sparrow
5th December 2013, 01:38 PM
Hey guys,
I've been looking at getting a bigger tray for my Gq for a while now, as the tray that it currently has is a bit impractical for me. I was torn between buying a secondhand tray or building one up from scratch myself, and was leaning towards building one just for the experience. The same day I was about to order the steel for the build I found a 93' GQ tray on gumtree for $50. Perfect. It needs the floor and headboard plate replacing as well as a good sandblast/re-paint but apart from one cracked bearer its in reasonable condition for the price. Its now sitting on some 44 gallon drums in the backyard waiting to be worked on.
Seeing as the whole reason for re-doing this tray is to put a canopy on the back, I thought I should ask some advice regarding the canopy's proposed layout. It will be a standard 1800mm x 2400mm tray and the pod will only be slightly shorted length-ways. My main concern with the design is that most of the weight will be distributed on the driver's side of the tray. Should I be concerned about the suspension being affected by this? I'm planning on adding a roof-rack to the pod and if need be I can load up the heavier items on the other side to compensate for the weight.
In saying this, my GQ has heavy duty leaf springs (ex-mining truck) and at MOST there might be 150 - 200 kg (horse tack, 20+kg bags of horse feed, jerry cans etc) on the driver's side alone, not including the pod itself.
Attached is a couple of diagrams for the MK1 layout.
Cheers,
Sparrow
I've been looking at getting a bigger tray for my Gq for a while now, as the tray that it currently has is a bit impractical for me. I was torn between buying a secondhand tray or building one up from scratch myself, and was leaning towards building one just for the experience. The same day I was about to order the steel for the build I found a 93' GQ tray on gumtree for $50. Perfect. It needs the floor and headboard plate replacing as well as a good sandblast/re-paint but apart from one cracked bearer its in reasonable condition for the price. Its now sitting on some 44 gallon drums in the backyard waiting to be worked on.
Seeing as the whole reason for re-doing this tray is to put a canopy on the back, I thought I should ask some advice regarding the canopy's proposed layout. It will be a standard 1800mm x 2400mm tray and the pod will only be slightly shorted length-ways. My main concern with the design is that most of the weight will be distributed on the driver's side of the tray. Should I be concerned about the suspension being affected by this? I'm planning on adding a roof-rack to the pod and if need be I can load up the heavier items on the other side to compensate for the weight.
In saying this, my GQ has heavy duty leaf springs (ex-mining truck) and at MOST there might be 150 - 200 kg (horse tack, 20+kg bags of horse feed, jerry cans etc) on the driver's side alone, not including the pod itself.
Attached is a couple of diagrams for the MK1 layout.
Cheers,
Sparrow