Got me a new camper. Woohoo.

[Nosferatu49534]

Wife and I have been kinda sorta shopping for a slide in truck camper since bought my truck last year. But as usual life usually gets in the way. And any found were either to far away to just go look at or way to much for our pocket books. Thursday I happened to see a little one for sale and figured I would at least stop and look. Its in pretty good shape for a 1997. Needs some roof repair and a few hrs scrubbing the inside and out down. The lady was asking $1800 for it but got her down to $1300 because I told her I'm gonna have to take the whole roof off to repair it. Still have to get the tie down bars and turn buckles made for it. But I need my buddy to do the welding. And now pictures.

As you can see some one had tried to patch the roof. She told me the reason it was like that is the previous, previous owner thought the roof would be strong enough to hold a boat. I'll keep throwing pics up as I work in it.

 

[Burning oil]

Wow, its like looking at mine almost. I have a 95 Jayco pop up with toilet and shower.

Good score.

 

[Nosferatu49534]

Thanks Leroy.

And the base.... The legs are old guard rail posts for the side of highways. There were 6 pallets of them down the street at the legion. Still gotta put a couple braces in the middle though. Brain wasn't working quite right earlier at Lowe's.

 

[Will L.]

Cool.

 

[Nosferatu49534]

Middle bracing.

 

[btfarm]

Good score. Hope it cleans up easy. Enjoy

 

[Nosferatu49534]

Built the tie downs for the truck today. Lady I bought the camper from said the ones she bought cost between $800 to $900. I said screw that. Steel cost me $65 plus lunch for my buddy and the use of his welder.
I've never welded before so he let me do all the welding.

Need to get a couple things tomorrow so I can actually attach everything. 4 hitch pins, and ratchet straps.

All four tie down points will be removable as well as the main cross bar that runs under the cab. That can come off if any of the big parts of the truck, (gas tank, tranny, drive shaft) need to be taken out. I have to get pictures of that tomorrow.

 

[NVW]

Nice welds, reminds me of a guy I got a job welding at a place I worked. His first welds looked like yours, better than some third year apprentices.

 

[ak diesel driver]

looks better than Gorilla welding

 

[Nosferatu49534]

Thanks guys. It was a lot of fun. I tried stick 15ish yrs ago. Did not go so well. I really want to learn tig. I've watched hrs of videos, so that helped a lot.

Also, I know why they make welding sleeves.

Woke up this morning thinking my are was sore.

 

[Nosferatu49534]

Thanks guys. It was a lot of fun. I tried stick 15ish yrs ago. Did not go so well. I really want to learn tig. I've watched hrs of videos, so that helped a lot.

Also, I know why they make welding sleeves.

Woke up this morning thinking my are was sore.

Also here's a couple pics of the cross bar for the front.

 

[DieselSlug]

Great pictures! I want to get a nice little tandem axle bumper pull for my truck someday. Really like the Outback 210's, heard mixed reviews on the quality of Keystone trailers though...

 

[Nosferatu49534]

Great pictures! I want to get a nice little tandem axle bumper pull for my truck someday. Really like the Outback 210's, heard mixed reviews on the quality of Keystone trailers though...

Thanks. I've looked at those a couple times, they're pretty sweet. We went with the truck camper so we can try and do more "exploratory camping". Plus this one was way cheaper. Some day we will go newer.

 

[Nosferatu49534]

I'm trying to get into a bit of hammock camping and wanted some way to store my portable stand I built. So instead of just laying the stand broken down on the floor of the camper of in the bed some how I build a box for it in the empty space between the bottom side of the camper and the bed rail inside the box.

I used construction adhesive on the two box halves and then screwed it together.

Finished product for now.

Company I used to do steel roofing for is gonna bend me up a cap to cover it for aesthetics.

 

[Burning oil]

I like it!

 

[Nosferatu49534]

Also forgot to put pics up of the new jacks I put on. It only had three on it. 4 seems better so I ordered 3 more. And the only reason I got 3 was, 1 Jack on Amazon was $199, 3 was $384. Seemed like the logical choice.

Oh and I got my wife to use the angle grinder to clean up the propane tank door and paint it.

We both decided we like to grinder swirls.

 

[JayTheCPA]

Oh and I got my wife to use the angle grinder to clean up the propane tank door and paint it.

Impressive! My wife will pull weeds buy has an allergy to tools. If it needs 'fix-in', she does it by bugging me to do something about it . . .

 

[Nosferatu49534]

Lol. Yeah I wasn't sure what she would say but she did it.

 

[NVW]

We both decided we like to grinder swirls.

Good thing, they won't go away easily.

 

[Nosferatu49534]

The other big thing I changed was the regulator and hose for the propane tank. The old regulator was a 2 stage and about an inch to long to fit comfortably in the cubby, and the hose had lots of chaffing spots. The tank was tipped bad and the fittings were jammed into the corner. I was afraid with all the pressure it would crack something.

Old regulator. The brass 90 had all the weight pushing on it in the corner.

New regulator installed with half the amount of hose jammed in there.