new fuso on the way ; )

[lehel1]

hello all

well, we finally commited to our new fuso today, hopfully we will pick it up this friday from pioneer fleet services in sacramento. this unit comes with a 14 foot flatbed, and we have also ordered a second fuel tank which we'll have mounted in a week or so (the dealer is still waiting for it to arrive). it will be a stock fuso tank mounted on the other side (drives side). we will also visit a local suspension shop susgested by pioneer while we're in sacramento to see about lengthening the leaf springs and some suspension work.

our plans toward our camper build is to build a 4 point mounting system for the 14 foot flatbed to sit on based on our current unimog camper. as well we will take a trip down to stockton wheel for some super singles all around. hav'nt decided yet on 16" or 19.5" wheels, we'll see what they have to say and do more homework on tire load ratings.

we're fairly new to this forum but i'll try and post pic's and undates on our project.

we plan to use the truck dual purpose, we own a small general store out in the country and haul much of our own supplies. so the 14' flatbed is important part of our desicion, we will also be pulling a 20' utililty trailer rated at 10000 lbs when extra space is needed. our current plans for the camper build is a custom 14' alaskian camper, they have been very helpfull so far and can do a 14' camper. 14' is the limit there happy with or then it will have to have a spliced roof, not recommended.

we are taking a look a a few trailers to mount on the flatbed as well, the most interesting being a small toyhauler call a wolf pack puma. it is a alum frame build and camper part would measure in at 16'. some drawings show this to be a good looking rig on our flatbed, the question is durability.
the nice feature is it has a vertical front end, witha slight angle back right about the height of the fuso cab. i'll try to scan our drawing of this.

anyhow, we're pretty excited we're getting started on our new camper.


cheers lehel and laura

p.s. here is our current unimog expedition camper we have enjoyed for so many years and so many places.
well, i'm have an impossible time to lfigure out how to load pic's on this forum, any help would be greatly appreciated on this ?????

[Gear]

Photo Help.

Upload your photographs to www.photobucket.com it is a free site.
Once the are there put them into a designated file like Unimog or Fuso. This will keep the link from breaking if you decide to add or move photographs around inside of photobucket. Hope this helps. I would like to see the Unimog.

Thanks

Justin

[kerry]

Very cool. I'll be curious about exactly what suspension mods you make and the effects of the changes.

You can also upload pictures by clicking on 'Manage Attachments' when you post, then browsing your computer for the files and uploading directly into the post.

[Tree]

Congratz man! Good luck with the FUSO!

[lehel1]

hiya

ya, tried the attachment photo's again, thats a no go. tell's me i have already uploaded them. i see no other provision for inserting photo's into a post. i accidently loaded one in the unimog section recently but can not figure out how to duplicate that again.

someone has posted some nice pic's under "unimogs heading for vegas" our rig is the 404 camper with the kayaks on top and motorbike on the back.

i hope i can figure out the pic's thing, in any case we'll keep posting our progress in writing.

thanks lehel and laura

[mcgovski]

I just looked at Pioneers website and I could not help but notice there is an '08 FG for sale with a flatbed. Is that yours? Regardless its a great looking rig! Enjoy

Chris

[GroupSe7en]

Lehel - sounds great!

We're in the process of trying to figure out our own FG project.
It will be really interesting to see how you go.

Did you buy it new or pre-ULSD?

Cheers,
Mark

[lehel1]

hi chris

yup, that's our new truck posted at pioneer.

[lehel1]

hello all

well, we've had our new fuso for about two months now and love it. mostly been useing it to haul stuff for the store at the moment and havn't been able to get it out much just for fun.

we have been experimenting with the frame twist on the 14' flatbed we have on the truck and so far we are liking the way the frame twists with the bed on more than with it off. i'm looking more into mounting a camper box on the bed instead of doing a new subframe for a camper. even so far as to rethinking of putting a trailer camper such as the 19' airstream bambi on the bed instead of doing a custom box. the actual airstream camper box measures in at 16' in length which is a nice fit with alittle overhang on our flatbed.

our findings on the truck so far
12-13 mpg if you keep the speed up over 60, 15 + if you keep things under 60. the power curve is outstanding and completely underrated in my opinion. even though i hate to admitt it we've been more than not overloading the truck and have a long 6% grade coming over the siskiyou's mountains here and no hickups at all. also in our first 5000 miles we have not had the deisel particulate burner light come on once, so our fears of stopping often to let it run its cycle seem unfounded at the moment
we have had some stake sides made for the flatbed and that seems to be a good chioce and makes picking up our orders (for our general store) much nicer than always trying to tie everything down.

we just took a trip back down to sacramento thsi week to get the truck its first service at pioneer fleet services (where we bought it) they are also adding a second gas tank for us and doing a suspension upgrade (adding longer springs). they say it might raise the truck about a 1" to a 1 1/2" and we're hoping the plan is to smooth out the ride abit for the camper part of our truck use. thats the stated plan anyway ; )
at the same time we went to stockton wheel and ordered our new 19.5" wheels (we'll have singles all around) and run yokohama tires ty 303. we should have all this togeather in the next couple of weeks so we're excited to see how the truck runs out with the new tires. we have some concerns the oversized tires will rob us alittle in power, but with the extra low gearing in the first 3 gears we're hoping it won't affect the trucks handling to much.

then it'll be on to how and what we'll do for a removable camper. exciting times

this is where were at so far, hope you are all well. i still havent had time to hack my way thru doing pic's here but perhaps sometime in the future

cheers lehel

[kerry]

I like the idea of a trailer on the flatbed. Can you say more about the frame twist with flatbed on and off. I assume it twists less with the bed on. If so, how much less?
Can you also say more about the new springs? Are you changing the spring hanger locations? I noticed on another thread that some people change the location of the cross members on the frame when they change the spring hanger locations.