Overlanding setup for the uncivilized/stealth camper

Glocker

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Pretty nice and thorough write up! I've always been intrigued with articles and videos on stealth camping, though I wont have a reason to engage in that myself. I'm going the RTT route in order to be able to store more gear for weekend trips. But I'm in a situation where I will be loading in for a weekend and then loading out. In between my truck will return to daily driver configuration (except I don't actually daily drive it) for errands and such and I want some bed storage capacity. I like the idea that, with your setup, you could pull over to a truck stop, or Walmart, or anywhere really and sleep for a night and no one would be the wiser!
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charwest

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Have you guys considered adding an awning off the side of the topper, so you can spend time outside even when it is raining? It wouldn't necessarily follow your sleek and stealthy overland look unfortunately, but it wouldn't be too bad. We have a 270deg Batwing awning from Rhino Rack that does wonders on our teardrop.

It's also nice for protecting from strong winds and driving rain/snow. It's been a huge saver for us and we are so happy we added it as an option.
I have definitely considered that. I have watched videos several times on the 270 awnings and they are obviously awesome in terms of upgrading the QOL, especially in sun and rain. our current setup is pretty sh*tty in the rain, as anyone can imagine. like future divorce court kinda' stuff:)

however ultimately we decided against it for now. it would require installing both a roof rack plus an awning, and blow the clean look. we are also (me more than my wife.. or maybe its just me...) anal retentive about mpg and i dont love reading it will drop me down another 1 or 2.

i have experimented a little with deployable shades. i took the old silicone coated ripstop tarp i made twenty years ago as my hiking shelter (ancient history!) and played around with a couple adjustable poles and some suction cup attachments.

IMG_1211.jpg


works ok. ok enough that i have just invested in a far larger tarp in the hopes of making something really viable and comfortable. that tarp just came in the mail, and was 6% the cost of a 270 awning. so if it works even 10% as well i'll be making money;)
 
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charwest

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Pretty nice and thorough write up! I've always been intrigued with articles and videos on stealth camping, though I wont have a reason to engage in that myself. I'm going the RTT route in order to be able to store more gear for weekend trips. But I'm in a situation where I will be loading in for a weekend and then loading out. In between my truck will return to daily driver configuration (except I don't actually daily drive it) for errands and such and I want some bed storage capacity. I like the idea that, with your setup, you could pull over to a truck stop, or Walmart, or anywhere really and sleep for a night and no one would be the wiser!
yeah. the irony is that a lot of the 'stealth' thinking that goes into this is basically a waste of time (for me). mostly fueled i think by my distant past where i spent years living out of a car. at that time i cared a lot about whether someone could pick me out in a parking lot.

while it is appealing to both me and my wife that we can just crash at a truck stop or walmart and sleep incognito while crossing the country, the reality is that in 14k miles we have yet to do that even once. mostly because we have been in parts of the country where there is enough ranchland, BLM land, and parks that it just doesn't make sense to suffer under the streetlights when we could sleep under the stars en route.

these days the 'stealthiness' is more useful so that we don't get looks while driving this truck around town, and also while parked at a trailhead it looks like some old truck that someone drove to the trailhead. not some truck that someone is living out of and is Filled With Things.
 
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charwest

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The Cab Redesign:

We never have passengers, and (unfortunately) don't have dogs, so the rear portion of the supercab was reconfigured into designated storage.

You get a significant amount of room back by removing the seats, and I turned the rear wall into modular storage.

For a look at my rear seat delete, check out this thread:

https://www.ranger5g.com/forum/thre...eed-advice-on-sound-proofing.7976/post-146496

So currently, my rear cab has a designated slot for a Yeti cooler that has bolted/buckled attachments behind the driver seat. It can be opened and accessed without removing it from the cab. The middle is where my toolbox sits which also is secured to the rear wall. And the passenger side has three milk crates bolted to the rear wall. these act as clothing and gear storage, and a handful of small bungees hold things in and to them as needed.

IMG_1423.JPG


passenger rear cab: tupperware storage in footwell, milk crates, and camp axe/shovel secured to milk crates. hooks on passenger headrest for baseball hats and headlamps.

