13 replies to this topic

[Abbiennormal]

I have decided to mount the corner jacks on 2x6 and use that to leverage the camper off the truck. Haven't actually done it yet since I have to unbolt the camper from the truck bed. Back in the 80s they did not use the tie down method, at least not for this installation, they bolted it directly to the bed of the truck. I have located the bolts but have not had time to pull it off the truck yet since I wanted to make a base to rest it on so that it would not sit on the ground and get wet. My garage is too full to store it in there and I wanted to do a complete redo of the interior and electrical before I put it on hopefully a tundra with a long bed. When I do, I will post the results. 

 I decided to go this route because the older campers do not have the corners braced for corner jacks. So when I strip it down, I will brace the corners for the jacks.

[Abbiennormal]

AbbieNormal, please post what you decide to do. I have a 1980 Keystone and have the same issue as you. Not sure the vertical bars on the corners can have braces and support all the loaded force from the jacks. I have two Brophy cable jacks and it is just too hard to get the camper off by myself, not to mention do anything with the camper once it is off.

So sorry for the tardy reply. The camper was pulled off the truck and sat on my driveway for quite a bit before I managed to start working on it. I ended up deciding to rebuild the whole thing so I pretty much striped it down to the skeleton before doing so.

 

I did mount the 4 corner jacks just to remove it from the truck. I can honestly say that it was definitely not built with the intention of having people mount the corner jacks. The aluminum was really thin and you can see from the picture that FWC did not use as much aluminum as they do now on the skeleton. 

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[craig333]

Find many broken welds?

[Abbiennormal]

I was lucky, no broken welds when I took it off the old truck. But in the subsequent rebuilding process, I found out that the welds did not hold up and were quite brittle.

 

Since I hulkanized it, it wasn't too much of a concern. See side view picture where added 2 inches to the top, 7 inches on the bottom and also made the overhead bed 7 inches deeper.

 

I know, tisk tisk, look how dirty the welds are. There was a lot of gunk on the old aluminum, I cleaned it as much as I could before the welder had a go at it. So far it is holding up pretty good. 

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