lance camper porpoising and tires cupping

thanks grit dog. i do realize the issues are unrelated, i guess i should have posted them separately. i will have the ball joints checked when i get an alignment done when i get new tires. I have only put 15,000 miles on the truck in 10 years, and yes over those 15,000 i am guilty of not rotating enough. The tires had only 15,000 left on them when i bought the truck, and now they are due. they are toyo open country MT. I did look under the truck since I posted, and the anti-sway bar links are popped and leaking, so i'll be attending to the front end a lot here soon, just wanted to make sure i attend to all issues, that's why i posted these questions.

IQ wrote:
thanks everyone for responding. i appreciate it. I especially appreciate those those that have shared what they have done and how it changed things. Mostly thanks to those that read my original post correctly and responded as I had requested. It sounds like nobody is suggesting the cabover struts, and I know it doesn't happens 100% of my trips or all the time so perhaps a different speed will be key. Thanks for the similar reports with the ford front suspension (leaf spring / twin i-beam). Has anyone had better/worse results while having a front hitch cargo carrier?

Tires cupping and truck bouncing are unrelated.
Cupping how? MT or AT? How often do you rotate, how bad of cupping after how many miles? The more aggressive the tire, the less you rotate and the more you drive on Mountian roads the more they will feather or cup.

Bouncing on I5 and not all the time? It's I5. Nothing wrong with your truck. I can get my new 1/2 ton or any other truck to start chattering or bouncing depending on how much I'm hauling or towing.
It's an old truck, how good is the front end? If the ball jts are wore out, that typically causes neg camber and wears the insides. Outside is from pos camber which is highly unlikely, excessive toe in on both tires which is unlikely, or normal wear on aggressive tires on a heavy vehicle, more so on curvy roads.

joerg68 wrote:
A better description of your rig in your original post might have gone a long way in avoiding misunderstandings. No need to complain about free comments on the interwebz.

I am on my third setup - 2 trucks, 3 campers. They were all pretty well balanced and not overweight. Our Outfitter Apex 8 on a Silverado 2500 Regular Cab, Long Bed, 4x2, rode like a sports car.

All of them exhibited some porpoising if the road conditions were just right. Not much you can do but slow down or speed up or find another road.

Your tire issue may or may not be caused by the camper alone.

btw i think i did a pretty good job of describing the situation in the original post. just like i said "4x4" and yet people still think i had independent i-beam front suspension (with a 4x4??? hahahaah)

That's what I was wondering. I had heard it was no longer in production, but saw it brought up in this thread. Normally manufacturers copy one another when something comes out and no one copied this idea leading me to wonder. Was Lance the only one with this problem or did Lance simply offer a placebo to cure an issue that had more to do with the road than the camper.

I'm sticking with "you can't fix the road" as where there will be a problem is pretty easy to predict based on expansion joints in concrete and in Interstate close to major cities that carry a lot of traffic and are showing their age.

My two cents

No other camper manufacturer offers, or has ever offered, anything like Lance's cabover strut system. At least not that I am aware of.

Heck, I am not sure Lance even offers it anymore.

Was there a real design issue or was the Lance strut system just designed to placate the "it's going to tip over forward" crowd? Seems it was from the days before North-South beds, so cabovers were shorter.

I do know that on concrete roads, my rig gets to "galloping" at certain speeds. The only solution is to drive at least 70MPH or under 45MPH. It's a harmonic that's set up between the wheelbase of the truck and the spacing of the expansion joints in the road. I personally think it's intentional on the part of the road designers, in an attempt to keep speeds down, because the spacing affects most vehicles. I've been down these roads in minivans, a short wheelbase Chevy Trax, regular cab pickups, extended cab pickups, compact pickups, and they ALL gallop to some extent.

Does anyone beside Lance offer the attachments for the cab over? I have never seen them, but it would seem other campers would have the same issues and benefit from the same fittings. I have only talked to a couple of folks who have used them and they did not seem to harm the truck in any way I could see.

I have never used them and know nothing about them other than what I have stated above.

thanks jbbrick

It's been over 20 years since I had a Lance camper but when I first bought it I had a lot of porpoising until I put on the extra shocks and linkage on the front part cabover anchored to the truck, along with the 4 on the sides. Don't know if thats your problem but it sure helped me.

thanks ardvark

oregun when the camper is on, i use the highest (5?) on all 4 shocks. one time i tried it a lot lower, i cannot remember the results.

I have found the whole porpoising issue to be hard to pin down with comments in various forums across the web. I have a Hallmark popup in an F350 long bed. If I drive 35W out of Minnesota heading south I have no issue at all. As I progress on 35W into Iowa I would swear I have switched to a speedboat crashing through waves there is so much porpoising. If you watch the back end of the camper and truck, it looks like it is jackhammering down the road.

After we are further south, all is well again. It is the same thing with towables, but on different stretches of Interstates, some of which seem to be pretty well known, thus my earlier comment about making sure it is not the road. Here in Tennessee on I81 just outside of Bristol heading towards Knoxsville we have a few miles of Interstate where there is so much vibration you would swear your tires have just gone out of balance. Drive a few more miles and by the time you are to the Johnson City exits, everything is smooth.

My thought is that as the quality of our roadways have deteriorated, harmonics play games with our trucks' suspension. I don't think it is one particular brand or even camper/truck match up.

I did install Sumo springs and Fox shocks and those changes did reduce, but not eliminate the issue.

Just my two cents. :)