NEW GUY Looking for Best Hard Side TC for light off roading

I have a 2013 F350 diesel dually crew cab 8' bed with a Northstar Igloo 9.5 mounted on it. No lifts just air springs to level it and a Helwig sway bar to cut sway.

Total height is 11'1" to the top of the AC unit. My opinion is you should try and stay under 12' just to keep from hitting who knows what. The Northstar rig like mine could probably be jacked up without being too high, but I wonder about the handling( and safety) going away as the center of gravity climbs.

When you are talking off road and 3" body lift and a 6" suspension lift just doesn't go together for a hard sided camper. Then you will probably want to go to bigger tires which raises you even more. With stock tires that big of wheel wells are gong to look really screwy, so that means either 35 or 37" tires. Now you have added another 2.5 to 3.5" in height. Do you realize how high your center of gravity is going to be. With a setup like this you are asking for sway problems going down the road with no cross winds at all. Also when you are going down any kind of trail if there is any slight side slope to it the rig being this high is really going to lean over.

Most of the time when you raise the truck you are getting softer suspension. This is going to compound your sway problems.

You are also gong to have problems with the camper jacks not being able to take the camper off the truck without putting additional blocking under them and when you pull out from under the truck that sucker is going to be way up in the air. You are going to have to make sure you are on level ground and that there is no wind blowing when you want to load or unload the camper.

With any camper especially one with any basement (which most of the 4 season campers have a heated basement) you are going to be pushing 13' tall. My NL on my stock Ram dually is over 12' tall to the top of the AC. Add another 9" or more on top of that and you are at 13' and that is without bigger tires.

Please rethink what you are planning to do.

This is IMO

But bottom line it is up to you.

I'd look at the short non basement Northern Lite. The basements make them about a foot taller.

Scars1989 wrote:

12V Cummins wrote:
Id take a look at northstar as they are non basement so will sit a little lower than most hardwalls. Ive seen a few videos of people off roading with them in Australia. Pretty impressive stuff

what do you mean by non basement

Many campers have a basement or void below the floor where the fresh water and waste water holding tanks are mounted. Basements are typically 8-12 inches tall. Non-basement models don't have this added height which is better for off-road use.

I agree with the Northstar recommendation if you want a well-made camper with a lower center of gravity. Unfortunately, these non-basement models have very small holding tanks. That's the only knock against them.

JaredWPhillips wrote:
Check out the CampLite truck campers from LivinLite.

ive been looking at the camp lite and the palomino the camp lite dont seem all that much heavier if not the same what i see the camp lite seems to be better about not rotting and rusting

12V Cummins wrote:
Id take a look at northstar as they are non basement so will sit a little lower than most hardwalls. Ive seen a few videos of people off roading with them in Australia. Pretty impressive stuff

what do you mean by non basement

Check out www.expeditionportal.com, lots of info and forums.

Id take a look at northstar as they are non basement so will sit a little lower than most hardwalls. Ive seen a few videos of people off roading with them in Australia. Pretty impressive stuff

Check out the CampLite truck campers from LivinLite.

With that truck, suspension lift, body lift and a hardside TC; one thing you need to consider is overhead clearance on offroad trails. Your vehicle will be extremely tall; likely the tallest vehicle to pass on those trails. I would guess 11' plus anything on the roof, like an A/C. That means you will likely hitting a lot of limbs with the top of your camper. I have run into that situation in developed campgrounds.

Good Luck,
Brad