IMG_1424.JPG


driver rear cab: slot for toolbox, cooler. binocular case attached to driver headrest.

the milk crates are bolted with m6 bolts and washers to the grid of t-nuts on the rear wall and can be moved or removed if needed.

in the front door storage we have a water bottle each, and various stuff in use while traveling.
driver suicide door has a fire extinguisher (see here: https://www.ranger5g.com/forum/threads/fire-extinguisher-mounting.3666/post-188103).
1605910061267.png


passenger suicide door has bathroom stuff (portable bidet, TP, and the shovel is right there).
 
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Securing those crates to the rear wall board is a great idea - and you got to use those tee nuts again !

The pic below makes me wistful for simpler times when my wife and I used to sleep in the back of the old truck.

Now, I know your set up didn't just happen; you've worked at it and it shows. But let this older guy just say this, you've got all that you need just there - your girl, your truck and you're out there.

Enjoy yourselves, and run with it as long as you can.

img_1211-jpg.jpg
 


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if i was doing it, i would probably cut black black-out cloth to size, and sew a strip of hook velcro to the edges.

...

from a prior incarnation, white colored black-out fabric was a bad idea because from the outside you can more easily tell the "camper" has curtains up. black fabrics tend to look like the windows are tinted or you can't see in.
This is essentially what I've done for years, with black blackout curtains that are affixed above the canopy windows with a long strip of velcro (the canopy is carpetted inside, so velcro sticks well)

The windows have small magnets glued to the fabric, at places where the steel window screws are, so they hold the fabric tight against the remaining three sides of a window.

To store them away, there's a dowel affixed all along the bottom of the fabric. I roll it up, and use another magnetic fixture to hold that rolled-up bundle neatly above the window.

To cover the windows from the rolled up position, I pull the bundle away from the magnets, and the dowel weight causes the curtain to swing down into place. The magnets pretty much automatically pull the curtain tight into place.
 
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charwest

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This is essentially what I've done for years, with black blackout curtains that are affixed above the canopy windows with a long strip of velcro (the canopy is carpetted inside, so velcro sticks well)

The windows have small magnets glued to the fabric, at places where the steel window screws are, so they hold the fabric tight against the remaining three sides of a window.

To store them away, there's a dowel affixed all along the bottom of the fabric. I roll it up, and use another magnetic fixture to hold that rolled-up bundle neatly above the window.

To cover the windows from the rolled up position, I pull the bundle away from the magnets, and the dowel weight causes the curtain to swing down into place. The magnets pretty much automatically pull the curtain tight into place.
thats a really nice setup. the dowel sounds like it makes it really sophisticated, and i never thought of the magnets to screws idea. some folks in steel vehicles use magnets for blackouts, screens, and shades, and i discounted it because of the fiberglass/aluminum cap. but it didnt occur to me the screws might have enough oopmh to make it work. small strong magnets are dirt cheap these days.

magnets are especially tempting as i worry i would tear up the carpet liner with repeated use

if i end up needing curtains, i might just go this route. if for no other reason than to keep the rising sun out of my wife's eyes in the morning.
 
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charwest

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The Kitchen:

IMG_9154.jpg


The kitchen is your basic setup, tossed in the back of a pickup.

the single biggest immediate upgrade to the function of the ranger as a camping accessory for us was putting a sheet of wood on the tailgate. this was mentioned in this thread here:

https://www.ranger5g.com/forum/threads/installing-wood-pane-inside-tailgate-advice.8084/

basically, i cut a 1/4" oak veneer plywood to size, secured it at the top of the liftgate using the four factory sheet metal screws, and at the bottom of the liftgate with a bead of silicone. the sheet metal screws that come with the liftgate have a large flange and would stick out a lot and be pretty ugly, so i hunted through the stock of accent screws at Menards and found screws with a tarnished bronze look, countersunk heads, and- importantly matching threads. not every wood/sheet metal screw of the same size has a truly identical thread and given i am reusing holes in the liftgate with small screws in thin metal i felt it was important to match the thread pitch exactly and avoid stripping an already tenuous hold.

when i first was toying with this plan, other posters suggested replacing the OEM sheet metal screws with riv nuts. that would be a far more elegant/robust solution, but this ended up working well after months of abuse and i dont think i will need to replace this frequently enough to make riv nuts an attractive upgrade.

the plywood was dirt cheap, as a 2x4' piece is sufficient and most big hardware places sell that size piece for 8-10 dollars for craft projects. i cut it to size and routed the edges with a roundover bit to make it prettier, sanded it lightly, and sealed it with leftover deck sealer from the underside of the bed project. this has been great as it does not absorb rain, spills, or food, but preserves the basic wood look.

