Rebuild old flatbed, or start from scratch?
I have a 18K GVRW truck with a 12 foot long Western flatbed on it, with a trashed wood deck. My plan is to drop my current short bed Six-Pac camper on it for a while, then replace it with a larger mo...
Forum Discussion
towpro wrote:
how you going to load it? swing out brackets on all 4 corners, or a fork lift to load the camper.
Honestly...wasn't something I really thought about all that much. One of my neighbors has a forklift, though I haven't approached him for help yet. Ideally, I'd like to find a way to do it myself, just so I'm not dependent on someone else in case the need arises to remove/install again in the future.
The current camper was originally set up for a pair of tripod jacks to lift it at the center of gravity. I also built a 3rd tripod jack to help balance it out as it made me very uncomfortable to only be on a pair. Turned out it didn't matter much, as it was just as unstable on 3, lol. With one jack on the center on one side, it almost didn't matter where I put the jack on the other side..still went up pretty flat. Adding the 3rd really didn't stabilize it at all, other than to help prevent it from going over if it was pushed too hard.
I'm thinking raise it on a pair of jacks again, back up the truck enough to get the bed under the front part of the base, and lower it down onto a piece of pipe. Add a 4th jack if necessary, put a pair under the rear corners, lift up, and remove the center jacks. Back the truck again, place second pipe under base, and roll the camper all the way in adding/moving pipes as required to get it to the front of the flatbed (this is another reason I'm planning on just replacing the existed flatbed deck...pipes likely won't roll over the existing wood all that well).
While I think this would be OK with the current feather weight Six-Pac (heck, when I picked it up, I didn't place the jacks well, and only got it about halfway in the bed. We pushed it into place the rest of the way...and when I say "we", I mean myself, and the 60-something woman I bought it from). I'm not sure this would be a wise plan if I end up buying a much larger/heavier model camper in the future...but I suppose that would be a "I'll cross that bridge when I get there" kind of thing.
