Home built pickups used to be a lot more common, at least in these parts. Once upon a time, it made some sense to take a Dodge Caravan, say, out behind the woodshed and let the old axe fly. But now that we’re in deep pickup era, why bother? They’re everywhere.
Well, some one did.
It’s pretty effective, for what it is.
The tell-tale is the lack of a tailgate, as it’s got the lower half of a Suburban’s barn doors. That’s actually pretty handy.
The spare is still where it was before.
The tinted plexiglass, or whatever it is, made it impossible to get a shot of the extended cab portion, but it’s just a storage area, not surprisingly.
This is what it takes to get me to stop for one of these.
Nice ideas in this upfit.
Indeed. I like the rear doors especially.
I’ve always wanted to make a pickup out of a Ford Aerostar cargo van. They were available (and most often equipped) with “barn doors”, which I believe is a great alternative to a tailgate in some instances. I’d like to leave the slider functional for side loading, similar to the CorVan Rampside.
“Not sure why the spare is up here now than down under”
Because that’s where it was when this was an SUV. Seeing the fuel filler door location, my guess is the fuel tank is there.
That’s what I first assumed. I Googled for some images that suggested it was underneath like the pickups. Obviously not. Text has been amended.
John, your assumption is correct. The fuel tank is under the back where the tire would go on a pickup. It is quite large in these Suburbans, about 42 US gallons or 160 lines. This gave these trucks pretty impressive range for the times on the highway.
If they would have stopped at making a regular cab, they could have had a later model version of the Chevy Longhorn.
With the seats folded down, these Suburbans had just over 8 feet of cargo length. They could hold many 4×8 sheets with ease. So had the conversion been a like a regular cab, he could have had an 8 foot floor length. The rear cargo area on these were ribbed metal just like a pickup. However, the second seat back formed the forward portion of the cargo floor. So ideally something stronger and more permanent would replace the seat back for it to become a pickup. On this truck it looks like he covered the second seat area with that wooden box rather than make a floor.
Remember the conversion van craze of about 1980-1995? A lot of those wound up ending their lives having been converted (back) to cargo vans. Why? Because for the same dough as a beat-to-death used cargo van, you could buy an old conversion van with lower miles that had been treated well by a family. Gut the interior and cover up the windows – sometimes just spray-painted over – and you’re back to a nice cargo van, maybe even with a raised roof. I see them all the time in the junkyards.
Perhaps the same sort of thing happened here? Good used pickups still command a lot of money, perhaps a Suburban can be had for less? Either way, I’m a fan of this one.
I’m curious whether in time the body filler around the doors will come apart due to body flex. The bottom seam and part of the side of a rear door is visible in one pic.
I was wondering that too, and more. Ford experimented with building unibody pickups (cab and bed as one unit) in the early 60’s. The experiment failed. With use carrying loads, the body wants to flex where the bed joins the cab. This could even lead to problems opening and shutting the doors. This doesn’t happen with a van or Suburban because the roof provides additional structural rigidity.
Looks to me like that vehicle started off as a Suburban. Fuel filler and tail lights are in the wrong position for a truck, in addition to the spare tire. Looks neat.
RAM pretty much offers that tailgate nowadays, although it’s more of a 60/40 or so split. You lose the “workbench” functionality of the tailgate but there are other attributes such as not having to stretch over it. Either way it’s a good solution for this home-built rig, getting a regular tailgate to work correctly would have likely been a bigger chore.
A RAM rep demoed one of those tailgates for me back in December, when I was at a rodeo in Vegas.
The tailgate actually swings out to the sides OR folds down like a regular tailgate, so you get the best of both.
An interesting conversion. The bed is kind of short, but there are plenty of 5 1/2 and 6 1/2 foot beds out there on real trucks. I like the barn door tail gate set up. Now that I’m getting old, I dislike having to stretch over the lowered tail gate to reach a load. A lot of times it’s easier for me to climb up into the bed and move the load onto the tail gate, then climb out and continue unloading. That’s what I liked my old Explorer, easier loading and unloading. I applaud the guy that built this, but it would have been simpler to get a real pick up. I guess that it must have seemed financially worth it to them, Though big SUVs are really cheap right now.
In California if no where else, the Highway Patrol and D.M.V. go bonkers over these because they’re making a commercial vehicle out of a lower taxed passenger vehicle .
I too remember lots and lots of old passenger sedans with the trunk lid removed and often the body cut down to make them into gardeners trucks, well into the late 1980’s in Highland Park was a local guy who took his pristine two tone 1955 Chevy sedan, removed the trunk lid and used a power saw to open the trunk thresh hold until he could bend it back down over the rear bumper….
In the mid 1970’s in Arcadia there was a fantastic Chrysler station wagon from about 1959 that had the roof and side windows removed from aft of the front seat ~ it carried prodigious loads until the Tempe City Sheriffs cited it .
This one looks pretty well done, is it a B.O.F. van or what ? I’d be worried about the possible lack of structural rigidity .
-Nate
Lincoln Blackwood,the wildly popular lux-truck, in some alternate universe, had these hacked off suburban doors for its tailgate.