Lance 851 Bumper surgery for trailer hitch, other mods
For a number of reasons I’ve replaced my older Lance 835 with a new-to-me 2007 Lance 851 camper. I pull a large, heavy trailer behind my TC with too much tongue weight, so I really wanted to keep the hitch directly on the truck, without using any kind of extension. The AirSafe hitch I use (one of the great inventions of all time) already sticks out an extra foot behind the truck.
The 851 is a pretty rare model, long bed with a slider for the dinette and unusually large tank capacities for a relatively small camper. They only made it for two years, and apparently not very many of them. It has always seemed about perfect for our uses and this fall we had a confluence of both the old camper with a scary amount of rot and this one coming available used just over the border in New Hampshire. Previously all I’d seen were in the deep south or far west.
Unlike the 835 which sits up in the bed and blocks neither the hitch area in the back of the truck nor the truck taillights and signals, the 851 has this silly back wall and bumper that drops down off the end of the truck and blocks access to the hitch, like this:
I took the camper to Rich and team at New England RV Collision Center to see what they could do. After some discussion of various possibilities we decided we could cut the bumper but leave the plate on top intact. It is rigid enough to maintain structural integrity without any of the additional reinforcement strategies we had contemplated for a bigger cutout. So once that was done the camper now looks like this:
I can both pull directly with no extension and we’ve even kept the rear step! A nice win-win solution. The only thing I’ve given up is some length for storing the stinky slinky.
While we were there I also added a backup camera for both the truck and trailer. This camper provides no visibility to the rear at all and has a blind spot about the size of Montana. I went with a wired system from Rearview Safety. The back of the trailer is a good 50 ft from the cab of the truck, with a 12 ft tall aluminum box in the way to block the signal, so I thought wireless was just asking for trouble. We installed a three camera system, one on the camper, one on the trailer, and one on the license plate holder on the truck to let me see the hitch ball when hooking up. The wiring harness and connectors provided were really nice and heavy duty—you can see the silver camera connector for the trailer to the left of the trailer hitch. The system seems to work very nicely, but it is going to take some practice because objects are much closer than they appear in the camera. I guess there is a tradeoff for field of view and distortion of apparent distance.
Finally we installed a 150 watt solar panel from AM Solar on the roof with the Blue Sky SB3000i MPPT controller. Their installation kit was great, with everything needed provided and what seems to be very high quality hardware. We haven’t had a chance to exercise the panel on a camping trip yet as winter is upon us in the northeast, but it certainly keeps the batteries fully charged.
With all of that the new camper is ready to rock, both for the kind of camping we like and when I’m hauling the fairground organ to fairs and other events.
The 851 is a pretty rare model, long bed with a slider for the dinette and unusually large tank capacities for a relatively small camper. They only made it for two years, and apparently not very many of them. It has always seemed about perfect for our uses and this fall we had a confluence of both the old camper with a scary amount of rot and this one coming available used just over the border in New Hampshire. Previously all I’d seen were in the deep south or far west.
Unlike the 835 which sits up in the bed and blocks neither the hitch area in the back of the truck nor the truck taillights and signals, the 851 has this silly back wall and bumper that drops down off the end of the truck and blocks access to the hitch, like this:
I took the camper to Rich and team at New England RV Collision Center to see what they could do. After some discussion of various possibilities we decided we could cut the bumper but leave the plate on top intact. It is rigid enough to maintain structural integrity without any of the additional reinforcement strategies we had contemplated for a bigger cutout. So once that was done the camper now looks like this:
I can both pull directly with no extension and we’ve even kept the rear step! A nice win-win solution. The only thing I’ve given up is some length for storing the stinky slinky.
While we were there I also added a backup camera for both the truck and trailer. This camper provides no visibility to the rear at all and has a blind spot about the size of Montana. I went with a wired system from Rearview Safety. The back of the trailer is a good 50 ft from the cab of the truck, with a 12 ft tall aluminum box in the way to block the signal, so I thought wireless was just asking for trouble. We installed a three camera system, one on the camper, one on the trailer, and one on the license plate holder on the truck to let me see the hitch ball when hooking up. The wiring harness and connectors provided were really nice and heavy duty—you can see the silver camera connector for the trailer to the left of the trailer hitch. The system seems to work very nicely, but it is going to take some practice because objects are much closer than they appear in the camera. I guess there is a tradeoff for field of view and distortion of apparent distance.
Finally we installed a 150 watt solar panel from AM Solar on the roof with the Blue Sky SB3000i MPPT controller. Their installation kit was great, with everything needed provided and what seems to be very high quality hardware. We haven’t had a chance to exercise the panel on a camping trip yet as winter is upon us in the northeast, but it certainly keeps the batteries fully charged.
With all of that the new camper is ready to rock, both for the kind of camping we like and when I’m hauling the fairground organ to fairs and other events.
