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MrPhelps's avatar
MrPhelps
Explorer
Oct 18, 2014

Broken Frame and Repair

We just finished a couple of trips totaling about 7500 miles. We took it on some very rough roads. I keep a plywood base under it to provide a makeshift table when I take it off of the truck. When I took the camper off, it looked like the camper had moved around on the edge of the plywood table in the bed and flexed the edging.

I noticed a bulge (in horizontal axis) about a foot forward of the rear wing corner of the driver rear side of the camper (sorry failed to take a photo of initial condition). It looked like the screws holding the metal trim had pulled out. I cut the metal trim to get a look.



Under the trim, a screw through the plywood side into the frame had flexed and not only punched a hole in the frame, but created a weak spot and fractured it completely. The frame was completely broken and was misaligned about 1/2 inch in vertical axis.



I was able to re-align it using the jacks. The frame is 1.5" aluminum tubing. I went to local shop and got a 16" section of aluminum angle that was about 1.75" wide. It had very good thickness and stiffness. I notched it in two places so I could stiffen the structure in the horizontal axis with bolts. I attached along vertical axis with screws, once it was aligned and then bolted to stiffen and strengthen along the broken section.






Bolting the horizontal axis eliminated the side bulge and pulled things back into place.



I used some filler in a couple of places to reinstall screws and it went back together pretty well.

Truck Campers
  • btggraphix's avatar
    btggraphix
    Explorer
    Oct 20, 2014
    Interesting....looks like a good fix. I had replaced my sheets of plywood (spacers under the camper belly) with pink foam board under the camper a while back, I think last spring. It looked pretty good after the first couple of trips but After about 5k miles since August I noticed the rear of the camper is sitting low, and I've determine ed that it has crushed the back edge of the pink down a fair amount. It seems the campers overhang aT the back (nearly 4') does rock down at least over time which isn't too surprising I guess. But in any case there is no doubt in my mind these big campers do some moving around and the overhang seems the most vulnerable place to flexing. Good you caught it and fixed it. That was one thing that was nice when I had the belly of mine open; you could inspect the framing pieces and at at thT time they looked good in the first 8'. Might be worth looking again next time I get a chance. The internal members might be worth looking at Yours if you can easily. Not sure if your belly pan is plywood or a thinner Sheeting, but I cut my thin sheeting Into three sections so I could open it up later fairly easily. But the part I'd most like to look at, the overhang, has to have a lot of stuff removed like the generator, to get to the sheeting.......it would be nice to get a look in There sometime..
  • MrPhelps's avatar
    MrPhelps
    Explorer
    Oct 19, 2014
    Victory, I think the original defect, if there was one, was the way the frame was attached to the plywood side sections. The attachment was with self tapping screws. When the side was flexing over the plywood base the camper was setting, on these screws flexed fracturing the aluminum frame. I know the camper is supposed to be designed to flex, but some of the places we took it on our long trip this summer were very rough, perhaps to rough for a camper of this size.

    Grip, I think that is a very good suggestion. Do you have a photo of your solution. I'm going to look at ways to keep the camper better aligned on the plywood table base.
  • Victory402's avatar
    Victory402
    Explorer
    Oct 18, 2014
    Very nice job! I wonder if some kind of original defect caused this? Very strange fracture there.
  • Gripnriprod's avatar
    Gripnriprod
    Explorer
    Oct 18, 2014
    Very nice repair job!
    While not breaking the framework, we experienced some damage when the TC shifted leaving an edge unsupported by the 4' x 8' sheet of plywood. I reworked the plywood using two sheets to form around the wheelwells thus limiting the potentially unsupported areas.
  • bobndot's avatar
    bobndot
    Explorer II
    Oct 18, 2014
    Nice repair job . I agree , it appears to be stronger now .
    It seems that aluminum cracks when stressed or tears when a small puncture is involved. I guess there are pros n cons of everything.
    That's what scares me about the 'no rot' all aluminum models. I can see those welds being an 'out of warranty' expensive option at times like this.
    I guess time will tell .

    Bob
  • MrPhelps's avatar
    MrPhelps
    Explorer
    Oct 18, 2014
    I hope not Silver. We repaired a damaged frame in the rear wing section near our generator compartment about 4 years ago. I looked it over and it seems fine.
  • silversand's avatar
    silversand
    Explorer
    Oct 18, 2014
    Mr Phelps:

    Nicely done!

    Probably (no, not probably, positively) stronger than new.

    Is this a fortification that would need to be done on the opposite side of camper, too?

    S-

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