1606335230112.png


to match the factory screws to the new board, i backed the factory screws out a quarter inch, vigorously marked the heads with pencil, put the board in place and pushed hard so the pencil marked the back of the board. then drill and countersink the holes and replace.

there are no convenient factory holes near the bottom of the liftgate, so initially my plan had been to use double sided tape. the one i bought was too weak, and i wasnt sure how long this plywood would last so to avoid industrial adhesive marks on the tailgate i used a small bead of silicone under the board and this has worked well. when it comes time to replace the board it will be easy to peel the bead off the smooth paint of the tailgate.

after a lot of heavy use, including pulling the unlubricated, unrailed heavy drawer over this board, walking around on it, and generally abusing it its still looking pretty good with only a few small spots where the veneer has come up. however when it eventually dies i would like to replace it with a prettier wood, perhaps a 1/4" bamboo or a baltic birch with no thin vulnerable veneer. unfortunately those were not available from my local places when i was building.

IMG_1576.JPG


this board is not for looks. its a major ergonomic upgrade. it provides a flat surface so that boxes slide over the tailgate, cups and bowls rest flat, it doesn't get hot in the sun when we sit on it, nor does it feel particularly cold in the winter.

alternatives would be to purchase a professionally made plastic tailgate cover, but the wood feels really nice underfoot and I suspect these dark plastic versions would be really hot in the sun, and the light ones would look messy. the wood grain hides the dirt and imperfections of wear and tear.

we keep a large cutting board, which insets into the top of the storage bins that go under the bed.

IMG_1580.JPG


i keep a MSR whisperlite stove (burns white gas or gasoline) in the rearmost section of the pull out drawer, along with a spare bottle of white gas (burns without soot or gas smell), lighters, pot holders, wind shield, etc. the stove sits on a square of aluminum flashing which fits neatly into the slide out drawer without taking any space. It stops stray drops of white gas burning the tailgate wood. It does not get appreciably hot. Even running the stove for thirty minutes doesn’t get the wood hot and there are no char marks after months of use. We typically carry 44oz of fuel which lasts a couple weeks.

IMG_1577.JPG


IMG_1575.JPG


the next chamber has our pots (3), pot cozy, plates, bowls, french press, utensils, and two vacuum double wall cups.

the next chamber has silicone/plastic collapsing tubs and collanders (they accordion flat), dish soap, collapsing bowls and tupperware, silicone scrub brush, more cooking stuff.

the last chamber has tons of nonperishable food and spices. The stuff we rarely use. it can be accessed by pulling the drawer all the way out, which is a little tenuous when its heavy, or through the trapdoor in the bed which opens onto this area.

1610757226847.png


for water we carry a bunch of platypus brand collapsing containers which we use when hiking, for a total of around 8L. We also have the frozen water bottles in the cooler (or occasionally use the melted ice as well). then for primary storage we have two MSR dromedary 10L water bladders which are super robust. they sit in the primary storage chamber next to the food box. One has a shower attachment which we use as a tap for dish washing or dispensing water. If we wanted more water, we could fill up one of the big storage bins with more water bladders, or stash another 5g collapsible container in the bed cutout. in practice, if we need more than the 30+L we just stop taking camp showers for a little while.

For actual showering, we leave the (black colored) dromedary on the roof and it heats up with the sun, and shower with that. We have a small quick drying fabric mat we put down to keep the dirt off our feet while showering.

trash bags (we use the thin plastic ones that come with groceries) hang off the metal bracket/bumper at the side of the tailgate in a convenient position while the tailgate is down.

IMG_9676.jpg


and the fridge:

IMG_1573.JPG


is just a cooler. for ice we typically use frozen water bottles which we drink later, plus or minus ice. it keeps things cold for days in hot temps, or forever in cool temps, and keeps us in vegetables and perishables and cold drinks while on the trail and traveling.

the cooler is bolted to the cab rear wall with seatbelt and seatbelt buckles

IMG_1574.JPG


the first iteration of the cooler attachment used a cam strap, but it was annoying to have to thread and attach it everytime. and bungees were also tricky. but i wanted a secure and robust attachment that would keep this in place in a rollover. so what is a common way to secure heavy things in place during a rollover, but is instantaneous to engage? seatbelts! these came from the local junkyard and are preadjusted to the cooler so it only takes 15 seconds to secure and release the cooler, which makes it easy to pop it out of the truck for use as our camp table (its the perfect height for our low camp chairs).

