Project: Dually Conversion on the Pickup—Swing Out Brackets on the Camper & Fenders bondo-ed

Well, its been a little over a month since I’ve been able to make any headway on my dually conversion project.

When I left off, the fenders had just been bolted on and the truck was driven home after a couple test drives to confirm that the brake shoes in the rear were at the exactly correct position.

Since then, the truck really hasn’t moved other than to be moved out of the way to mow the grass.

Now, that has changed .

Over the last couple days, I finished a couple tasks on this project.

First, I got some old Hi-Jacker swing out brackets off of craigslist for $100. Took them over to Terry’s, had him beef up them up a bit, painted them white and then bolted them on the camper.

Discovered that the stock swing out brackets only gave me 3/4” between the jack and the dually fender to load and unload (Truck is 94" wide, Camper with the stock swing-out brackets was 95 1/2" between the jacks). I’d much rather not have to perform a NASA grade maneuver every time I go to load, so a few weeks later, over the fourth of July weekend to be exact, I returned down south and had Terry cut me two 3” wide x 14”tall x 3/16” thick hunks of plate steel, which I drilled, painted and then bolted onto the swing out brackets and onto which I bolted the jacks.

I now have an 1 1/2” of additional clearance on each side to squeeze my truck through. I’ll still need to watch, but the tolerances are nowhere near as tight .

Now, all I need to do is call Jay over at Torklift and get the parts I need to make those Wobbl-stopprs hinged at the jack mount point, and I should be able to slide under the camper as smooth as greased lightning .

The next thing I did was used the majority of a can of Bondo-Glass to fill in any gaps and imperfections in the fenders so that they are now perfectly matched to the truck’s body. The bondo was still tacky when I left to write this blog entry, so I’ll wait till tomorrow before attempting to sand the fiberglass down smooth.

I also took this full truck view picture as I realized there wasn’t really a good set back view of the truck with the fenders installed.

Please forgive the smudge in the center of the lense, had no clue it was there until I went to upload the pictures!