scissor steps

This is the second time I've read through this thread and I feel like I'm the house or mirrors! My experience has been far different. Our Lance came with a 4 step arrangement that hung below the door on broad 'C' bracket lag bolted to the wooden frame. The woe was it was made for a 2WD, 1/2 ton Dodge pickup. Much lower of bed. I used 1/4 " alum. flat stock and made 4 drop bars to breach the gap. This aforded no landing but worked well and folded underneath the camper when we had no rear rack in the receiver.
The 'C' bracket eventually broke and I was not real happy with how narrow and rickety the steps were so we went with Glow Steps a couple years ago. Again, the woe was they did not fit our application so I used the same 4 flat alum bars to lower the steps down as before except I had to cut the bars down from about 8" to 5".



The sad truth is one size does not fit all. There are so many variations of spring height, tire size, air bag position, stable loads or not, that it's impossible to fit all TC's with a 4 or 5 step set.
jefe

i have the 5 step 24".mine slant down on the top step and up on the bottom just slightly.the top slant works well for me,as my popup door is smaller than a hardside door and i need to stoop to enter or exit and i find the slight slant helps us alot.

I started me renewed membership with tread about steps, so look into my profile for the topic.
I am remodeling contractor, so dealing with steps is my business.
Accidentally I bought 5 steps kit, but ended up using only 4, so if anybody wants extra step at discount, shoot me PM

Carb Cleaner wrote:
These are nice steps. Decent enough welds, sturdy, and they lay parallel. They have some weight to them and I'm happy with them. I choose these over a Little Giant step stool when we took delivery of the camper. This pic, my camper is rather low and it's obvious the treads point down. The little bit of variance from parallel during normal, on the truck use, doesn't bother me. It would be great to have a handrail, though, and I have a plan to fabricate one, but the execution keeps getting delayed.

Where do you carry your steps when traveling??

Finally got to try my new 8" Glowsteps. What a difference, they feel rock solid. The steps are not perfectly parallel, but very much closer than the old ones. The gap plock40 spoke of could be corrected by shortening the top arms, but then the steps would not be able to swing away completely underneath the overhang area. I think we'll use them as is. Nice upgrade.

We just added Torklift 3 step Glowsteps to our truck camper. We attached it to the bottom of the sewer hose compartment and used the existing brackets. I cut the mounting bracket that came with the steps in half and on the steps I switched the long brackets and short brackets on the top step. I then located where I wanted the steps and attached the mounting bracket I cut in half with the curve facing outward onto the existing bracket on the bottom of the sewer hose compartment. After that I attached the steps to the curved mounting bracket. This makes the steps very stable. There is a wide gap when you step down to the first step so I inverted the step that came with the camper and placed it over the gap. It fits nicely and covers up the gap. No bolting necessary, but you do have to take it off when you fold up the steps. With this done the steps fold up flush against the sewer hose compartment. I put a racket strap around the steps when we are traveling

When we bought our old camper it came with scissor steps and after going up and down when loading we had our son in law, a talented welder, pull those puppies off and weld us up a set that goes in the receiver with a camping world folding platform step for the bottom step when necessary. We can just pull the pin to use the receiver to haul a trailer with the steps inside the camper, otherwise they just travel along in the receiver. For us it was the most economical and practical but not everyone has their own personal welder and I feel your pain. Next is a modified tray/step/generator thingy for our new Honda eu2000i to be locked onto. Have all the parts just getting it all "glued" together the way I want it., then adapt it for a bike after that! Never ends does it!

Sue.t's top picture above shows the issue with the top bracket tilted down which allows the step to tilt. If the top bracket is perpendicular to the back of the camper the other steps should be level except for play in the scissor mechanism.

I can't see that the angle of the top bracket matters because there is a hinge point about 2" out from the mounting bracket, so the frame of the steps themselves will adopt any angle it wants to regardless of how the top bracket is sitting

Not sure if this helps or not but these are a couple pics of my ladder in use in the real world. Normally the top step is closer to the floor but i had the truck up on a couple boards to level it. This is why I mentioned earlier I may have to go for the 4 step ladder. This situation solidified my decision to use the little giant because scissor steps would have been the wrong length now, and the ground is at an angle to the camper so I question how that bottom step would have been. The ladder remained rock solid all week even though it was off camber and the first step out was farther than usual.

VERY timely thread. We are considering some form of step system, and now would want to investigate a specialized fold-up ladder (as an alternative to TC attached scissor genre).

So far, the best TC attached step (by a long shot) appear to be Glowstep (Torklift). We wouldn't consider any non parallel step system, ever.