Aluminess Boxes

[carringb]

^^^ That looks great!

And it looks like it retains full range of motion of the doors.

That's one of the things I really dislike about my Reunel, is the doors can't open 180 anymore (same goes for Aluminess). And I removed my door-hinge hinge because it kept failing from fatigue, and also introduce noise into the door since the body is supposed be isolated from the frame.

[daveb]

Originally Posted by JCTex

@ Dave: What is and where did you buy a non-A box with the same o.d.'s as the A-box above.


I'm thinking I might just have all three boxes custom made. The outside uppers can be slanted inward and the door opening just adjusted. I can then get the wider space I need for the tire/recovery gear box.

However, I will still need HEAVY duty swing out arms. Unless anyone knows of other HQ arms that go on a rear ALUMINUM bumper, I guess I'm buying those from Aluniness.

I, too, am going to hang some Roto tanks bt my boxes and doors. I donno gal sizes yet until I see how much room I have. Anyone know any reason why, with appropriate stiffening, I couldn't hang them off the doors instead of the swing away bars?

JC

I had a friend build it for me and it did cost me dearly even by having my buddy build it. I would think it would have been cheaper if I would have had Aluminess just make the box how it is now in the first place but hindsite is 20/20. I did worry about the weight but I run tons of rough trails and it has been rock solid to date. I always make sure the tail gate pin is in and like I posted am installing a damper to heavy it up even more.

The problem is that with the Aluminess bumper you'll need to send the complete bumper in to add extra hinges if you plan to beef it up to haul heavy loads. Mine has four hinges on the box side and 3 on the tire side. They or someone can add extra hinges but you'll need to re-powder coat all over again. I also had to redo the spare tire holder when I moved up to 315 tires. I added extra tail lights under the bumper but also made sure the box didn't totally cover them up.



You might want to look at what Zeta did to his bumper...very heavy duty. I just didn't want to spend the bucks to redo mine. So far so good but his is better.

[JCTex]

@ Dave: Thanks. Good reply. Have you had much problem with the outer corner of your upper galley box catching trees, brush, and stuff? I don't understand your "damper". Detail it a little more for my dumb brain and where are you putting it?

I think now the best way is for me to get Aluminess to make me a bumper with stacked galley boxes with top rail on the passenger side, including the extra hinges you talked about, but install it in the usual place and exposing the tail light as normal. For the tire mount, I'll ask them to beef it up including extra hinge mounts, too.

I'm trying to make use of the now-wasted space above and in front of the tire. I figure I have about 5" above the tire until I reach the top of the stacked galley boxes. A box ~5"H x 35"W x 16"D is NOT insignificant so long as I don't put really heavy stuff up there. The 315 tire should be 13.5" thick. Since the tire hangs down below the bottom of the boxes at little, that still presents available space in front of ~33"H x 35"W x 2.5"D. For most van owners that's tiny, but for off-roaders it's perfect for recovery ropes, shackles, extra winch line, and maybe the hard-to-find-room-for spade on the Pull Pal. Additionally, the "corners" of the tire would be perfect for wheel chocks. Finally, if I could put a little box on top of the tire, I can add rails (without the center) and create a space to haul something wide up there, if ever needed. So, I'm not going to give up on the tire side.

You pointed out if we do any DIY to the Aluminess set-up, we'll have to remove and re-powder coat the whole side. Good point; but in spite of that, I'm going to see about having what I want custom made and added to the Aluminess tire swing away somehow. I need the proven tried-and-true Aluminess swing away pivot, bearings, and center latch. I see no sense in trying to create something that already works fine.

JC

[daveb]

You can always just have them paint rather than powder coat. It was an option. My spare rests slightly on the bumper and you could have Aluminess add a ramp that the tire can sit on if necessary. I don't know what will happen when I put a used tire on the back as a spare but I'm not worried. It was a challenge mounting the 315 but I originally designed the box around it while keeping enough tail light visibility. It was the cars tailgating that had me mount the lights on bars under the bumper. They are LED and very bright day or night.

I'm added a pneumonic spring between my box and ladder. Unless you back into something I'm thinking there is more torque away from the bumper than towards the van. The box is always pulling down and back when loaded with say 20 gallons of fuel. Aluminess worries about overloading and there have been failures. I rarely carry that much fuel plus the other stuff. Mainly I carry a 5-gal propane tank, a 1 gal-propane tank, BBQ, Pul-pal spade, 5-10 gal of water, my propane fire, plus some lightweight tools and what not. The spring will just pull back a little and my hope is to just relieve some of the torque from the tall box on rough roads. The spring came in yesterday and is force 20. Seems about right. I struggled with actually using a damper instead but it would make for a slower opening/closing swing.

Next week I'm having a friend bend some schedule 80 2" aluminum buss bar to hold a platform over the spare for a small box like the jeeps have. I was hoping it could hold something like a porta potty or whatever. Space is space...you need all you can get.

I hate to say it but the type hinges Zeta and catmandu are using might be a better choice. I just didn't want to completely rebuild my bumper when I already had added all the extra hinges years back.