IMG_8706.jpg


i decided against a real fridge becuase this was simpler and i just didnt think the fridge would be necessary. a real fridge would max out the powerbank we have, but that would be easily fixed by upgrading the solar. we currently only have 80W, but another 150-200 would fit easily on the topper, with a flexible panel which would more than power a fridge all day and remain below the level of the tracks, out of sight and with no wind profile..
 
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Espo78

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What a great thread. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and there is some good stuff in here you only get by getting out and using the setup to learn what works. I just bought my truck and coincidentally one of the must have features was the 6' bed because my wife and I plan on camping out of the back of it. We are mostly just weekend campers but I really like your buildout and may do something similar. I've watched countless youtube videos and most are the same old platform over drawers setup but I really like your notched out corner that adds a lot of usability to the space. As I plan out my storage areas I think I might keep a spot for our trusty 10x10 canopy.

Before I get ahead of myself though I need a topper. ARE was at the top of my list. I have a lot more research to do. Have you considered adding a vented fan to the roof of the canopy? Living in Florida one of my main concerns is the heat and humidity here and I dread that once I get a topper and do a test run it will just be unbearably hot back there and I'll hate it.
 
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charwest

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What a great thread. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and there is some good stuff in here you only get by getting out and using the setup to learn what works. I just bought my truck and coincidentally one of the must have features was the 6' bed because my wife and I plan on camping out of the back of it. We are mostly just weekend campers but I really like your buildout and may do something similar. I've watched countless youtube videos and most are the same old platform over drawers setup but I really like your notched out corner that adds a lot of usability to the space. As I plan out my storage areas I think I might keep a spot for our trusty 10x10 canopy.
Yes, that notch makes a huge difference to us in terms of usability and flexibility. If it weren't the two of us in there, It would be nice to make it even larger. As-is it seems like a good compromise- Plenty of foot room at night. If it were larger I would need a rail or net along the side so that my feet dont fall into the notch at night, or you could have a flip-up board that gives you footroom at night but preserves the open space during the day.

Before I get ahead of myself though I need a topper. ARE was at the top of my list. I have a lot more research to do. Have you considered adding a vented fan to the roof of the canopy? Living in Florida one of my main concerns is the heat and humidity here and I dread that once I get a topper and do a test run it will just be unbearably hot back there and I'll hate it.
I have another thread somewhere about my ARE topper. Short story is I have some buyers remorse about it, and next time would have liked something that sealed better around the liftgate. ARE makes plenty of types of toppers and may have modified their design as well. and another possibility about why our build/service sucked is that we bought during national covid shutdowns which may or may not currently apply.

i have considered a roof vent. ultimately never seriously, because by and large we have been living out of the truck in places where it is cool at night, and we never ever spend time in the bed during the daytime. the once or twice its too hot in the bed i have a nice USB fan that plugs into the power bank and clips to the bedrail and works well.

Having the window at the head of the topper is key to improving airflow around your face, although it has no screen.

it would be even better if the windows we have in the topper opened the other direction. as-is, when we slide the windows open, the screened/open area is at the foot of the bed. however, you want the breeze on your face and chest when its hot, so that is annoying. and also, it means if you have the windows slid all the way open you need to get back into the bed to close them. having them reversed would fix both of those problems, but i dont know whether that is possible.

if i were to buy the same topper again, i would get the gullwing version windows. a little pricier and bulkier, but still elegant and would give us massive airflow in the times it isn't buggy (which is usually, and still have smaller windows to slide open for lesser airlfow when it is buggy.

a roof vent would be nice, especially with a fan, but might be noisy near your face (remember how close you are to the topper roof in this setup, unlike in a van or RV which is the typical roof vent/fan setup). i dont have anything against it i guess, but i like the idea of being able to mount a big solar panel or roof rack or wahtever i want up there and preserve the clean 'stealth' look.

if you didnt care about that, a neat option would be to put in a large flip up skylight over your head, which would give you a big sky view, lots of ventilation, and when open would fix the low headspace problem which i think will be a dealbreaker for a lot of folks with this setup. something like this: https://www.lewmar.com/node/11297 (plenty of options out there for the boat market, but you would have to make your own screen if in bug territory)

i feel you, though. we are actually moving to the tropics soon. when (if?) the truck arrives we will try it out. although we dont expect to be doing much camping for a while.
 
