Fitting a Suntrekker to a Mk 8 Hilux
Posted: August 29th, 2018, 3:13 pm
I've had my Suntrekker since (I think) 1995 or so, when I bought it from Balmer Lawn Garage near Lymington, a Toyota dealership. The owner had bought it new from Island Plastics, and used it once a year for a run down to the south of France on whatever Hilux he happened to have in stock at the time; apart from that it hadn't been used. I only bought the camper, and I had to borrow rather too much to do that: I couldn't afford a nearly new truck as well. A couple of months later, I bought a Ford P100 to carry it. That truck carried me a long way, but it cost me a lot of money too... but that's another story.
I think the camper had been originally set up to go on Hiluxes, because to hook it on to the P100, I had to get slightly different hooks made. (These are the hooks which bolt into the underside of the camper's 'flare' - where it bulges out above the sides of the truck bed, and hook onto the rolled-over rim of the truck bed). But it fitted just fine once that was done.
Years later, when I got a Mk 6 Hilux, I managed to find the original hooks, and it slotted straight in, with no drama at all.
Roll forward a few more years, and I got a Mk 7. The hooks still fitted, but I found that the cab doors extended a bit further up into the cab roof, so with the camper in place, you couldn't open the cab doors! I spent a couple of hours one winter night with a padsaw and a file making a curved step in the skirt that extends down from the camper's overcab floor to give clearance for the doors.
And now, it's time to replace that red Mk 7, with a shiny new Mk 8 - and a 4WD for the first time. I'm a firm believer in Hiluxes - I've had lots of them and other pickups at work, and they have always been the whole team's favourites. Tough as old boots, comfortable, sensibly and thoughtfully put together, with practicality in mind, and, off-road, pretty much unstickable with good tyres. I'd been watching the market for some time: it's limited, because single-cab Hiluxes are quite rare these days. Most are run by utility companies or farmers, or belong to rental fleets like SHB, which, indirectly, is where mine came from. There are really only three or four dealers that specialise in them, though, which, if you're in the market for a used Hilux, makes it easy to find one. The ex-rentals are actually quite a good option, as they're mainly rented on long leases by civil engineers and the like, and used as little more than cars: an easy life (whereas farmers' trucks often haul heavy stuff and trailers in awful conditions. Even a Hilux can be worked to death given this treatment, and insufficient maintenance, long enough).
And now we come to the fun bit: would the Suntrekker fit on the new, bigger and taller truck? I hoped so, I'd already bought the thing!
The first task was to remove the tailgate. Easy enough: there's a bolt at each lower corner, just as on other single-cab Hiluxes. Remove the bolt, and the tailgate lifts free -but take care not to lose the bolt - it's an obscure Japanese thread that's virtually unobtainable in Europe. Take care also not to lose the top-hat washer from each side: it will fall out and roll down a drain given a chance, and is also hard to replace.
Of course, the Mk 8 has a fancy-schmancy high level brake light in the tailgate, and that has to be disconnected too. It turns out its wires run through a grommet in the truck bed and there's a connector just behind. If you undo the connector, the grommet hole is big enough for the connector to come through it, so it's easy to disconnect everything and the tailgate is free. Thoughtful design.
I demounted the camper from my old red truck, and on reversing the new truck up to the it, the first thing that became clear was that, wound up to their maximum height, the legs weren't long enough to get the new truck underneath!
I lowered it back onto the old truck, and tried again, with some bricks beneath the legs as a temporary way to get a bit more height. Now, it was high enough...
...but it was also clear that the cab is an inch or so taller than on the old truck. I was going to need a subframe or something to raise the camper up a little bit relative to the cab roof. I had to leave the job at this point (don't worry, I didn't leave the camper teetering at the top of those propped-up legs), so I had a few days to mull over what to use. Timber would be cheap, but potentially quite heavy if it soaked up any water, and it would eventually rot (remember, I've had this camper 20+ years already!). What about PVC window frame profile stuff? Tough, not so light, and, it turns out, not so easy to source in small quantities if you don't happen to be a window manufacturer. I was walking through B&Q when the answer struck me: Jablite - expanded polystyrene insulation sheet.
