2016 2500 144” Crew High Roof Build

Made some progress over the last 5 days. I focused on finishing the mid-rear panels above the bed rails. It was a fairly tedious process to create the templates, but got it worked out in the end.


I ended up using 3/4" plywood for the backing because anything less felt too wobbly for my liking. Once the main panels were cut out I laid out the remote controls and power items like lights, dimmers and DC outlets. Then I upholstered both.


I added back in the thinsulate insulation that was taken off when the windows were added. I also felted the upper and bed rail while I was at it.




Final results turned out pretty nice. Pleased with how the template worked. I used three Rivnuts (1/4" x 20) to anchor the panels into place.
Driver's:

Passenger's:


One other item that was updated was the Thule Awning. We initially had two brackets (one set), but I not OK with the amount of play and droop when extending it out. I ordered a second set of brackets and it went from mushy to solid. You can see the four bracket in the below photo:

When posting images from imgur, just add an 'h' at the end of each photo tag and they'll resize to fit the page better.

Looks good!

shouldbeasy said:

When posting images from imgur, just add an 'h' at the end of each photo tag and they'll resize to fit the page better.

Looks good!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I'll give that a try next time.

Made some good progress last weekend. I got the light wiring put together, 10 lights installed into the headliner and trimmed around all the various items. There are two zones / circuits for the lights. The four lights above the bed and the 6 lights in the center cabin. Both will hook up to BlueSea dimmer modules. Trimming the headliner was super time consuming since I didn't want to cut too much off and screw it up! The best tool to keep the fabric from pulling up turned out to just be a plain old box cutter and changing the blade out often.

I still have a little bit of finishing to the side and under the cabinet to cover up the exposed wood backing / furring strips that was used to mount it. I will probably end up covering it in black felt to match the bed rails.

Next up is putting up the lower half of the walls. Planning on using knotty cedar planks.

View from the rear


Headliner trimmed around the front cabinet. The factory rear ac forced it to be mounted a little lower. There is about 1.5" between the bottom of the ac plastic cover and the cabinet door.

I haven't posted in a long while as it got very busy, but this summer I was able to finally find time and "finish" the build! The last component that is being worked on are the thinsulate lined curtains that use bar magnets to attach to the windows.

A few more pictures

Last group including the rear electric control box I made so I could control everything without having to crawl in.

I wanted to figure out an interesting way to mount a mini projector. So I ended up using the "sock" mount used for camera accessories via a cold foot mounting arm. The screen is a cheapy amazon 84" screen that can be held up with magnets.

Over the bed it gets partially unrolled from the roof. This means it can be watched from the front seats comfortably when they are swiveled around to face the rear. The alternate screen mounting location is fully unrolled across the front seats, again held up via magnets, for viewing from the bed. The projector just gets turned around on the same mount to face whichever location is chosen. Adds very little weight and everything gets tucked away without much bulk.