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charwest

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the first iteration of the cooler attachment used a cam strap, but it was annoying to have to thread and attach it everytime. and bungees were also tricky. but i wanted a secure and robust attachment that would keep this in place in a rollover. so what is a common way to secure heavy things in place during a rollover, but is instantaneous to engage? seatbelts! these came from the local junkyard and are preadjusted to the cooler so it only takes 15 seconds to secure and release the cooler, which makes it easy to pop it out of the truck for use as our camp table (its the perfect height for our low camp chairs).
one note on the cooler: one thing that does annoy us about this setup (using an in-cab cooler with ice as our fridge) is how much noise it makes when offroading. on the first day it doesnt matter much as everything is still frozen, but as the ice melts and you have an ice-food-water slushy mix in there starting on day two, when offroading it makes a lot of noise while slushing back and forth as we rock-crawl and muck around on off camber terrain. to fix this, you could probably drain the water, but we dont do this to preserve as much cooling potential as possible (and we can use the water if we want).

however with our setup, you can strap the cooler into the bed if you want. it straps reasonably nicely between the two OEM load attachment points in the bed cutout. for aggressive offroading, i would pad between the cooler and the bedwall (with a folded blanket or big jacket) so it isnt banging against the bedwall, and use some aggressive cam straps or bungees.

img_1573-jpg.jpg


our cooler is the yeti roadie 24
https://www.yeti.com/en_US/hard-coolers/roadie-24-hard-cooler/YR24.html

we like this one because its big enough for our purposes, fits behind the drivers seat with lid opening out the suicide door (ie: easy access by opening suicide door, dont have to take cooler out of cab or fight the drivers seat to reach in), fits a bottle of wine upright (wife says thank you), and seems to do a decent job keeping things cool. there are non-yeti (ie, not ridiculously expensive) versions which i bet would also do fine. an advantage to the non-yeti versions is that many have a drain plug, which would make it easier to drain water. the yeti insulation material does not seem to be anything magic and i dont know why a walmart brand cooler wouldnt do a great functional job. honestly we chose the yeti because it had cleaner lines, was easier to clean, and the build quality was better, but with no fantasy that the cooler function would be any better.
 
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Be careful, they can end up taking up more space than you think. haha This summer when we had 3 dogs and 2 humans in our little teardrop, it was a tight squeeze and not the best sleep I've had. haha
My single 17lb dog does a great job of taking up an uncomfortable amount of space. He's not one to sleep by our feet. Nope. He likes to be right about at stomach level, firmly pressed against one or both of us.

[charwest, post: 188672, member: 5361"]
yeah. the irony is that a lot of the 'stealth' thinking that goes into this is basically a waste of time (for me). mostly fueled i think by my distant past where i spent years living out of a car. at that time i cared a lot about whether someone could pick me out in a parking lot.

while it is appealing to both me and my wife that we can just crash at a truck stop or walmart and sleep incognito while crossing the country, the reality is that in 14k miles we have yet to do that even once. mostly because we have been in parts of the country where there is enough ranchland, BLM land, and parks that it just doesn't make sense to suffer under the streetlights when we could sleep under the stars en route.

these days the 'stealthiness' is more useful so that we don't get looks while driving this truck around town, and also while parked at a trailhead it looks like some old truck that someone drove to the trailhead. not some truck that someone is living out of and is Filled With Things.
[/QUOTE]

I've absolutely done a good bit of dirtbag camping in random spots. I care a whole lot less about being stealthy, honestly. Most of the time, even in a fairly low key looking vehicle, it's obvious to me if someone is dirtbag camping. I have a teardrop camper that works in a similar vein as the1mrb, and I've camped at truckstops, trailhead parking lots, etc. I almost always have gear along for the ride, and I'm usually dealing with big stuff like multiple mountain bikes and boats. A roof rack is necessary for boats. The bikes go in the bed of the truck, but it's an open bed.

