This is a slide-in truck camper which I built from scratch from October 2023 through April 2024. Based on a design by Dave Mason of Endgame Campers ( / @endgamecampers ) .
Great job, so practical. We did a similar project. We might only use for a week or two a year, so a couple thousand invested was the right amount for us, thanks again.
Fantastic job! Congratulations, it must have been fun to build. We are planning to buy a composite camper shell and kit out the inside ourselves. I’d love to build one from scratch one day, maybe when I retire….
Because I always tend to "overbuild" projects, it came in a bit heavier than I hoped - dry weight is 940 lbs. Still qualifies as light weight for a truck camper, and gas mileage isn't badly affected at all.
I love Dave's campers. You've taken one of my favorites of his and really made it nice with your own variations. It looks like a hand in glove fit on your truck. Very inspiring... thank you for sharing your experience.
What happens if someone wants to mess with you and close your tailgate while you are sleeping? One of the first videos I watched the person mentioned this, and I have never forgotten it. You need a window lower in the door so you can reach ouch and unlatch the tailgate.
Yes, I considered all of that in my design. My tailgate locks with the key fob. So if the truck doors are locked, I can trip the lock strikers on each end of the tailgate and then it's not possible to shut and latch the gate. However, if we were inside and the truck wasn't locked, someone could possibly shut the tailgate. For that reason, I fabricated a simple long hook that I can reach out of the back door window and catch the tailgate handle to pull it up and unlock and let the tailgate down. That hook assembly will be inside the camper at all times, just in case.
We just got back from a 10-day 1800-mile trip out of Michigan, through Indiana, Illinois, and all around Missouri. We slept in the camper all 9 nights we were gone. Everything worked out great, even with a couple of torrential downpours while we slept. The truck (Ford F-150 4WD with 5.0 V8 engine) did pretty well on fuel economy. Bucking a headwind most of the way down, it started out at 17.5 mpg but then dropped to around 16 because of the headwinds. However, on the way back home, we got 18.5 mpg, and that was even with being stuck in traffic on Interstate 80 for over an hour. So I would say that the camper lowered the mpg by maybe 3 mpg, which isn't bad. All in all, we count it all a success. (Forgot to mention - we kept the speed down to around 63 mph to decrease wind resistance, so that helped the fuel economy.)
