Modified Enlighten 1120 Happy Camper Truck (not Lego)

Hello and welcome back to another post at Bricks and Figs!  It's mid April 2020 and we are still practising social distancing, which means we shouldn't go outside unless it's completely necessary.  That means we have lots of time to build some brick sets or in this case, we can modify an existing set that we already have.

Let's time travel back to April 2017, four years ago.  That's when I first blogged about the Enlighten 1120 Camper Truck.  In that post I complained that the truck was too wide at 8 studs, instead of my preferred width of 6 studs.  Yup, that's the camper truck above, in all it's 8 stud wide glory.  Ok, now let's return to present day and here is the modified Enlighten camper truck.

I decided that we wouldn't compromise the utility and play value of the set by making the living quarters smaller.  In fact, within pretty much the same footprint, I've managed to add a bed to the interior, but I'm getting ahead of my self. Let's take a look at the exterior before moving to the inside of the truck.

Here's the newly modified front cab of the truck.  I've decreased the width to 6 studs and it kinda has a retro ford econoline look to it.  The eight stud windshield has been replaced by the six stud equivalent, maintaining the transparent blue tint of the original.  I didn't have a 6 stud wide slope brick in lime green, so I opted to use the original roof blocks as part of the hood.  I'd much prefer the cab roof to be match the rest of the truck colour, but white is all I have in my brick stash.

Moving around to the side of the cab, you can see how the profile has changed.  There was a toss up about how big I should make the cab portion. I opted to go for the longer cab and use the side window pillar there.  The other option is to shorten the cab by one stud, which will necessitate a different roof over the cab.

Behind the cab, everything else is pretty much the same.  The axe is still there and so is the window.  I added some amber lights where the cab roof meet the rear box.

I got rid of the roof mounted shovel and antenna and moved the solar panel array from mid roof to as far forward as I could.  This gave me enough room to carry two bicycles.  I did manage to retain the roof racks, however.

The bikes are held in place by a clamp, so they don't go flying off during highway driving.  The solar array also helps to deflect the the wind up and over the bikes.

Here's the right side of the truck with retained window and fire extinguisher.

The back of the camper truck sees some significant improvements.  There's a license plate and extra marker and brake lights for safety.  The space that used to be occupied by the bike now has a gas can and spare tire.  The ladder to the roof has not changed.

Enlighten's original concept for the back of the camper was that it was split down the middle and both sides could swing away to access the interior.  In my design I opted to go with the complete removal of the box instead for structural support.

Seating has been reduced from 4 seats to 3, but I did manage to keep the freezer and stove/grill.  Since there's no passenger seat in the cab, I removed the computer screen that came in the original design.  There's now enough room for a decent sized bed and if necessary I could extend the bed width by another stud to comfortably sleep 2 minifigures side by side.

I tossed the minfigures that came with the set into a large box, so I just grabbed some random ones for this photo shoot.

Here's how the camper looks with shell removed looking forward.

As in real life, storage space is at a premium, so I added under the bed storage, accessible by two doors in the back of the camper.

Here's a few extra pictures I took of the modified Enlighten Camper.

Hope you enjoyed the pics!  Thanks for looking!   The original set is available on Aliexpress if you search for Enlighten 1120.