PEASHOOTER's M109A3 CAMPER Build Thread

Gorgeous truck, fantastic work, and phenomenal attention to detail. The only thing I'm miffed about is that I found out you just sold your last set of adapter plates two weeks before I bought my truck. DRAT!


; )

Yea, I was looking into buying some of his adaptor plates in the future and his final sale out, caught me off guard.

I think a lot of us were sitting on the fence and he got tired of waiting for us to support his effort.

peashooter said:

yes, I traded some items for a new 18" steering wheel from the a3 trucks. It is more comfy since it's got some cushion to the wheel. It does give you an extra inch of belly room also which isn't much but every bit helps in the deuce. My truck came with air assist steering and I've never driven a deuce without it so I don't know what the effort would be like for a "regular" unassisted steering deuce when using the smaller 18" wheel.

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Thanks peashooter.

I'm still trying to get used to my air assist steering, as I drove my truck for 4 years on the stock NDTs with no assist. Last week I drove my truck to Boyce Equipment (16 miles) for them to fix a broken locator pin on the front axle. So I drove with the air-assist turned off. It was my first time driving without the air-assist but with the new Goodyear G177 tires. The truck was noticeably easier to steer on the radials than on the stock bias ply NDTs.

Mike929 said:

Yea, I was looking into buying some of his adaptor plates in the future and his final sale out, caught me off guard.

I think a lot of us were sitting on the fence and he got tired of waiting for us to support his effort.

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, Actually, it was sort of a last minute decision to quit making the adapter plates (at least for now). Sales have dropped off significantly since I think most people who wanted them already got them. The market for Deuces and deuce accessories in general has taken quite a dive in the recent years since GL basically liquidated all the stock of them and started selling the 5-tons.
There are so many other people selling adapters on ebay now for the same price or less than I was selling them for, and I had a few material price increases over the years without raising my prices. It got to a point where the effort of making and packaging them was starting to not feel worth the dwindling profit. I made well over 20,000 lbs worth of these adapters, each one handled multiple times by me so my hands have more aches than they should have at my age. The Fedex guys despise coming to my house to pick up the packages I'm sure, and I even needed to replace the rear wheel bearings on the minivan that I was using to pick up the material from the laser vendor due to all the trips with 600 lbs of adapters in back

You've been such a staple of quality and worthwhile upgrades it's just the natural human reaction to change.

Well, tell me this... is there a way I can identify plates you made over others? I may just end up buying a set of A3 wheels, but if I don't find a set soon, I'm just going to go the MRAP route. I'll start prowling the classifieds...

lelandEOD said:

Well, tell me this... is there a way I can identify plates you made over others? I may just end up buying a set of A3 wheels, but if I don't find a set soon, I'm just going to go the MRAP route. I'll start prowling the classifieds...

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I think the only noticeable difference with the adapters I made is that mine had 6 notches evenly spaced on the outer edge like you can see in the below picture. They are only there to help with fixturing when being milled. The first 40 adapters I made didn't have these but they had alignment pins in them, but I'm sure you wont see those around. Below are some various pictures showing the different adapters (also showing the short lived "multi-fit" adapter that fit 3 different 5 ton wheels).

Not too much to update on the truck, but here are some pics of a new battery disconnect switch and upcoming projects:

I winterized the truck the other day and realized my battery disconnect switch wasn't disconnecting anymore. I saw some rust on the bottom of the switch so I assume either the contacts welded together or rusted together (or a bit of both). I bought a new higher amp unit from Amazon. Its a Blue Sea Systems unit w/Key part number 6005. It is nicer than the previous one from POST 15.



Also a member was kind enough to put up a posting telling that he found some replacement M109 van box screens on the sportsman's guide website. I had been looking for some replacement screen units a while back but couldn't find any (except ebay had some for $100 ea!). Sportsman's guide had them for like $16/ea w/free shipping, couldn't beat that!



Also I decided to get a surplus folding MRAP step from Sportsman's guide (I think it was around $60 w/free shipping!). I had hoped to use this for some type of boarding ladder/step thing for the trailer but its quite a bit larger than I expected...... so I'm not sure what I'll be using it for yet.


