Newbie Question on removing small Lance

diver110 wrote:
……. How flat does storage surface have to be? We have a three car garage and two cars, so there is a space available, but driveway slopes down. Do not have truck yet, and it sounds like I have to choose carefully. Thinking in terms of a Ram, mostly because I like the local dealer (where I have been taking my Jeep for a decade, now has 170,000 miles+), but am open. ….

Where you take the camper off should ideally be as level as possible. But, I live on a hillside, and other than the garage floor, nothing is level in my yard. Is your garage door tall enough to get the camper inside? Even a small hardside TC will need 10-11 ft of clearance.

The problem with lifting a camper on a sloped surface is that as you raise the low end to make the camper level, the base of the jacks on that end need to move out an inch or more as the camper rotates to a level position. With the weight of the camper on the jacks though, they can’t move. Plus, until the camper is level, it’s leaning on those low-end jacks. So, you end up putting a twisting movement on the jack mounts. The more slope you need to overcome, the worse the twisting will be on the jacks.

About 15 years or so back, we did a major rebuild that had almost half of our house reduced to nothing but studs and joists for several months. We needed somewhere to cook and eat for most of that time, so I set my camper up just outside the garage to use as a temporary kitchen.

As you can see, the apron slab outside the garage wasn’t anywhere near level, so I used two 4x6 timber’s to create a more level surface for the jacks. Even with three two-by’s under the low end of the 4x6, it’s still not very level. It was close enough to get it off though, but I still needed a stack of pallets under the front to stabilize it while we used it, while the rear bumper is almost on the ground. The jack bases are each sitting in a cup-like depression so they can’t walk off the timbers.



About eight years ago we tore down the garage and built a new one with an RV bay. The foundation was even torn out because it was cracked and shifting. The new garage floor came in about 8” lower than the old garage floor, so the apron slab isn’t quite as sloped today, but it’s still not level enough for me to feel comfortable taking the camper off the truck without using those same timbers. I wish I had taken a picture just a month or so back when I was washing the camper, and had it sitting on the timbers again. Maybe next time. :S

All that is to say; yes you can take it off on a slope, but depending on how much slope you have you may need to take some steps to be safe, and prevent damage.

:R Let’s Go Girls! :P
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Lance 1121-Two Awnings, Slide topper, 3.6 kw Gen, Trimetric Batt. Monitor, 1500W Inverter, 40A Redarc DC-DC charger. 2016 F450 6.7 PSD.