Truck Construction

In a little more than a week Ryan and I will be loading the truck up with bikes and camping gear to drive down to Boone, NC for five days of cycling and camping.  Last week I began work on a shelf and storage system for the back of the truck to accomodate all our stuff.  This is where the purchase of the truck cap last fall comes to fruition (LINK).

The goal is to have the bikes travel safely and securely inside the truck bed, with the protection of the truck cap.  It would be easier to simply use my hitch mounted bike rack, but I like the idea of having the bikes inside the vehicle.  The challenge becomes fitting two bikes and all our camping gear in the back end of the truck.  For several months I've been planning a shelf and storage system for this trip.  Today it gets installed.

First, I attached a cleat to the driver's side bed rail with three bolts, and I attached a cleat across the front, floor of the bed with some threaded rod I bent into j-bolts.  These cleats will allow a shelf unit to be secured to the truck.  The shelf unit consists of two shelves between inner and outer sides.  The outer side is notched to fit over the wheel well and snug to the side of the bed.  I skeletonized the sides to save a little bit of weight and provide access to items stored forward on the shelves.

The lowest "shelf" is the bed fo the truck.  The heavy popup canopy, tent, and water jugs will be stored down here.  The first shelf will hold three plastic storage tubs end to end.  These container are for food, cooking equipment, and general camp stuff.  The top shelf will hold sleeping pads, sleeping bags, and perahaps another storage tub.

To the right of the shelf unit two cots will stand up with a 5' plastic table.  These are secured to the shelf unit with a ratchet strap.

The remaining 25", on the passenger side of the bed, will contain the bikes.  At this point it became a puzzle to figure out how to store two bikes in such a narrow space.  I built stands to hold the front wheels independantly of the bikes and I already had some front fork locks built for a previous trip.  In the basement I laid these out on a piece of plywood and attempted to come up with a configuration where both bikes and wheels would fit in the alotted space.  It took a couple tries but I ended up with a workable setup.

The plywood piece was cut to size and I added a bracket to lock the plywood in place once it's slid into the truck.  It turns out there's enough room between the tailgate and end of the plywood for a cooler.

There are more tweaks to be added before the trip but most of the work is done.  We will store our clothes and cycling gear in the extended cab of the truck.  I might try to whip up a shelf for the extended cab, this would be better than just piling stuff back there.

I'm sure there will be more pictures to come later of the system in action.

Now I need to do a brake job to get rid of my warped rotors and an oil change before our trip.  I've been living with a pulsing brake pedal on the short trips around home but I'm sure this would get old on the longer trip.