in the suspension, that puts me at 11 inches of ground clearance. The RV"s I have measured are usually around 14 inches or more. My door is right between the steer and front drive axle so the stairs are obviously there. This would make this area very susceptible to bottoming out on stuff:( My fuel tanks on the truck are about 10 inches when aired up going down the road but they are right behind the steer tires making it more difficult for those to drag. If I go to the more traditional KWIKEE style stairs I would eliminate this concern as they fold up rather than slide out on an angle. I really like this bus style set I have however because they are way sturdier and 30 inches wide rather than KWIKEE's 24 inches. Any thoughts from you guys? We end up in the grass at the race tracks we go to more times than not and I am concerned about bottoming this out. Am I over worrying!?

Regarding the open space under your step/treads - you gonna keep it open ?? I would !
If you don't keep it open i would encourage you to put a door or drawer under each step....anything that would allow someone to put there shoes UNDER the step (or maybe even some frequent items, used during set up etc).

we TRY not to wear our shoes in the coach (still happens) but when we kick them off we don't really have a place to hide them (they get left on the steps to be tripped over or just generally be in the way).


Regarding the steps HEIGHT -

I've never measured mine but I've never had an issue (except on my mother in laws curb)....i just know to stay a few inches away when parking there (to keep the coach tires out of the curb and more "on the street")...and then its only an issue when i let the coach down off the jacks (after I've deflated the bags).

If its too big a step from the ground to the 1st step you can always use a portable/height adjustable step - we have one (and only had to use it once or twice) - CAMCO 43676 Step

assuming you'll have levelers and won't always have the luxury of parking on level ground...the height to the bottom step wont always be the same anyway.

I've got a jeep wrangler that doesnt have 11 inches of ground clearance and other than some off road trails I've never even come close to contacting any thing under the jeep.....same with my wife's tiny miata.

Thanks for the reply, and link to the step. I am not sure if I will have levelers. I would sure like to but not in the budget right now. I am allocating a spot for them but not going to be in there right now. My father in-law uses a set of boards that he drives the front wheels up onto depending on the terrain. I was thinking about putting a manual set I could crank up in the rear. Much like trailer legs. Probably wouldn't work on the front.

The stairs I have in there are temporary and for testing purposes only. I have been playing around with tread height and if I should go with 2 steps inside or 3. I have started seeing more RV's with the open treads. I like that idea as well, although I do like the idea of being able to put 2 batteries in there as well. That seems to be a common spot for them. Depending on my power steps I use will determine this.

My steps are open and I have all kinds of junk shoved under them. Handy. I have a great way to handle those shoes, Don. I've got to get a picture of what I do next time I'm at my rig. Maybe the next week or so. We never wear shoes inside either.

if nothing else levelers will help stabilize the coach & prevent "sea legs".

I'd recommend that the levelers be on the FRONT (since there are no "parking" brakes on the front, only the rear)....you wouldnt want to raise the rear (w/out raising the front) for fear it could ROLL & bend or bust the levelers.

of course you could CHOCK the front wheels but thats a bit of a PIA.

I keep some 15x15 squares of 3/4 pressure treated plywood....ive screwed 3 sheets together....i use them to put under the hydraulic levelers so the ram's don't have to deploy as far every time (makes it a little quicker to deploy/level & retract).

the plywood also is helpful in extreme situations where i cant deploy the levelers far enough to level the coach (the boards give me extra inches of reach) - more than once I've had to stack multiple squares on top of each other (my mother in laws street has a huge crown) i end up w/ the passenger/curb side needing an extreme level compared to the drivers/road side.

the boards also help when we're forced to level on soft ground (dirt/grass) or warm asphalt, ill put the boards down to avoid punching holes thru the surface...or to try to prevent cracking concrete.

our steps are closed....so we cant even kick the shoes under a tread...they lay in the way on each step.

because we almost always have the dog w/ us, we keep the cover over the steps, so its not much of a problem.

FWIW we've found that putting the cover on the steps at night helps keep the cold out too.

In regards to Don's post about using plywood under the leveling jacks. I've had much better luck using cut off pieces of micro-lam. Micro-lam looks kind of like plywood but it's much thicker. They use it as beam to support spans when framing stuff. Often used to support the load above a garage door opening. When I see a framing job going on I stop and visit and ask if they are going to use any micro-lams. If so could I have any scraps they cut off. They are tougher than plywood. And since they're thicker I don't have to screw them together. I keep a bunch in a storage bin. I use them the same way Don does. Here's something about them: Weyerhaeuser :: Microllam LVL Beams

FWIW i alternate the grain of the wood (and suggest others do this too, regardless of what they use)....it provides additional strength & prevents cracking/splitting & warping (especially if you use 2x material.

I like the idea of the microllam (1st I've even hear it called that)....ill be cruising construction sites now ;)

Hows that stuff hold up in the wet ?

I think it holds up as well as, if not better than, regular plywood. I don't think I've thrown any away yet due to delamination/rotting.

Thanks for the pictures and measurements! I am going to shoot for a ride height around 12 inches. I have heard you can install a button to adjust your ride height up. I have a dump valve already but am going to investigate more on hitting a switch to add air to the suspension to raise it up. This would give me the luxury of adding an inch or two of ride height when parking (if needed).

I was planning on having the rear slide in mine to slide the bed out further to give me a walk way to the front. I will have to look at putting the bed in sideways like yours.

Thanks again,
Steve

we have the dump valve also but have found it to be unnecessary (since we use the levelers & only have bags on the rear).

ours has a mechanical linkage (rod) tied from the pumpkin to a frame mounted dump valve....when i deploy the levelers the linkage activates the dump valve. I haven't looked at it but i suspect i could reset the height of the mechanical link/rod to gain some added height....but the rods job is there to "set the height" of the coach/box.

Granite work
 

Started working on the granite counters over the weekend. I was able to acquire some used granite from my neighbor that he pulled out of a job. I purchased a 7" diamond blade to put in my circular saw, a 4" one for my angle grinder, a set of polishing pads, (8 different grits) and a core bit for drilling holes and I have granite counters in my camper now! Very messy and time consuming but it came out fantastic. I still have to do the backsplashes but my father in law and I were able to have the bathroom top and kitchen top cut and polished in a day. Would have been much better to do this outside as it made such a mess of my shop.

Kitchen granite
 

I am not sure what to do with the backsplash yet. I plan to put the matching granite one in along the back of the kitchen counter, however I want to put something up the wall behind the stove at a minimum as I have to cover up a mistake made earlier that caused me to piece in a portion of the paneling. I don't have enough of the mosaic tile back that is shown in the picture, I may try to make my own. I see they have stick on mosaics and stainless looking shapes at Menards/HD, however I am not confident they will stand up well to the temperature changes as I will not have the luxury of keeping this unit in a climate controlled building at all times. I am thinking of screwing a piece of 1/4" or 1/8" plywood to my paneling and then liquid nailing mosaic glass tiles to it. That way if I have problems with the tiles I can just remove the hole board and try something else. I haven't figured that out yet.

Steve

Awesome Job! Looks Killer!

Dang, man!! That looks great!