Bigfoot 2500 Underbelly, Thoughts and Pics

Grit dog wrote:
What’s the cradle for and what does it have to do with the jacks? :h

The cradle serves two functions. First, it raises the camper 3" so the camper will clear the roof of the truck. Second, it prevents it from sliding side to side in the bed of the truck. Previously I used a combination of Foam sandwiched between plywood coupled with rubber mats. This all worked well enough but since the weight of the camper is along the perimeter of the camper, the foam on the outside edge of the platform was starting to get more compressed than the inside. This also was leading to some additional movement in the camper on rough roads because of the compressive nature of the foam. The platform addresses both of these issues.

As far as removing the jacks, the camper stays on the truck full time. The only need for the jacks was to either realign if the camper moved around in the bed or to stabilize in windy conditions. With the cradle in place, the camper has very little room to move in the bed of the truck so that eliminates that issue. As far as the stability is concerned, I've put the jacks down maybe twice in 5 years and while nice, I can partially get the same stability by inflating the airbags on the truck to provide some rigidity to the springs.

I want to remove the jacks for two reasons. The first is to service them as they are very tired and barely lift the camper as it is. The second, is to reduce weight since they just aren't needed at this time. My plan is to remove for a couple of local trips to figure out first if I'm happy and don't notice any issues I didn't foresee. If no problems are encountered, I will keep them off and start my winter project of rebuilding them.