Avion truck campers - Hundreds of photos
Without going into too much painful detail, we had a mishap several week-ends ago. While working with sand bag crews on the Mississippi River, the truck and camper fell into the flood waters as a road...
Forum Discussion
Fellow Avionistas, thanks very much for your good ideas and observations about connecting Argo to the truck. Keep your ideas coming. I'm considering it from many angles. In that vein, I called Mark at Provan. They're the folks who make the Tiger line of truck-based campers. Very pricey, they occupy that middle ground between truck campers like our Avions and the Class C, van-based rigs.
Mark told me they use two styles of mounting. The first and original one, as personified by their Bengal model, is having all parts rigidly attached everywhere. The camper frame is bolted to the chassis, then the camper and cab are bolted together. Finally, the bottom of the cabover is bolted to the roof of the truck! These units have accumulated thousands and thousands of miles in all sorts of terrain, including trips from the U.S. To the southern tip of South America. He said there have been no attachment failures or other problems.
They are now also using an independently suspended camper and cab arrangement, with a flexible accordion coupling between the two units. The camper uses a proprietary three point suspension system. He characterized this system as allowing a good deal of flexibility in the camper itself, as distinct from the cab. The bottom of the cabover is some distance above the roof of the cab, rather like a conventional truck camper.
So where does this leave me? With two good options certainly, perhaps even three. I could rigidly mount the camper to the chassis and use an accordion coupling between the camper and cab.
This whole enterprise has become profoundly quixotic. It remains a very interesting design challenge and a compelling one, most of the time!
67, I seriously considered the Motorvator that was on eBay recently. I spoke at length with the salesman and with Chuck Cayo. Arguably, putting a sound Motorvator body on a new 4wd truck chassis would be simpler. However, I concluded that I'm so far down the all-aluminum Avion C11 road, that it wouldn't make sense to buy a rig with unknown issues. Plus, it's hard to imagine selling Argo in his present uncompleted condition. I'm not really after a Class C, just 4wd and reasonable access between cab and camper.
So, for all that, onward!
Dick
And D, thanks for starting this forum. It is astonishing!
Mark told me they use two styles of mounting. The first and original one, as personified by their Bengal model, is having all parts rigidly attached everywhere. The camper frame is bolted to the chassis, then the camper and cab are bolted together. Finally, the bottom of the cabover is bolted to the roof of the truck! These units have accumulated thousands and thousands of miles in all sorts of terrain, including trips from the U.S. To the southern tip of South America. He said there have been no attachment failures or other problems.
They are now also using an independently suspended camper and cab arrangement, with a flexible accordion coupling between the two units. The camper uses a proprietary three point suspension system. He characterized this system as allowing a good deal of flexibility in the camper itself, as distinct from the cab. The bottom of the cabover is some distance above the roof of the cab, rather like a conventional truck camper.
So where does this leave me? With two good options certainly, perhaps even three. I could rigidly mount the camper to the chassis and use an accordion coupling between the camper and cab.
This whole enterprise has become profoundly quixotic. It remains a very interesting design challenge and a compelling one, most of the time!
67, I seriously considered the Motorvator that was on eBay recently. I spoke at length with the salesman and with Chuck Cayo. Arguably, putting a sound Motorvator body on a new 4wd truck chassis would be simpler. However, I concluded that I'm so far down the all-aluminum Avion C11 road, that it wouldn't make sense to buy a rig with unknown issues. Plus, it's hard to imagine selling Argo in his present uncompleted condition. I'm not really after a Class C, just 4wd and reasonable access between cab and camper.
So, for all that, onward!
Dick
And D, thanks for starting this forum. It is astonishing!