I'm definitely with you on the mpg obsession. haha I hate losing 1mpg, let alone more. Winter is so frustrating, getting the mileage down into the high teens with the winter fuel blend and cold temps. So I don't blame you there. I have a personal goal of trying to do a full tank of 30+mpg. And my wife doesn't really care either. haha I probably wouldn't add it to my truck either. haha The nice thing about ours being on the camper is that it still basically sits below the truck roof line behind, especially with the topper on.

Adding something that can be fully unpacked, repacked, and stored inside is definitely a good way to go, if you can make it work. We also have a Clam popup tent as well for bug protection in the notoriously buggy northwoods, as well as additional rain protection, and we love that too. Doesn't fit in the crew cab 5' bed too well though since it's 5' 6" tall, so makes it awkward to fit and bring along.

I'll be interested to see the final result of your homemade awning/shelter!
I'm not convinced the Ranger suffers so much from bare roof rack bars. I've got a Yakima Overhaul HD and I'm convinced that I'll be able to hit a 30mpg average for a full tank in the summertime. Not going to get there with winter gas, for sure, but I've been close enough at this point that I think I can get there.

I've definitely got a Clam shelter on my list. Did a trip this year where I had persistent heavy wind for DAYS and the lack of wind protection was really trying. The Clam was highly recommended as being a solid option for those conditions. I'm just not comfortable deploying my Foxwing in stuff like that, even if I had side walls (though I do plan to get a couple wall panels).
 
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charwest

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IMG_0940.jpg

sealing the bed:

For folks that DO plan to live in the bed with a topper, or are considering it, i think it might be useful to review how I approached sealing the bed.

Preface: this is our first truck, and we previously were doing our adventuring out of a lightly converted minivan. We chose the ranger to get us outside because we no longer wanted to be limited by road quality (or lack of road at all, at times) and chose against an SUV because they were generally more expensive with lesser MPG for a similar offroad capability (4runner, etc) or werent big enough to live out of. We knew we would miss the single-room ergonomics of a van/SUV for overlanding. I sorely miss the ease of moving between the front seats and the living area in the minivan, especially when its raining, cold, etc. And the additional noise and storage space and rear visibility loss from two unwanted walls between the cab and bed is a bummer. These were small tradeoffs for the freedom to explore the expansive undeveloped roads with our house, but I have to admit I underestimated the difficulty of keeping the outside outside. Some folks have noted the ranger bed is especially hard to seal- it's my first so I can't compare. I also think our ARE topper is unnecessarily poorly engineered to make a seal, but that could be because we got a crappy build or an early model, or a model ill-suited to our purposes (see my topper thread here: https://www.ranger5g.com/forum/threads/my-new-are-topper-installed-today-is-this-right.7913/).



We live in the bed. Without a zipped RTT or a sealed space inside the OEM hermetically sealed compartment of a van/SUV, sealing every little crack makes a difference. Otherwise the road dust, puddle mud, rain, wind blown debris, and bugs and rodents will be in your personal space, your wife will (may?) be unhappy, and you will spend a lot of time brushing sand off your sheets before bedtime. And it is a pain in the butt to clean the inside of the bed after you build it out like this, so it's all about prevention..

First, before you even get the topper on, the bed itself has a lot of holes in it. This is never more apparent than in our un-bedlined truck. If you have a bedliner most of these will likely be sealed for you, but we do not, which was good in terms of building onto the truck and making it easy for our stuff to slide in and out of the storage chambers. Sealing the holes in our bed required a varied approach: there are various holes in the sheet metal, some empty bolt holes for aftermarket add-ons (bed extenders, etc) and empty load attachment points, and then there are awkward complex gaps at interfaces in the bed and around the tailgate. Closing the small sheet metal holes is an easy place to start. Initially, my plan was to find premade plugs that fit the various holes, and there are threads on that here (https://www.ranger5g.com/forum/thre...-for-these-holes-in-the-bed.8376/#post-155195, https://www.ranger5g.com/forum/threads/in-search-of-bed-box-plugs.7056/, https://www.ranger5g.com/forum/threads/bolt-holes-near-cab-in-cargo-area.8615/#post-156535). I started down that path, and did use a box of cheap assorted firewall plugs from amazon to plug half of them, but the oval holes, and some offsize holes meant there was going to be escalating orders and costs. I lost interest in this when I realized what a great job white electrical tape did- it holds up across the wide temperatures i travel in, matches our white paint making the holes basically invisible in the low light inside the bed, and i can cover any shape and size.

