Howdy from TX Hill Country

Hi George & Mrs George! Welcome to the forum. As you surmised, you're going to get a lot of comments on your camper-truck matchup. Most folks here are trying to be helpful. You said this is your first RV so you're at the bottom of a steep learning curve. Your comment that your first night was MISERABLE hints of a few steps you've already taken up the learning curve :E You'll have to share that story some time :B

The 815 is designed for an 8' bed truck and needs support along its full length for its structure and the heavy water and waste tanks enclosed. Your tailgate may not be strong enough to provide the support it needs. It may hold for a while but the inevitable bumps along the road will stress the tailgate, the camper, or both. One option you might consider until you can switch to a long bed truck is to put the camper on a trailer and tow it behind the truck. Yeah, that defeats part of the purpose of having a truck camper, but it would eliminate the support issue and other concerns that your camper-truck matchup raise. And it would even help solve your problem with the steep terrain at your home as you wouldn't need to unload it. You can find some previous posts where others have done this and it works out really well, sometimes even providing extra room to store gear or to serve as a porch.

Oh, and Happy Anniversary!

A couple comments. Looking over the Lance brochure for 2002, Lance does advertise the 815 Lite camper for a shortbed full size truck. I think what makes it look weird is the lack of skirts which was an option for shorted trucks.

http://www.lancecamper.com/docs/2002-brochure.pdf

I would get better tie downs ASAP. The tie downs as they are fitted give very little resistance to rolling the camper out of the bed in heavy side winds or evasive maneuver.

If the truck is carrying the camper level with the stock suspension that is a good sign. With almost any TC upgrades such as sway bar, better shocks and quality tie-downs are key to safe and sane travel.

I have a .pdf copy of the owner's manual and the camper sits on my truck exactly like the one pictured in the 2002 owner's manual.

We bought the camper from a fella in Nacogdoches and it is about a 370 mile home. By the time it was loaded and we got a cursory briefing on how stuff worked, it was lunchtime so we drove as far as Rockdale and it was getting dark. I was getting tired and we stopped in at the Walmart there on US79. My wife suggested we stop for the night and there was an RV park right across the street. The park is called Shady Oaks RV Park. The education began.

It was raining. The park doesn't have any attendant and you stop in at the Comfort Inn next door and pay. First hint was that they have you pay cash or pay an additional $7 for using a card. They hand you a key to a slot and send you to the park. The park is on the side of a hill and there are no level spots. The road to the spots was mud and when I opened the locked electrical box, I plugged in the camper and filled the water tank and lit the propane heater. All seemed OK as the rain came down hard. My wife put my supper in the microwave and NADA... the brand new microwave didn't work. Called the PO and he was kind enough to let me know that the microwave wouldn't work unless the truck had power from the 30A box. The microwave is 110VAC only. That was a hint that the electrical box didn't work. Walked back to the office in a driving rain and got another key for another box. The gal had no idea which electrical boxes worked and which didn't.

Pulled into slot 24 after disconneting and BINGO, after plugging in, the microwave worked and I had a hot TV dinner for supper. The truck was setting pretty uneavenly and the camper sat at a slant as a result. I learned never to park at a slot that is sloped.

The dogs belonging to all the permanent campers barked all night. My wife wouldn't let me shoot them and suggested I shoot the owners. I didn't.

When I finally got to sleep on our air mattress with a topper, I was woken by a drip of water on my arm. Couldn't figure out where it came from as the ceiling was bone dry. Second time it happened I figured out that since it was cold and humid outside condensation from the warmer insides formed on the aluminum rail inside the emergency hatch and with the trunk on a slope, dripped about one and hour on my arm. I read in the owner's manual that you are supposed to crack a vent to keep the condensatin down.

The mattress is horrible, by the way and I have a new inner spring mattress coming from Overstock.com via eBay.

The next morning, went to take my first showeer and the water was ICE COLD. After taking a quick shower in cold water, I checked and the pilot light had gone out. The gas tnak had run empty! There is a volume gauge on the tank which never moved off 1/2 full. It doesn't work. I did shut off the gas and turned the water heater to off.

I went outside while my wife roused herself and the ground was a mud mess. There was no gravel on the parking spot, just dirt/grass. I dumped the water tank and when I went to dump the black and gray water tanks, found the sewer hose we inherited with the camper didn't have a fitting to go into the sewer so my missus had to come out and hold the thing. The hose also was cracked and leaked. The adventure suddenly left the trip and we stopped right away, once on the road and scrubbed our hands good. I pitched the hose when we got home and bought a Rhino hose kit.

I have also bought a TV mount, a 3 step step to get in without drama, a couple of grab handles to get up into the bed and a DVD player.

I will be sure to pick my camping park more careuflly in the future. A camp ground with clean and private showers will go a long way as well. We are going to camp the weekend of Feb. 17-19 at the Big Oak River Park just outside Camp Wood which has all these things.

Oh yeah, the place in Rockdale claimed to have cable and wifi and they didn't. Cell reception with our AT&T phones was sketchy as well. It was an adventure and we actually enjoyed it as we had a great breakfast Sunday morning at Lee's Landing diner in Rockdale... pretty fine breakfast tacos!

Sounds like typical first night of camping in a used camper. :B
Hope you enjoy your camper as much as we do ours.
I had to upgrade tires and shocks when we got ours. Bought some used torklift tiedowns off ebay for 1/2 price of new ones. Put upper stable loads to level the truck back up.
Once you get it all figured out you'll see how nice it is to have your food and bathroom with you everywhere you go.

Thanks for the kind words. I will get it figured out. I already put Air Lift air bags on for load leveling. Once I get a level pad built, I can take off the camper and will be buying some Chinese 10 ply high payload tires. I know folks will yell at me for that but those tires are just fine and are CHEAP.

I would love to find a CHEAP 3/4 or 1 ton truck but all the ones I have seen that are older have 300K miles on them (in the price range I can afford). It would be nice to be able to just leave the camper on the truck.

wiredgeorge wrote:
...10 ply high payload tires. ....

Tires, schmires... won't mean JS if the wheels are not up to the job. Not sure if 5 lug, 1500 series truck type wheels with a high load rating are available.

BTW- Don't just go by ply or "letter" ratings of tires...look at Load Index (LI) to determine "high payload" capacities for tires.

I thought that when I was looking at and thinking of getting a TC that the ones I was looking at you took the tailgate off to carry them?
bumpy

work2much wrote:
A couple comments. Looking over the Lance brochure for 2002, Lance does advertise the 815 Lite camper for a shortbed full size truck. I think what makes it look weird is the lack of skirts which was an option for shorted trucks.

Ah, didn't know that. Then shouldn't be a structural problem carrying it on a short bed.

Thanks for sharing the story, George. I chuckled all the way through it. Your upcoming trip has to be an improvement!

I'm sorry if you can hear me laughing a thousand miles away! Sounds very familiar. You can learn a lot on this forum there are no dumb questions just people who have been in your spot. Try camping in the driveway at home a few times you'll learn a lot.

George,
I think we have found a new, fun writing voice of the newbies.
I had to wince a couple times during the description of your initial ordeal because many of us have been through a similar saga, or worse at the beginning.
My only comment is to set yourself up for a good, long term experience, instead of any short cuts that hang around your neck seemingly forever.
I've come to understand that almost any TC lash up is possible to take.....for a while anyway. Safely? Not so much. Just do what you want to do and see what happens. But, be sure to make another report for us.
jefe