28 replies to this topic

[JaSAn]

Jim,

Is this what you used?

http://www.homedepot...-68WD/100320355

 

Same stuff

 

How did you fasten it to the bottom of the camper or keep it from moving around?

Do you use a rubber mat as well, or just the insulation?

 

1/2 inch rubber mat under 3/4 inch Formular.  My Grandby is bolted directly to the box, through the floor, Formular and rubber.  Bottom of camper is weathered plywood.  Camper (and Formular) doesn't move in the bed at all.  Just guessing, but the coefficient of sliding friction is high between Formular and camper bottom. 

 

Does it compact under the weight of the camper? I think 1 inch would be about right to fill the gap between the truck and camper as long as it retains its height.

 

Compressive strength is 15 lb/sq in.  4X8 sheet = 4608 sq in.  Any compression will depend on the contour of the sandwiching surfaces.  I have no measurable compression from my (flat bottom, ~1200 lb wet) camper.  Camper has been permanently mounted to the truck for 1+ years.

 

Thanks.

- Dave

[DoGMAtix]

Update:

 

We decided to mount the front turnbuckles to the front of the jack brackets, using a home-made metal plate system similar to Bigfoot and Bad Habit's. Although it would have been nice to get an attachment point further back on the camper to get a decent amount of forward pull, it seemed like all the options for doing that would risk wrecking something that would be a pain to fix. We made the plate out of 1" angle aluminum, with holes drilled to attach it to all 3 bolts holding the jack bracket to the camper. The way we oriented the pieces, the tunbuckles exert just a bit of forward pull - enough, it seems, to keep the camper held snug up against the front of the bed.

Initially I was hesitant to go with aluminum, but it's easy to work with and if it starts to show signs of wear I can just get my neighbor who's a metal worker to recreate the same thing in steel. Thus far, after the maiden voyage, things seem to be holding up with no signs of damage to the aluminum.

 

The TorkLift AnchorGuard turnbuckles showed up in good shape ($127 well spent!). We trimmed down the threads to allow for the short distance between mounting points.

We've decided to stick with the rear bumper mounts for now, since the rear AnchorGuards are damped (the fronts are spring-loaded) and the bumper seems pretty solid.

 

I picked up an 8' x 4' piece of 1" thick Foamular ($20) to slide between the camper and the rubber mat on the truck bed. Turned out to be the perfect thickness to get the camper sides up off the rails. Haven't fastened it to the camper yet, eventually I plan to glue it down and maybe put a few screws in with fender washers to keep it in place. I can also cut some extra pieces to cover the bare wood on the sides of the bottom in back, which are exposed to water coming up off wet roads. The Foamular is tongue-in-groove, which will make it easy to get everything sealed up and weatherproofed.

 

We took the rig camping over the weekend, and It seems to stay put well, even on washboard dirt roads with occasional big bumps and a short steep rocky hill. As Jim (JaSAn) mentioned, the friction between camper/Foamular/rubber mat/spray-on bed liner seems sufficient to hold everything in place nicely with no shifting. When we took the camper off the truck and looked at the Foamular, it was indented by the ridges in the rubber mat, which probably resulted in loss of height of about 1/8 inch (the depth of the ridges), but the sides of the camper are still clearing the back of the bed rails comfortably. It'll be interesting to see if small changes in position of the camper each time we take it off and put it back on the truck will result in further compaction. If so, we may need to start over with a new mat without ridges (like a horse stall mat), or maybe just keep our current setup and attach a thin layer of rigid material over the bottom of the Foamular (this looks like it would work well: http://www.homedepot...32780/202404545).

 

Overall, this is HUGE improvement over the crappy chain/ aluminum turnbuckle setup we started out with, in both function and appearance. A much cheaper fix than I'd expected, with minimal modification of the HappiJack system Hallmark installed.

 

Barring a change in the way Hallmark installs their attachment points on their campers I think this is probably the best way to mount a Guanella to a short bed Dodge. I'd love to use a frame-mounted system, but the front frame mount (the one that really matters) would put the front turnbuckle at an angle that would pull the camper backward. We may end up going with rear frame mounts instead of the bumper mounts, but at this point it seems like that would add expense and weight to our setup, possibly needlessly. Time and off-road miles will tell...