Basically all drilled/tapped holes I filled with the appropriate metric bolt, with grease on the threads to make it easier to remove in the future and hopefully cut down on some corrosion.

one problem hole was the large oval hole i had wires going into from under the bed (with the 12v wires from the battery). i didnt feel like buying new plugs from the dealer for this invisible spot (under the bed) just to cut holes in them, so i just left it empty. bad idea- dust billows up from the road into the bedwall and into this gap easily. now it is sealed nicely with a chunk of leftover memory foam from the mattress which forms around it and seals nicely, after a couple months of use.

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a couple linear gaps in the rear top of the bed were covered with electrical tape, and then the large gaps- in the top four corners of the bed, and the tailgate itself at the corners at the bottom had large gaps that i filled in with 'great stuff' brand 'pond and stone' spray foam (perhaps more up to handling the elements, and has a black color which fits the general look of the truck better than the yellow color of typical spray foam. just a few squirts, only enough to seal the gap, and intentionally NOT enough to make a larger hidden spray foam collection in the bed wall that might be a future rodent abode. i used a knife to trim it back to a reasonable contour after it expanded.

Note that spray foam was also used for two large gaps in the bottom corners of the liftgate that could not be sealed with the rubber strips.

The liftgate was sealed with a kit. We bought this one from amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YF5BL8M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

it is decent. i would mention that it took me far more than three suggested tries sticking and unstucking and sticking to get them aligned right, as the way the liftgate closes it is very difficult to get the sealing strip to be compressed, but not stick out and make the sealer strip squeeze out around the edges and look ugly. After many months, super hot temps, a ton of dust and offroading, they are still sticking in place and sealing well. The one thing I would say is that i was applying a little light tension to the strip while applying it to lay it down straight and over a month of hot weather after applying it it retracted a little. This has only mattered where there is an interrupted strip of sealer along the floor liftgate/bed interface, where there is a larger strip on the sides, then a long strip of medium strip in the middle. The retraction has left a 1/4" gap at each interface that i don't like looking at.

IMG_1411.jpg

it does let a little dust in while offroading (most would consider this trivial, but my wife is very.. sensitive) and i could close it with a little silicone, but i am tempted to leave it as-is as it will let water that collect in the bed drain if we are unlucky enough to get into that situation.

The last spot are the gaps in the front of the bed along the floor. These are abotu 1/4" and too small for mice to get in. small bugs might, and we definitely get dust in there, but it is less dust in those gaps than the gaps around the liftgate for whatever reason. I could lay a bead of silicone down to seal these easily, but i liked the idea of having them open to allow drainage if the bed gets water in it. so i temporarily sealed these by laying a strip of memory foam about 2x2" (leftovers from the offcuts from our memory foam on the bed) across the front, and these stay in place with the storage bins and drawers pressing up against them. in months of use they have not moved. they keep 99.9% of the dust out, although admittedly i am not sure they would really let water drain out all that well.

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this is the dust collected under the memory foam "seal" at the front floor, after a couple months of regular outside and dusty road use.

then comes the topper.

in preparing for the topper, i ran a thin bead of clear silicone around the entire edge of the bedrail, where the plastic bedrail meets the outside of the truck. this would probably attract dust and look ugly with the topper off, but the topper lip hides it.

then the topper goes on. as noted elsewhere and by every topper person we spoke to, the ranger is a difficult bed to put a cap on, because it isnt one flat bedrail, but has a dip in the front, and because of tolerance issues ARE (and perhaps other companies) dont make a tight fit, so there is weird large gap in the corners at the front, and you need topper sealing tape of varying heights to make it seal all the way around, and subsequently have gaps between the sealing tapes. the side rails have one layer of foam strip, and the front has about three, and it still doesnt conform, so eventually the guys who put the topper in just gooped a bunch of silicone on it to seal it. it works, but it means the topper is basically glued on in the two front corners and if we wanted to reposition the topper or put it on and off it would probably tear the sealing tape and make us start over sealing the front side of the topper every time. not satisfactory for people who put the topper on and off. a better solution might be some of the high-volume topper sealers available online, or putting a chunk of very soft foam in those corners and let the topper compress it. i bet some of the garage door sealer products i see in the big hardware stores would work, as they seem robust, compressible, and tall.

