Wooden fail safe camper alignment tool

Travelon wrote:


Airborne?:h...Then something is wrong with your rig. I have traveled within CA for 50 years and never been airborne, loaded or empty. Maybe stretching the truth a little there. ;)

.

It is normal that 10,000 lb suspension will not flex when holding only 4000 lb of empty truck weight and roads are not getting better in CA.
It become common that truckers when approaching I-5 underpass will change to the left lane, becouse the joints on right lane are so beaten up that trucks fly.
It varies from road to road. Took wife lately to San Jose on 880 freeway and wife promised to never ride in truck again.
Then drove i-80 to Reno last week and it wasn't that bad, although on some stretches the rear wheels got kicked into the air.
No joke about CC turning off becouse shaking trigger accident sensors.
Had porcelain sink on the bed once and regardless slower driving on 15 miles trip, it arrived cracked.
That is why I want everything at least double secured on my truck.

Sleepy:

You've been quite busy!

I really like the design. Very well thought-out. We have the same bed interior stamp-out as yours (both 8 foot; the only difference is: our truck is 1 model year newer, and is an SRW).

Our truck camper's "tub" section (the part in the bed when loaded) may be slightly differently dimensioned than the Lance you have. And, we have long rubber spacer blocks on our camper's bulkhead, but this would be easily adapted with a slight design change.

Great work,
Silver-

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

Buzzcut1 wrote:

Kayteg1 wrote:
Maybe you drive on better roads, but my dually gets airborne on CA freeway bumps every few minutes.
Quite often my Cruise Control will disengage becouse computer thinks I am involved in accident.
So the rear blocks like that sooner or later would find their way to jump out the sides.
I have no blocks on the rear, but on front I have all the blocks screw to a plywood that front of the camper sits on.
I need the plywood shimming to clear the roof lights on the truck, so it is working for me very well.
I don't consider rear blocks very important, but would be happy to find a way to secure them there.

Ever notice how the opening of the tailgate is narrower than the rest of the bed and that the tc fits through that opening with a 1/2" on each side at the top and 4" at the bottom? So just how is a 2x4 hooked to a big wedge ( thats makes a 8" wide assembly) jammed up to the side of a camper which is held in place by properly tightened tie downs (front and rear) going to bounce or slide out of that tiny little gap?

Buzzcut.... your ability to visualize is very good...

... if you had cables attached to any of the 5 assemblys... ( ie; front, front corners, and rear sides ) and the cables hanging over the sides where you could use them to try to pull the pieces out.... you couldn't do it.

I can assure anyone, I'm not the brighest bulb in the world.... but my ideas are usually so simple that they don't fail.

This is one of the simplist....

assists alignment, position, and prevents skewing.

"IF" the camper was to bounce up off the bed and then drop back down it would fall (repositioning)into it's proper place.... the whole truck bed as been transformed into a "funnel"... the bottom of the camper fits with only a 1/2" of movement possible

It's not a rubeX cube... just look at the essential pieces... the slopes... then attach themial pieces to some thing that will position them and keep them from turning over. Position them so that they can't move with the campers bottom can't move anywhere except where you want it to be.

Help, someone....

If it doesn't work I wouldn't't publish it...

I get enough grief on the forum that I don't offer many ideas on the TC forum now.

Chet

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?

Nice setup Chet.

I don't have a TC but, that's a good idea.
Thanks for sharing.

Kayteg1 wrote:
Maybe you drive on better roads, but my dually gets airborne on CA freeway bumps every few minutes.
Quite often my Cruise Control will disengage becouse computer thinks I am involved in accident.
So the rear blocks like that sooner or later would find their way to jump out the sides.
I have no blocks on the rear, but on front I have all the blocks screw to a plywood that front of the camper sits on.
I need the plywood shimming to clear the roof lights on the truck, so it is working for me very well.
I don't consider rear blocks very important, but would be happy to find a way to secure them there.

Airborne?:h...Then something is wrong with your rig. I have traveled within CA for 50 years and never been airborne, loaded or empty. Maybe stretching the truth a little there. ;)

Travelon

PS. Nice set up Sleepy that will work for my next camper.

Kayteg1 wrote:
Maybe you drive on better roads, but my dually gets airborne on CA freeway bumps every few minutes.
Quite often my Cruise Control will disengage becouse computer thinks I am involved in accident.
So the rear blocks like that sooner or later would find their way to jump out the sides.
I have no blocks on the rear, but on front I have all the blocks screw to a plywood that front of the camper sits on.
I need the plywood shimming to clear the roof lights on the truck, so it is working for me very well.
I don't consider rear blocks very important, but would be happy to find a way to secure them there.

Ever notice how the opening of the tailgate is narrower than the rest of the bed and that the tc fits through that opening with a 1/2" on each side at the top and 4" at the bottom? So just how is a 2x4 hooked to a big wedge ( thats makes a 8" wide assembly) jammed up to the side of a camper which is held in place by properly tightened tie downs (front and rear) going to bounce or slide out of that tiny little gap?

Maybe you drive on better roads, but my dually gets airborne on CA freeway bumps every few minutes.
Quite often my Cruise Control will disengage becouse computer thinks I am involved in accident.
So the rear blocks like that sooner or later would find their way to jump out the sides.
I have no blocks on the rear, but on front I have all the blocks screw to a plywood that front of the camper sits on.
I need the plywood shimming to clear the roof lights on the truck, so it is working for me very well.
I don't consider rear blocks very important, but would be happy to find a way to secure them there.