The vehicle.

I want an approx living body size of 25' and an overall length of approx 33'.

The finished motorhome will be.....
33' long front bumper to tow-bar.
8' outside width.
11' 6" overall height.
So yes it is going to be a big one.
So i need a truck with a bit of power and able to carry weight.

I thought about using a Daf 45  7.5 tons this would give me the length without having to extend a chassis, and also the gross weight is good.
The only problem is the tilting cab to get at the engine, this is something i do not want.
But there is no other vehicle that would give me all i want..........or is there.

I started thinking about some friends of ours that have a Winnebago and it has a truck at the front with a bonnet easy access to the engine.

So i started searching and came up with 2 trucks that had a good gross weight and they were the Renault Mascot and the Ford Iveco Daily.
Now which one would be easy to get second-hand parts and would be best suited to me.....

I went for a Iveco Daily 6.5 ton gross weight, should be fine as I was going to done rate the Daf anyway.
Now i have to find one?
The best place i find to look for anything is Ebay, so i had a look, there were lots but not many 6.5 tons and not in my price range.

After 2 weeks of searching i came across just what i was looking for on Ebay at Manchester and within my price range...an 05 reg, low mileage, Ford Iveco Daily 6.5 tons it had a 14' body on it with a cab pod, as you see in the pictures below.

Doner truck No3

The Pod

This is the biggest weight carrying truck out there with a bonnet, the only other i came across was Renault Mascott.

Here is my truck.

Here is my 05 reg Ford Iveco Daily (made in Spain) so should be ok when travelling to get bits for it if needed.

It has a tail lift that along with the body is not needed.

I am going to remove the tail lift and body and sell them both to get a little back.

Here i am removing the tail lift with good old faithful stacker truck....it's a god send, lucky for me my mate has a fantastic large workshop and all the tools.

This is us using old faithful again to lift the body off after i have been under it cutting the bolt ends off so as the body will lift off.

Oh forgot to say.....we use elf & safety here....not health, cos this is deffo not good for your health, especially if you underneath it and it falls....lol.

Was a litle windy this day so the guy from yorkshire that had bought it, we got his truck underneath ASAP, before it fell to the ground....glad to say we did it fine and the guy drove off into the sunset...happy as larry and i was when i got the reddies in my hand.

A little bit different now, the body was heavy as it was double skinned.

Well i removed the channel that ran down the chassis top and removed the crossmembers and i gained another 8", which with building a motorhome every inch matters.

So now its ready to go off to the fabrication man to get stretched and all new body made.

Here are 2 pictures showing the truck now 

stretched with 8' in the middle and 2' in the rear. 

 

 

This picture is showing the crossmembers 

in and nearly finished.                

Here the truck is back at Shap and ready to be towed to the Shot Blasters and also get the chassis painted.

Here we are at the shotblasters after it has been painted, the total length was truck - 33' long, towing bar - 12' long then the car - 15' so my maths say it was a total length of 60' long, this was brought up the M6 at 55 mph no probs at all and NO POLICE about, but we did things right, there were lights on the back of the truck and they were connected to the car...plus we had a flashing beacon on the roof of the truck to warn everyone long vehicle coming....lol.

Here it is at Shap after i hand painted the chassis 3 times with an undercoat first then 2 coats of vinyl paint. Its now ready to start getting its foam/fibreglass body built on.

Here's my mate Chris making the base for 

the body to go on top of the crossmembers.

 this is the base on the truck.

The type of body we are building on to the truck will be cocooned in fibreglass, so no water will be able to penetrate inside the upper body at all. The outer body will be made of 3" foam with fibreglass on both sides, so it will be warm in winter and cool in the summer.

The main benefits with this type of body is that, i have a 6.5 ton gross truck.....so with a foam body, it will be megga light and so i will not reach the max weight.