Rear of camper sagging

[Supercharged111]

Like the title says, my camper is canted back on the truck. Is this normal or is there something I can do? The truck sits almost dead level, but the camper relative to the truck is my concern. my camper does have a CG of 39", so behind the axle. I'm suddenly reminded of how I struggled to post pics on here, been a while since I've logged on.

[Supercharged111]

Pulled my head out of my ass and put the thing on level ground. I have a 1/8" delta top to bottom gap between bed and cab on both sides. Bed appears to be the same height front to rear and the truck with camper without trailer has a slight rake, so higher in the rear. I'll compare to empty here in just a bit.



Here's why I try not to read too much into the right side. The upper rail is bent too, on both sides actually. Right side rail height measures wonky compared to left side.





Front rail is a little bowed. No shots of the floor yet. Finding a clean white dually bed turned out to be a way bigger headache than I anticipated.

[Supercharged111]

Aaand we can disregard the bed gap pics. Stupid me forgot to account for the fact that I had the right 2 jacks down to level the truck due to the crown in the street.

[Supercharged111]

So some interesting observations and realizations. There is something of a 3/16" delta on the right side and left from top to bottom. Also, right side gap overall is about 3/8" greater overall. Bear in mind this bed came from another truck, so I may crack all the bolts loose and shift the thing to even out the gaps. Another thing that struck me was the fact that there is a weird spot in the bed floor, like something really heavy was dropped in the frontish rightish area so there are both low and high spots. This could certainly be part of my issue. In addition, the front rail of the bed is tweaked like something whacked into it so now I feel kinda dumb for not taking all of that into account. Could we expand a bit more though on this crown issue that was mentioned earlier?




The truck has been a bit of a project, but there were bits of it in such great condition with such low mileage that I couldn't pass it up. Plus it came with a blower. Here is how I bought it.

[MORSNOW]

GeoBoy wrote:
Morsnow, you truck maybe has the crowned floor of the bed problem. If you measure the flatness of the bed, front to back, with an 8’ straight edge you will see the problem. I cut a piece of 1/2” thick rubber stall mat and placed it in the rear of the bed and eliminated the problem.

It does have the crown, I discovered that soon after buying my camper. I have two rubber truck mud flaps under the rear half of the bed with the full length rubber bed mat on top of them to offset the crown. The camper now sits level, the cab of my truck does have a noticeable slope which is normal.

[Grit_dog]

TIcky. That is a body line at the top of the bed.

[Supercharged111]

I slacked on the camper last night, will do some homework tonight and post results.

[GeoBoy]

Morsnow, you truck maybe has the crowned floor of the bed problem. If you measure the flatness of the bed, front to back, with an 8’ straight edge you will see the problem. I cut a piece of 1/2” thick rubber stall mat and placed it in the rear of the bed and eliminated the problem.

[ticki2]

Supercharged111 wrote:
Here you can see the camper and the box body line.

When I blow up that picture there are 2 areas of concern . First is where the truck bed meets the cab . The space at the bed rail is larger than the bottom which would indicate the bed is tail down . Drivers side picture did not indicate this . Perhaps a crushed cross brace or missing shims . The second is the bed to camper . Look at the horizontal line that starts at the top of the tail light and runs forward . There seems to be more space between camper and bed at the front . Could be a shadow line , hard to tell , I don't recall a body line there . Take some measurements from bed rail to under wing front and back .

[Grit_dog]

You're correct. Camper definitely isn't parallel with top of the truck bed. Again, is the bed the same depth front to back?
If yes then bed could be crowned a bit and camper not sitting down hard or camper frame a little bowed or squished in back.
Looks like the bed is also canted back looking at the bottom body lines.
Honestly frame looks a little tweaked from all the weight on the back.

Truck might be getting fatigued from the load?
How many miles, how many with the big camper and or trailer combo?
Does the bed line up better with the cab when the camper is off the truck?

[MORSNOW]

Supercharged111 wrote:
You're talking the gap between the bed and cab? Never noticed that before. Will snag more pics tomorrow in the daylight. I did salvage the bed from a wrecked truck and the right side is a little dinged up from when the running board of that truck caved upwards so that may be it.

Modern GM cab roofs also slope forward so it can make it look like the camper is leaning rearward. You can see the cab slope on my truck pretty good in this picture.

[Supercharged111]

You're talking the gap between the bed and cab? Never noticed that before. Will snag more pics tomorrow in the daylight. I did salvage the bed from a wrecked truck and the right side is a little dinged up from when the running board of that truck caved upwards so that may be it.

[MORSNOW]

What does the gap look like between the cab and bed? In the above pic it looks like the entire box is leaning towards the rear.

[Supercharged111]

Here you can see the camper and the box body line.

[Supercharged111]

The chassis cab trucks came with a heavier bolt in leaf pack. I've long wanted to grab one. The hitch is a 1500/15000, so intentional overkill for the 1000# of tongue weight and ~9000# loaded weight. The truck has new Bilsteins which helped tremendously. I don't really notice the Hellwig sway, but the front shock strut things that hook up down by the wiper cowl made a noticeable improvement. We're focusing too much on the truck though, I'm more curious if the camper sitting in the bed nose up is an issue or fairly normal with these 12 footers.