It weighs almost nothing, it doesn't rot, it doesn't hold water, and it's cheap as chips! It would even provide a slight cushion, spreading the weight of the camper's floor across the ribbed bedliner in the truck. But it's firm enough not to collapse under the relatively modest, evenly-spread weight of the camper. I knew I needed an extra inch or so of height under the camper, but on the red truck, the chassis rails flex enough that, on the right kind of undulations in the road, the overcab part of the camper would bump on the roof of the cab. I don't know if the Mk 8 is any stiffer, but to avoid the overcab coming into contact with the new truck's roof, I decided to try 3" - 75mm jablite, so give a bit of room for some flexing.
An 8 x 4' sheet of jablite fits just nicely in the truck bed, just needing a little trimming around the wheel arches, and extending an inch or so beyond the back edge.
With this in place, time for another offering-up. Cue drum roll....
It looks like it's going to fit, although with the wider truck, there's not a lot of clearance between the legs and the sides of the truck. Enough, though.
It's all going rather well!
But then...
...it becomes clear that the rear leg is going to contact the bumper...
...well before the camper is all the way forward towards the cab. Ah.
But my old red truck didn't come with a rear bumper. Even if it had, it wouldn't have provided any protection for the back of the camper. In fact, for that very reason, I made this bumper-cum-step thingy, which telescopes out to provide an always-there step and some body protection when the camper's on, and telescopes back in to protect the truck's back corners without sticking out to far when it's not.
Since the bumper's not going to provide much protection on the new truck, why not remove it - at least temporarily?
So...
It's easy to get underneath a 4WD Hilux, and examination showed that the bumper was held on with four bolts through the chassis-rail extension pieces which end up supporting that towbar/protection thingy. The bolts turned out to be encouragingly (but not worryingly) easy to get undone (the truck's not old enough, and perhaps hasn't spent enough time on salty roads for everything to be rusted solid under there), and the bumper came away without too much trouble.
It turns out that the number plate lights in the bumper are on the end of little extension cables. If you remove these, the number plate lights fit into the vacant sockets on the ends of the oringal cables, and there's a slot in the bodywork behind the bumper for them to fit into. There are even holes in the bodywork for the number plate to screw into, so it all works without the bumper perfectly well and with minimal fiddling about: no cutting of wires, soldering or crimping required. Again, thoughtfully designed.
So, once again, a drum roll as we back beneath the camper another time...
Now it goes all the way...
...and in contrast to the old truck, the camper fits almost entirely within the length of the truck bed! So there's a bit of Jablite sticking out, which made removing the rear leg a bit difficult.
But it's also clear that 75mm is a bit generous - 50mm would have done.
Another day (I didn't take photos), I demounted again (my neighbours are beginning to look forward to another show) and put in a more judiciously-trimmed sheet of denser, grey 50mm Jablite. This provides comfortable clearance above the cab, while of course reducing the centre of gravity of the whole thing a bit.
So it physically fits in the space, but being about two inches wider than the old truck, those hooks don't fit. With the 50mm Jablite "subframe", you'd think they'd need to be 50mm longer, but it turns out the truckbed walls are about 50mm taller than on the old truck, so the hooks' length is about right, but rather than being L-shaped, they need to be C-shaped to reach the truckbed's lip. (The single-cab, agricultural model Hilux, which this is, still has that lip, and external tie-down hooks, and a payload of 1200 kg, and rubber flooring in the cab, and comes with a towbar as standard. All sensible stuff... who'd want a pickup without a towbar? - it's a workhorse, not a saloon car for showing off at the golf club....)
I made some measurements and knocked up an aluminium prototype, just to be sure it would do the doing, then made some drawings and took them and an example of the old, stout steel hooks, to show how they were built, to my friendly local fabrication engineers'. I'll be away travelling next week, but when I come back, I should be able to actually drive the new outfit!
