Wooden fail safe camper alignment tool

silversand wrote:
If you think about it, crawling under the truck camper or sticking my head between truck bed rails and camper wing(s) to eyeball back-up accuracy from time to time wouldn't be my "thang"; way too dangerous.

As sleepy noted, his system doesn't replace being able to backup. If you use the system to align your camper and not pay attention, I think you will likely be disappointed with sleepy's or any other similar apparatus. :)

I've only had my TC 9 years, but I've experienced all of the different types of terrain I probably am ever going to including lots of horrible roads due to road construction and mountain dirt roads between forest service roads in WA. My TC still hasn't noticeably moved to the extent that I need something to "lock" it in. I'm not crazy about backup up and loading the TC, but I do it less and less now that my truck isn't my daily driver. I can't see how sleepy's system helps me which is different than saying it doesn't help anyone.

That said, I have to say I'm agreeing that there's been a lot of drama for yet another alignment tool. If this variation works for you, great. I can't see any reason to argue about it. I assume the arguments have to do with history here instead of the OP's tool.

I didn't think sleepy meant you sort of line up 2 inches off in the rear and a inch off the other way up front and let the camper slip wedge itself into place as you lower away...
Our camper often find itself standing on 3 legs during jack operations. One of the rear jacks will exhibit daylight under the foot. It's a sturdy made in Canada camper, eh?
I never leave the truck lined up so as to place lateral force on the jacks as the load transfers from truck bed to jacks or vice versa. I do as many forth and backs as necessary to line up sqware under the camper. Then I close the dump valve and inflate the truck's air suspension and pick up the camper. :) Then I run the jacks the rest of the way up, no load :).
These line up blocks would work great to keep the camper situated rotationally speaking in the truck bed and to make that last little alignment.
Nice simple set up.

RedDog wrote:
To put it another way, how many failures in loading have you seen, and more importantly, what was the cause of the failure?

...we've attended 4 Northeast Truck Camper rallies (attended by many, many truck campers), and have never heard of a single incident where a "healthy" jack support system failed on loading.

Sleepy's wood block system "keyed into the truck bed" seems to be a very good method to lock the camper tub into the bed, resisting pivoting. If you think about it, crawling under the truck camper or sticking my head between truck bed rails and camper wing(s) to eyeball back-up accuracy from time to time wouldn't be my "thang"; way too dangerous.

I personally like it. Other readers MMV.

Folks, I read a lot of drama for a very simple project. There are many methods one can use to load the TC. The preferred method is the one that suites you. It does not require an "engineer". To put it another way, how many failures in loading have you seen, and more importantly, what was the cause of the failure?

Wayne

sleepy wrote:
bb_94401, that is an ambitious project and nicely done.... having to raise your truck camper almost 4" to get it over the truck bed sidewalls sure caused you a lot of work... and added a considerable amount of weight. Can you remove it easily when you want to use the truck for something else?
Sleepy

It breaks down to single pieces and is easy to remove. It is all just lap joints and when fit together can not move in the bed in any direction. During the winter the openings are filled with 3.5" of extruded foam insulation. There is a layer of fiberglass on the top and anti-skid sand on the epoxy for the boards that contact the bottom of the TC to minimize movement to the rear on steep, rutted or washboard roads. The longitudinal boards extend past the end of the truck bed to help support the TC and minimize the sag that happens there in my TC.

Skipro3

To load my camper on the 4x4 and clear the frame in the bed (needed for roof clearance), I'm almost to the orange warning band on the jacks. At this point the combination of the slop in the swing out bracket for the dually and tolerance of the jacks, the TC easily moves by itself more than the offset of the ramp on my guides (jack attachment, corner structure and anchors are in good shape and show no movement).

The frame and the guides also make for lots of reference points when loading, so at most I end up being centered or just use ~1/4" of one of the ramps to align it.

Lifting one jack at a time is only a method for relieving stress on a jack, no matter how it occurred, or if it is binding. It is only for a short time and only needs to be lifted enough to unweighted it and relieve the stress. I'm not advocating that anyone sky one jack to do this, nor suggesting only using three jacks vs. four when storing the TC or routinely raising / lowering the TC.

As Sleepy pointed out this was for preventing the TC from shifting during use. Despite having all four fastguns at approximately the same tension, my TC would move to the right and pivot around the wheel well. A potentially shifting load is not something I want when dealing with a side hill or off camber rough forest service road, nor for emergency handling of the rig. Many solutions exist and it just depends on your criteria.

I made my guide setup after using foam blocks ahead and behind the wheel well at points where there was framing across the TC or equivalent to a bulkhead. It was difficult to place the blocks with the limited rail clearance I had and it wasn't as tight as the 3/8" tolerance I have now.

I posted this response at the top of page three:

sleepy wrote:

towpro wrote:
I have wondered about this method of aligning campers in beds, but if your not centered, as you lower the camper and camper body contacts blocks of wood and starts to force your camper to center of bed, don't it put a lot of stress on your jacks?

Practice, practice, practice.... there is no excuse for missaligning your camper more than a 1/2" or so....

Your camper is often off that much just from uneven ground....

My electric jacks don't move up or down at exactally the same speed... causing a walking effect.... occassionally you can hear the jack slip on the ground as the weight gets off one jack.... then the operator corrects...

walk the camper down... it's your job to practice until you can load it correctly no matter what method you ude to align your truck....

Thanks for your interest

sleepy

The devices that I offered on the first page were never meant to take the place of driver skill... it is the drivers job to practice loading the camper over and over until he or she can load it squarely and centered in the trucks bed.... most of us can do it without thinking about it.