Lastly, I started getting some parts for the trailer. I think I'll be adding/making a bike rack for on top of the cargo box cover (CBC) and also wanted to add some cargo doors to help make it easier to get things in and out of the trailer. I found ebay has a giant selection of new and new take off rv cargo doors. I just wanted to find something with the nice slam latches and a keylock that would fit between the CBC's aluminum support framing so I wouldn't need to cut into that. I found a couple of these puppies for cheap. You can see in the trailer picture below where I plan on cutting out to put the door (1 on each side). Also I plan to put a larger door on the front of the CBC box as part of the future "kid's bunk house" conversion of the trailer.

Good find on those windows

This is an awesome idea, how much did it cost you?

peashooter said:

Here are some more pictures of revised supports that hold up the deck/platform between the truck and trailer (deck folds down so we dont need to unhook the trailer from the truck). Platform idea courtesy of Lowtech.
Previously the support arms were attached to the deck and could flop around while driving. The new design has them attached to the trailer and they fold up to connect them to the deck when its "deployed".
I also made some quick mounts for the scissors ladder. There are mounts on both sides of the deck so we can quickly attach the scissors ladder to either side of the deck. There are also mounts on both sides to attach the military style ladder that comes with the M109s.

This is what the deck support arms looked like before:
View attachment 580406

This is what the revised setup looks like:

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I think you should consider selling your plate CAD file to individual buyers and allow them to source a local cutter. Would allow to get a few bucks for each sale and give fellow SS members a little comfort knowing they weren't relying on a questionable plate design. I know I would buy the CAD file for $5-10 just in case I decide to make some in the future. Unfortunately some of the cheaper kits were cut using poor quality plasma cutters, improperly tuned or require a ton of clean up.
Love the thread, read the whole thing through and I don't even have my deuce yet.....

Wow nice build so far....Hard to hide a 2 1/2 next to the garage..Nice set up and the attenation to detail..WOW...

This weekend my family and I went and visited a local SS member (HOEFLER) who has a fun collection of MVs. I just asked if I could come see his MK48, but he let me drive it! It was an absolute thrill to drive and we had a great couple hours visiting with him. He also let me drive one of his 5-tons which was also a new experience for me. Just like everyone says, the 5 tons certainly are more comfortable and a far nicer ride than the deuce.
As far as the MK48 goes, I was amazed at how nimble that truck was. Having the front 2 axles steer plus the articulating front power unit, it really lets that giant truck snake around things well. I'm not sure what the turning radius of it is, but I cant imagine its too much worse than a deuce.

Hey Aaron,
Thanks for coming up. You have a great family and I enjoyed all of your company.
Pete

I haven't given my truck much attention lately but I have been following "LINO" and his well done projects. One of his upcoming projects is to install a higher output air compressor (double the output) and extra air tank. His info on this starts HERE.
So with the idea and info from LINO, I found an air compressor that should fit. Of course our Deuces use a somewhat odd one in that they are considered a "4 hole, base mount" compressor but the kicker is they are also "base oil fed". So their is a hole on the bottom base of the compressor flange where the oil is supplied to from the engine.
I got lucky and found a compressor with this, Lino found a compressor without the base oil hole so he will probably be drilling the hole. I'll post pics of that oil routing in another post incase they help anyone else out.

Below are some pics of the compressor when I got it (all black). Then I bought what I hope to be the best suited manifold kits for the deuce: outlet manifold (Haldex SN3711AH), I chose a filtered intake manifold for now (Haldex KN19040) but those who are doing the fording kits will want something different. I added the manifold kits, and then painted it green. I found the new/rebuilt compressor on ebay for $100 shipped, unfortunately I ended up spending about that for the set of manifold kits since I couldn't find any deals on those.

The compressor I got was a Midland KN13060 but I think Midland sold off this division to Haldex so that's who has them now. Lino and I are hoping these EL1300 series compressors are a good fit. You can find the Haldex compressor catalog HERE

-Stock compressors are about 7.4 cfm
-These EL1300 units are 13cfm.
-There are also EL1600 units that are supposedly high output versions of the EL1300 and they put out 16cfm.

The last picture is the larger air tank that I plan on adding to the truck. ($60 shipped off ebay!, another find by Lino)

some pictures of the compressor and dimensions related to the base oil feed supply port.

This build has blown my mind! Amazing job and thanks for taking the time to share everything.

How many gallons is the larger air tank that you got?

Another Ahab said:

How many gallons is the larger air tank that you got?

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Good question, I'm not really sure. The tank is NSN: 2530-01-562-4624, the ebay description says its 9"x23" so that would make it about 6 gallons...... I'm not really sure what the stock size tanks are off hand.

Very nice job!!!
I will be using some of your ideas