 

Photos of the (nearly) finished product below.

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Edited by DoGMAtix, 30 September 2015 - 07:01 PM.

[DoGMAtix]

Home sweet home!

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[DoGMAtix]

Foamular mounted to the bottom of the camper. As noted above, we may end up covering the exposed Foamular with a utility panel to disperse the weight across it and stop it from being indented/compacted by the ridges in the rubber mat (if you look closely at the photo you can see the dark grooves worn into the Foamular).

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Edited by DoGMAtix, 30 September 2015 - 07:12 PM.

[Bigfoot]

Glad it worked out. I notice you didn't get the Torklift Derringer handles which probably helped with clearance in front. 

 

Now you have a few years before the twins grow too large for the camper. 

[DoGMAtix]

Regarding the Derringer handles, the front turnbuckle hooks wedge in perfectly between the jack mounting bolts and holes in the aluminum angle with zero clearance, so it's a non-issue. It's a minor inconvenience to unscrew and retighten them whenever we take the camper off and put it back on, but no sense in messing with success. We did have one rear turnbuckle loosen on a dirt road, so we added a second wrench to our tool kit to be able to tighten the lock nut down better, but it may be worth adding derringer handles to the rear turnbuckles for convenience and I suppose it may help avoid having the lock nuts loosen up.

 

We're actually fairly cramped sleeping in there now, since we've got to put the twins into their "Pea Pod" tents to get them to sleep, and that's not a very efficient use of space (they're too amped up by the experience of being in the camper and won't go to sleep unless we zip them into the tents). Once they're out of the tents we'll have several years of having them sleep comfortably side by side on the dinette bed, then we'll get a bunk installed over the dinette and that'll tide us through a few more until somebody has to sleep outside in a tent.

[Threerun]

Wow. I have owned a Guanella for 5+ years (8' bed model) mounted to a 1998 Dodge 2500 and it doesn't budge an inch! I have the same front tie down system you started with and the standard turnbuckle mount to the bumper.. 

 

I've always left my turnbuckles 'loose' a tad and the camper has never, not once moved one inch. Off road, driving in 60mph gusts (think Livingston MT)... not one budge and I've had my rig rockin' on some back mountain stuff! 

Edited by Threerun, 19 April 2016 - 10:29 PM.

[isbram]

When I got my current Cuchara I was having problems with it sliding back in the bed every time I drove on rough roads. The front turnbuckles would go slack until it had slid several inches back and gotten an angle on them to tighten them up again. Bill Ward added front tie down point’s for me a little further back on the camper and we used both of them in unison.
It worked perfect; I never had a problem with the camper moving in the bed after his fix.

[DoGMAtix]

Well, so much for our camper mounting system! While driving rough roads in the Maze District of Canyonlands, the rear turnbuckles tore the plates mounting them to the camper clean through the plywood. Rather than bury a description of what happened and the eventual fix (knock on wood) here, I'll start a new thread.

Threerun - I'm glad to hear that your rig is holding up with the original mounting. Not sure how that's possible if you're taking it on 4WD roads like the ones that thrashed our original setup, but hey, if it works for you it works for you.

Isbram - we had originally thought about doing something like what you did to ensure there's some forward pull of the camper in the bed (see earlier part of this thread), but Bill told us under no circumstances should we put another mount under the camper. Interesting. Anyway, the camper doesn't shift around appreciably with our current front turnbuckle system. The big problem is the back wanting to buck straight up, and the two options on turnbuckle adjustment are to let the thing buck and slam back down (not good for contents) or be continually pulled down forcefully, which presumably predisposes to mounting point failure like we experienced. We're padded underneath by a rubber mat and foam insulation, and the rear turnbuckles are damped (though not spring loaded), so we'd thought we had a happy medium. Apparently not so.

In any case, one thing seems clear - although it's useful to see what kind of problems people have with their campers, in the end if you drive a truck camper around rough 4WD roads you'll eventually come up with problems all your own. You just need to keep a good attitude and embrace them.