the liftgate on the topper has a good seal at the top and sides, and a nice overlap and gasket at the lower lip, but the bottom corners have a wide gap and a junky fit at least on our model. these let in quite a bit of dust, and rain when the angle or speed is right. for the first few months, we dealt with this by shoving a rag into each corner of the liftgate, sittting partly on top of the bedrail, and it keeps out 75% of the dust and gets soaked in the rain and we just dry it or wring it out. then I played around with the many bits of sealing foams tapes and whatnot that i had lying around and never made a satisfactory solution here. Especially as the topper on our truck doesn't fit exactly straight, but gets a better fit at a slight angle, so the two sides arent exactly symmetric. ultimately i made a decent seal with a piece of closed cell foam that was originally pipe insulation, and silicone glue.

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but it isn't robust and looks a little goofy. after a few weeks of use one already ripped, and i would probably have to replace them a couple times a season to make this work. i would be eager for better ideas for this spot, perhaps revisiting the garage door and window sealing aisle at home depot is in order. decent photos of that interface and the gap can be found at the end of my ARE topper thread. https://www.ranger5g.com/forum/thre...nstalled-today-is-this-right.7913/post-157333

finally- sealing the cab. well, obviously its pretty good as-is, but then you start running wires and antennas into it and motivated critters can get in if they want to. Those issues are sussed out in other threads. thankfully the cab isnt a problem for us.

final result:

dust: barely any. after a long day banging around on dusty roads there is enough that it lays a fine coating on the foot of the bed and along the liftgate, but not enough that most people would be annoyed.

water: after a hard rain or driving on the highway in the rain it will let an Oz or two of water in along the tailgate/liftgate gaps (less when the homemade gap seals are working). this is controlled well with a rag, or a wipe after a drive. Not ideal though.

1610066637386.png

after a heavy rain and some driving you can see the water rolling down the bedwall after we open the tailgate. note this is before i put the little foam gap fillers in.

rodents: mice can get into the cab as-is. with the tailgate down mice and rats can get into the bed (they seem to make their way up the wheels to the underbed stuff to the liftgate /bed gap and in. since figuring this out, when we are in places that see camper traffic (and therefore the rats and mice have figured out where the good stuff is) we close the liftgate behind us at night and have never had a problem since.
 
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Espo78

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I'm disappointed to learn of all the trouble sealing up the bed for a topper as it was one of the main things I planned on doing with this truck. I had looked at a "bedrug" for the inside and I'm hoping one of those will help keep most of the dust out of it aside from where the topper seals at the front of the bed and the tailgate. We'll see.
 
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charwest

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I'm disappointed to learn of all the trouble sealing up the bed for a topper as it was one of the main things I planned on doing with this truck. I had looked at a "bedrug" for the inside and I'm hoping one of those will help keep most of the dust out of it aside from where the topper seals at the front of the bed and the tailgate. We'll see.
if you accept my final end point, and just do what i did instead of mucking around and experimenting like i did it might not be a big deal. with electrical tape, a can of sprayfoam, and the twenty dollar rubber weather strip kit you could be done in 45 minutes. shoving some cut pieces of rubber seal into the large gaps might avoid sprayfoam if you are concerned abotu that step.

the silicone bead around the bed rail i suspect helps, but perhaps that was an unnecessary step, and replacing the threaded holes with bolts instead of just using more electrical tape doesn't functionally improve anything. regarding the silicone aroudn the bedrail- i didnt want to chance finding out if it mattered or not, so i just did it, as moving the topper on and off wasnt something my wife and i planned to do, and we will take anything we can get to limit the dust intrusion.

i strongly recommend that if you have a dealer put the topper on (that seems to be the MO) you make a big stink about them getting it right. honestly now that i know what i do i probably would have elected to seal the topper myself to the bedrail- basically go home with whatever they do (no silicone glue!) then do some measurements and go to home depot/online to pick out the ideal garage door and window seals and topper seals to make a good fit with circumferential compression and no gaps

i earnestly hope for your sake and everyone else that ARE and the other companies do a better job with their design than my particular model- like i said we might just have had a bad run or an early run. it didn't have to be this complicated. but much of that is Ford's fault. there just isnt a good reason why they had to make a dip in the forward bedwall/bulkhead, and it cocks up all future topper fittings.
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