by Laredo » Sun Jun 03, 2007 3:17 pm
MK, do you have a concept drawing for the back (hatch) end of that design?
Or an idea on dimensions?
I'm thinking it'd make a really nice 6x10... gives you a queen bed with the foot of the bed even with the doors, and a nice little forward locker (assuming you're tapering the nose forward a bit, say from the 6' width to a 4' frontal width over about a 12'' depth...
Lets you set up some, ah, conveniences, inside. Take a look at Mike Schneider's variant on the Weekend Warrior for the inside layout, and give some thought to it...
Put the doors underneath part of that outback overhead overhang, so they blend into the midpart of the pod just about centered on the axle, and make your rear hatch one straight piece like a Weekender, coming halfway down and letting your lower hatch surface be a Dutch door, and you can run them straight down and not worry about hitting the wheel/wheelwell.
If you flatten the top of the back third of the cargo pods, you'll have side tables built right in, and if you use PVC for the part of the pods over the doors, you'll have instant fenders. You could cap the backs and have storage forward of the doors, or just a handy shoe shelf.
I might want to leave a 3'' or 4'' overhang from the roof at the back gate to help keep water off the hatch hinge, and I'd probably want swing-down, jointed aluminum poles (was it Bledsoe 3 who did that on his hatch rebuild a while back, with the clevis pin connectors?) to latch the open hatch to fittings in the ends of the pods (and yeah, if the pods stick out past the doors below and above, that gives you a place to latch your opened lower hatch doors and cheats in a little more shelf space if you need to).
Mopar's what my busted knuckles bleed, working on my 318s...