Any idea what a used truck topper will run. just want something basic so when i go to the coast i can throw in on and dont have to bring a tent. Im even considering those ladder carriers and tarping the beyotch into a tent.

 

if it's seriously just cause you wanna go to coast and camp in it...and you're actually considering throwing a tarp over a ladder rack...go to home depot and buy some black pipe and make something. i had a 93 dakota and made the ladder rack for it. just utilize those square holes on the bed rail. build it, assemble it when you've arrived where you're at, throw that sumbitch into bedrail holes.../profit

and seriously....if you make it liek that..and you only use it/screw it together when you need a cool "tent", you could make it like 6feet tall...

 

you know thats a damn good idea, gonna go draw up some plans. PVC pipe will prob work the best, 2 or 3 inch should be sturdy enough, prob go with 3 inch since it can get real windy. And yeah ill make it 6 and half feet tall (im 6,4)

 

awesome. my ladder rack was two of these things, then just some pipe and some unions to connect the two. so, this awesome drawing below is what was on each side of my old truck...and only had one bar connecting the two...cause i was using like 2" black pipe, and making more than one across was unnecesarrly...all the crossbar does is hold them ridgid. i wish i had a picture of my old truck's rack..it was quite awesome.

 

we should make a new rule, that all diagrams on the site, have to be like that.

That does look like it would work great for what you wanna do though

 

that drawing was too advanced, whats up with it not being black and white???

ill take pics if i decide to make it. I'm moving back to fl so i wouldnt be camping out at the beach since i would be about 10 minutes from the beach. here in texas, i live in san antonio and go to north padre island (corpus christi) so its a 2 hour drive there, 1 -2 hour drive on the beach (about 40 miles of beach where 4x4 only signs are posted) so you dont want to just spend a few hours there. so we'll see how the weather is, right now corpus is around mid 70's for the hight but still getting in the high 50's low 60's at night.