To begin with, the new truck seemed huge, and dwarfed the camper. Now I'm getting used to how they look together, and, actually, I think it all looks rather neat. Better proportioned than the old arrangement, in fact.
Is it my imagination, or does my old truck look a bit forlorn at seeing her duties taken over by this brash young upstart....?
I think the camper had been originally set up to go on Hiluxes, because to hook it on to the P100, I had to get slightly different hooks made. (These are the hooks which bolt into the underside of the camper's 'flare' - where it bulges out above the sides of the truck bed, and hook onto the rolled-over rim of the truck bed). But it fitted just fine once that was done.
Years later, when I got a Mk 6 Hilux, I managed to find the original hooks, and it slotted straight in, with no drama at all.
Roll forward a few more years, and I got a Mk 7. The hooks still fitted, but I found that the cab doors extended a bit further up into the cab roof, so with the camper in place, you couldn't open the cab doors! I spent a couple of hours one winter night with a padsaw and a file making a curved step in the skirt that extends down from the camper's overcab floor to give clearance for the doors.
And now, it's time to replace that red Mk 7, with a shiny new Mk 8 - and a 4WD for the first time. I'm a firm believer in Hiluxes - I've had lots of them and other pickups at work, and they have always been the whole team's favourites. Tough as old boots, comfortable, sensibly and thoughtfully put together, with practicality in mind, and, off-road, pretty much unstickable with good tyres. I'd been watching the market for some time: it's limited, because single-cab Hiluxes are quite rare these days. Most are run by utility companies or farmers, or belong to rental fleets like SHB, which, indirectly, is where mine came from. There are really only three or four dealers that specialise in them, though, which, if you're in the market for a used Hilux, makes it easy to find one. The ex-rentals are actually quite a good option, as they're mainly rented on long leases by civil engineers and the like, and used as little more than cars: an easy life (whereas farmers' trucks often haul heavy stuff and trailers in awful conditions. Even a Hilux can be worked to death given this treatment, and insufficient maintenance, long enough).
And now we come to the fun bit: would the Suntrekker fit on the new, bigger and taller truck? I hoped so, I'd already bought the thing!
The first task was to remove the tailgate. Easy enough: there's a bolt at each lower corner, just as on other single-cab Hiluxes. Remove the bolt, and the tailgate lifts free -but take care not to lose the bolt - it's an obscure Japanese thread that's virtually unobtainable in Europe. Take care also not to lose the top-hat washer from each side: it will fall out and roll down a drain given a chance, and is also hard to replace.
Of course, the Mk 8 has a fancy-schmancy high level brake light in the tailgate, and that has to be disconnected too. It turns out its wires run through a grommet in the truck bed and there's a connector just behind. If you undo the connector, the grommet hole is big enough for the connector to come through it, so it's easy to disconnect everything and the tailgate is free. Thoughtful design.
I demounted the camper from my old red truck, and on reversing the new truck up to the it, the first thing that became clear was that, wound up to their maximum height, the legs weren't long enough to get the new truck underneath!
I lowered it back onto the old truck, and tried again, with some bricks beneath the legs as a temporary way to get a bit more height. Now, it was high enough...
...but it was also clear that the cab is an inch or so taller than on the old truck. I was going to need a subframe or something to raise the camper up a little bit relative to the cab roof. I had to leave the job at this point (don't worry, I didn't leave the camper teetering at the top of those propped-up legs), so I had a few days to mull over what to use. Timber would be cheap, but potentially quite heavy if it soaked up any water, and it would eventually rot (remember, I've had this camper 20+ years already!). What about PVC window frame profile stuff? Tough, not so light, and, it turns out, not so easy to source in small quantities if you don't happen to be a window manufacturer. I was walking through B&Q when the answer struck me: Jablite - expanded polystyrene insulation sheet.
