Avion truck campers - Hundreds of photos
Without going into too much painful detail, we had a mishap several week-ends ago. While working with sand bag crews on the Mississippi River, the truck and camper fell into the flood waters as a road...
Forum Discussion
I posted a version of these pics of the outside of Argo on the main Truck Campers forum inadvertently. Rather than direct you there, let me put up an improved version of the outside build process here to make it easier to understand what happened.
Argo, the all aluminum camper- the outside...
This is how he looked when I bought him in Minnesota. Nice Ford Camper Special truck.
When I arrived home and Annie came inside to get the tour, she said “It smells kind of musty...”
It didn’t take long to figure out why...
As I exposed the wood structure, I found rot, lots of rot. I suspended Argo from a steel A frame at a friend’s boatyard and removed the entire bottom section of the camper.
I built a frame of 1.5” square aluminum tubing. No more structural wood.
i
Hanging from the A frame.
At this point I was still in the slide-in camper mindset
But that began to change as Annie lobbied for free passage of dogs from cab to camper.
Still the slide-in configuration
And then, the moment of truth. I sold the Camper Special truck and bought a 2013 Ford F-250 Super Duty 4WD diesel and cut The Hole, as it came to be known...
The Hole is the width of Argo’s floor and as high as the bottom of the cabover berth.
I sold the truck pick up bed and built a steel and aluminum frame on top of the chassis, mounting it with rubber body bumpers of the same size and hardness as those Ford used to mount the cab to the chassis.
Argo mounted on the new internal frame and on the chassis. Note that the interior is now insulated with 2 layers of 1/2” rigid foam sheets.
We built storage compartments where the truck bed would have been.
And covered them with fresh anodized sheet, attaching it with 3M double sided adhesive tape.
The new sheets and old sheets didn’t match...
So Argo was painted “Porsche Polar Silber”...pretty fast looking!
k
A heavy tubular steel bumper and folding aluminum steps that rotate off to the side to allow us to use the steps when a boat trailer is attached complete the exterior.
Whew!
Argo, the all aluminum camper- the outside...
This is how he looked when I bought him in Minnesota. Nice Ford Camper Special truck.
When I arrived home and Annie came inside to get the tour, she said “It smells kind of musty...”
It didn’t take long to figure out why...
As I exposed the wood structure, I found rot, lots of rot. I suspended Argo from a steel A frame at a friend’s boatyard and removed the entire bottom section of the camper.
I built a frame of 1.5” square aluminum tubing. No more structural wood.
iHanging from the A frame.
At this point I was still in the slide-in camper mindset
But that began to change as Annie lobbied for free passage of dogs from cab to camper.
Still the slide-in configuration
And then, the moment of truth. I sold the Camper Special truck and bought a 2013 Ford F-250 Super Duty 4WD diesel and cut The Hole, as it came to be known...
The Hole is the width of Argo’s floor and as high as the bottom of the cabover berth.
I sold the truck pick up bed and built a steel and aluminum frame on top of the chassis, mounting it with rubber body bumpers of the same size and hardness as those Ford used to mount the cab to the chassis.
Argo mounted on the new internal frame and on the chassis. Note that the interior is now insulated with 2 layers of 1/2” rigid foam sheets.
We built storage compartments where the truck bed would have been.
And covered them with fresh anodized sheet, attaching it with 3M double sided adhesive tape.
The new sheets and old sheets didn’t match...
So Argo was painted “Porsche Polar Silber”...pretty fast looking!
kA heavy tubular steel bumper and folding aluminum steps that rotate off to the side to allow us to use the steps when a boat trailer is attached complete the exterior.
Whew!
