Garage-Built Pop-Top Camper Turns a Pickup Into Standing-Height Shelter for $1,500

Commercial pop-up truck campers start around eight thousand dollars and climb quickly from there. In some countries they are simply not sold at all. Rob at Further Fabrication faced both problems and decided the only practical answer was to design and build one himself in a regular garage with ordinary tools. He began by measuring the truck bed and creating a full 3D model so every panel, beam, and fabric panel could be cut accurately the first time. The structure had to sit low enough for highway driving yet open high enough for a person to stand upright inside. The solution was a rigid lower shell combined with a fabric upper section that rises on gas struts.

The outside and interior walls are both made of nine millimeter structural plywood. Between these two layers are strips of 18 millimeter plywood and rectangular aluminum H-section beams. Exterior grade wood glue and heavy-duty construction adhesive hold everything together, while self-tapping screws and longer structural screws ensure that nothing moves. Aluminum beams provide stiffness without the weight of a full steel frame. We added extra laminated plywood blocks to the front and side joints to ensure that the long screws had a good grip. Then some ratchet straps are used to pull the walls square while they are being constructed, keeping the structure straight while the adhesive cures.

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The roof frame is built in the same beam-and-plywood style, but it is kept separate from the walls to allow for a continuous rubber seal and tent fabric underneath. The roof is made up of two big sheets of aluminum composite panel, which is similar to what is used on some commercial truck bodies. There is one junction in the middle that has been reinforced with extra aluminum angle and 90-degree brackets. MS polymer sealant is used to seal the screw holes and secure the panels together. Four adjustable gas struts raise the roof to around thirty degrees, and the CAD calculations ensured that the mounts were precisely positioned so that everything worked smoothly and remained sturdy once up.

The fabric walls are constructed of 600 denier PVC-coated polyester. This is the same weight as all of their heavy-duty outdoor gear. He utilized paper patterns from the 3D model to cut out bigger panels, and then stitched YKK continuous coil zippers into the window apertures to allow you to unzip the mesh screens and receive some ventilation. He used basting tape and clips to keep the seams in place while we got a heavy duty machine in the house to stitch everything together. After that, we used a soldering iron to create neat holes around the sides and simply screwed some plastic strips cut from garden edging over the top to secure the cloth to the plywood flanges on both the walls and the roof. When the roof is up, the fabric remains taut, and when closed, it folds neatly.

Three large fold-down doors on the sides and back are made of aluminium angle frames held together by rivits and attached to 7mm plywood panels, which were later replaced with matching aluminum composite. Gas struts make it simple to swing each door out to a hundred and ten degrees, just wide enough for a person to stand up without smashing their head. They also include stainless steel locking locks and some bespoke small rods that can be controlled with a single key fob, which is really useful.

The sliding bed platform inside runs on wooden rails; push it forward and it drops over this lower shelf, which subsequently serves as a step when you exit the camper. By the way, it was a relatively inexpensive build, totaling roughly $1500. And the end product is actually quite lightweight; it rests directly above the bed, so nothing scratches the ground as you drive it, and you can even lock the entire thing shut while the truck is parked. With the top up, there’s plenty of headroom and room for two people to sleep, and when you fold everything down, it just looks like a regular old pickup with a truck tray.
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