It weighs almost nothing, it doesn't rot, it doesn't hold water, and it's cheap as chips! It would even provide a slight cushion, spreading the weight of the camper's floor across the ribbed bedliner in the truck. But it's firm enough not to collapse under the relatively modest, evenly-spread weight of the camper. I knew I needed an extra inch or so of height under the camper, but on the red truck, the chassis rails flex enough that, on the right kind of undulations in the road, the overcab part of the camper would bump on the roof of the cab. I don't know if the Mk 8 is any stiffer, but to avoid the overcab coming into contact with the new truck's roof, I decided to try 3" - 75mm jablite, so give a bit of room for some flexing.
An 8 x 4' sheet of jablite fits just nicely in the truck bed, just needing a little trimming around the wheel arches, and extending an inch or so beyond the back edge.
With this in place, time for another offering-up. Cue drum roll....
It looks like it's going to fit, although with the wider truck, there's not a lot of clearance between the legs and the sides of the truck. Enough, though.
It's all going rather well!
But then...
...it becomes clear that the rear leg is going to contact the bumper...
...well before the camper is all the way forward towards the cab. Ah.
But my old red truck didn't come with a rear bumper. Even if it had, it wouldn't have provided any protection for the back of the camper. In fact, for that very reason, I made this bumper-cum-step thingy, which telescopes out to provide an always-there step and some body protection when the camper's on, and telescopes back in to protect the truck's back corners without sticking out to far when it's not.
Since the bumper's not going to provide much protection on the new truck, why not remove it - at least temporarily?
So...
It's easy to get underneath a 4WD Hilux, and examination showed that the bumper was held on with four bolts through the chassis-rail extension pieces which end up supporting that towbar/protection thingy. The bolts turned out to be encouragingly (but not worryingly) easy to get undone (the truck's not old enough, and perhaps hasn't spent enough time on salty roads for everything to be rusted solid under there), and the bumper came away without too much trouble.
It turns out that the number plate lights in the bumper are on the end of little extension cables. If you remove these, the number plate lights fit into the vacant sockets on the ends of the oringal cables, and there's a slot in the bodywork behind the bumper for them to fit into. There are even holes in the bodywork for the number plate to screw into, so it all works without the bumper perfectly well and with minimal fiddling about: no cutting of wires, soldering or crimping required. Again, thoughtfully designed.
So, once again, a drum roll as we back beneath the camper another time...
Now it goes all the way...
...and in contrast to the old truck, the camper fits almost entirely within the length of the truck bed! So there's a bit of Jablite sticking out, which made removing the rear leg a bit difficult.
But it's also clear that 75mm is a bit generous - 50mm would have done.
Another day (I didn't take photos), I demounted again (my neighbours are beginning to look forward to another show) and put in a more judiciously-trimmed sheet of denser, grey 50mm Jablite. This provides comfortable clearance above the cab, while of course reducing the centre of gravity of the whole thing a bit.
So it physically fits in the space, but being about two inches wider than the old truck, those hooks don't fit. With the 50mm Jablite "subframe", you'd think they'd need to be 50mm longer, but it turns out the truckbed walls are about 50mm taller than on the old truck, so the hooks' length is about right, but rather than being L-shaped, they need to be C-shaped to reach the truckbed's lip. (The single-cab, agricultural model Hilux, which this is, still has that lip, and external tie-down hooks, and a payload of 1200 kg, and rubber flooring in the cab, and comes with a towbar as standard. All sensible stuff... who'd want a pickup without a towbar? - it's a workhorse, not a saloon car for showing off at the golf club....)
I made some measurements and knocked up an aluminium prototype, just to be sure it would do the doing, then made some drawings and took them and an example of the old, stout steel hooks, to show how they were built, to my friendly local fabrication engineers'. I'll be away travelling next week, but when I come back, I should be able to actually drive the new outfit!
To begin with, the new truck seemed huge, and dwarfed the camper. Now I'm getting used to how they look together, and, actually, I think it all looks rather neat. Better proportioned than the old arrangement, in fact.
Is it my imagination, or does my old truck look a bit forlorn at seeing her duties taken over by this brash young upstart....?