So, how did we get to the decision of a Turtleback? I had set the truck up for me and my wife Shannon to be a stand-alone, self-contained rig. Homemade bed rack, RTT, basket up top, Pelican case made into a chuck box/kitchen. Not much is readily available for H3T's. Sure, the 22's, chrome this and that is available but not much useable stuff. So I pulled my back seat and built a platform to hold my ARB fridge and NL Battery pack. We used the open space for day packs and camera stuff, it worked great! Then my wife told me we were having a boy (Yes......I know how that happens!!).
I realized I had to put the seat back in (truck is also my DD). The wife wanted to continue with our creature comforts. So talking with the her I laid out the options. The H3T has a one off bed, the dimensions will not allow it to fit much off the shelf, no flip-pac, no Phoenix or FWC camper, unless we wanted to go custom....read $$$$$$$$$$! We looked at some purpose built campers, again, cost was out there. We talked about a new truck (Tacoma, F150, etc), then we would have to add in the outfitting cost and the payment. We liked our truck, so we decided to keep it.
We settled on some sort of trailer. We liked the idea of being able to have the trailer ready to go all the time minus the food, and being able to disconnect and go on a day drive if we wanted too. We liked the teardrop trailers but we still wanted to tent camp, but there is something to be said about being able to pull up somewhere and in the pouring rain, just hop inside where it's dry....no set up...no canvas.....no wind....no frozen fingers......
So I bought an M101A3 on a Gov surplus site with the plans to set it up as an expedition type trailer. "Plans" was the key word....even after drooling over everyone's build threads, I realized I didn't have the time to do what I wanted. So I started looking at trailer vendors......