There are plenty of clues as to weather you are getting it right.

1) the distance between the front jacks and the wheel wells.... my dually has about 1 1/2" space on each side

2) you can look at the apacing between the side rails on the trucks bed and the side walls of that portion of the camper that sits in the trucks bed.

3) other folks have their own visual clues. (Maybe they'll share)

IF, you have the skills necessary to back under your camper accurately and you make it a point to unload and reload your camper on level ground you too can drop the camper into the space between the blocks..

Again... I can't sress this enough.... most of us can do it with little thought or stress.

When I push the button to retract the jacks the camper is lowered between the centering blocks.... to stay aligned in the bed.... keeping equal tension on each of the properly adjusted tiedowns.

BTW... how many of you had truck campers back in the day when they all had three manually operated jacks? We cranked a little, walked to the next jack... cranked a little, then moved on to the third jack.... cranked itback to approximately level.... then repeated this over and over.

I usually moved the jacks about 4" with each pass around the camper.

I did it this way for 33 years.... on the same camper, the same truck, and the same jacks. Did it stress the camper.... probably.

Did anything fail.... no!

My truck was a daily driver... so the camper was loaded and unloaded with each trip.

I'll bet that my wife could load our camper correctly with a few trys of practice....

Note again.... my device and the other device pictured are not a tool to help the driver back up a truck... they are to keep the camper aligned after it is tied down and bouncing along the highways.

Houston, we have a problem.
The jack feet are firmly planted on Terra Firma and the camper is being pushed off it's center in order align with the truck bed.
What gives?

Probably nothing. The world isn't a perfect place.
Loading and unloading on stilts will usually place some lateral force on the jacks at some point in their lives.
Less is better of course, but the lift system works that way and is probably made for it.

Google: truck camper centering device
Click "images". There are hundreds of methods.

I tried something similar to those "engineered" wooden pieces with my first TC. They did work quite well.

I purchased a new to me truck and made the first trip with the TC installed on the sprayed in bed liner. On an I-35 "ski ramp" (bridge to road joint) the truck practically went airborne and the 4300 lb. TC shifted back 2" putting stress on the front tie downs and loosening the rear tie downs to where they were about to fall off.

As soon as I got home, I ordered the DualLiner package with the rubber mat. The same setup I had in my 2013 truck. Subsequent trips have been movement free.

The DualLiner rubber bed mat is designed to maintain air space underneath to prevent issues Sleepy described for the average rubber mat by sitting on top of the truck bed ridges.

I'd thought about doing this sort of project but what has kept me from doing so came true for me one day. We were parked at Deception Pass and somebody backed into the left rear TC jack. The whole camper rotated in the bed. Fortunately no damage happened to the TC but the Honda Odyssey rear gate had a large dent in it. I am pretty sure the freedom to rotate saved the TC which I feel would have been damaged had I had installed the positioning devices. The TC has a little shifting back and forth in the bed but it has never been a problem.

Exactly. The only reason a camper will shift after it's loaded is because one of the four mounting points has more stress on it than the others, so it rotates. Personally, I find that to be a safety valve like Camper Jeff here points out.

Something's gotta give folks; if your camper is moving while traveling, and you force it to not move, that load is gonna be relocated someplace else. Where? I'd guess at the tie down and tugging on the camper mount point. A load that helps self-distribute to the other mounts when one is loaded more than the others I would think is a good thing, not something I would want to sacrifice just so the camper looks pretty sitting square in the truck bed.

I lower my TC down 1" below the top of the boards and slowly back it in when loading. The boards keep the TC centered during the loading and they lock into position preventing the TC from moving side-to-side while driving. Since my boards run along the side of the TC from the front of the tire wells all the way to the tailgate, there is no way for the front of the TC to move; therefore, no need for anything up front.

See? Doing this puts huge stress on not just the jacks but now on the sides of the camper near the bottom as the camper is slowly forced along the boards and the loads build on the jack legs with torque. The sides of the camper where it contacts is being steered by the boards. I can pretty much guarantee that the manufacturer didn't design that part of the camper for a rubbing like that.

And...

If you are misaligned, you can eliminate the lateral stress on the jacks by lowering it slowly until you are uncomfortable with the stress. Then lift one jack off the ground and then put it back down. Do the same for the remaining jacks and then continue lowering your TC into the bed. Repeat as necessary.

Now we not only have torque, but a system designed to distribute the load on 4 points is now only on THREE??!! Seriously, it might LOOK like this isn't a problem, but if only 3 jacks were needed, then that would be all a manufacturer would put on the camper; 3 jacks and a crutch to keep it from tipping but doesn't hold the load.
Again; the torques on this arrangement; the load on 3 of the 4 jacks, is going to cause parts to weaken and eventually fail.
3 jacks; there is NO way the load is equal on all three. Think about it; the load is balanced on the two opposing jacks with the third, odd jack tipping it diagonally. Try it with a brick or something; put two standoffs on opposite opposing corners, then shim up the third side to keep it even. Where is the load? Not on the three jacks, just two jacks with the third keeping the load level and almost zero load on it. It's a teeter totter with a brace on one end is all. Not load bearing.

This reminds me of videos of cranes that fail; everything looks absolutely fine until the load is too much. Then there is a tip, a collapse or something snaps with spectacular results.

Can you get away with it? Ignorance is bliss they say. Sure you can. Until physics says you can't. Let's say it's 99% guaranteed not to fail. That means every 1 in 100 WILL fail. So, who's feeling lucky with a 99% odds that nothing is gonna go wrong? I'm sure not. I seem to fall into that 1% crowd 99% of the time... I'm just 'lucky' that way...