Latest Truck Camper Projects
by Brian and Michele
| Older Projects are located
at the bottom of the page: |
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Bike Rack: Being
a distance runner, I spend allot of hours banging away miles
on the open roads alone. To spend more time together, Michele and I decided
we wanted to get her a new bike so she could join me out on the
roads and trails. To be able to take Michele's bike along with us on
our camping adventures we had to come up with a way of transporting
it. I searched the net for the best way to carry a bike on
an RV
and decided I wanted to save my hitch for another project (deck)
and choose to mount a roof top carrier on our RV ladder.
Coming up with the parts was a lesson in how expensive car roof rack bike carriers could be, lucky I remembered craigslist.com and scored a complete roof rack system with two crossbars and two Rocky Mount bike rails in near perfect condition. Next was designing how I was going to mount a horizontal car roof rack to my vertical RV ladder. After numerous designs, both complex and simple I finally settle on the tried and true....KISS approach, KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. The parts I would need included eight stainless steel hose clamps, two crossbars and two bike rails. I mounted the roof rack crossbars horizontally to the ladder with four hose clamps each securing them to the vertical ladder support tubes and the ladder rungs to carry the weight. I left the crossbars full length (temporary) as I began the installation, as I wanted to fit the bike rails before cutting the crossbars down to proper size. Once the crossbars were in the proper position I twisted down the hose clamps. This really tied the ladder and crossbars together, once done the horizontal crossbars felt as solid as the ladder itself. To stress test this installation I hung on the crossbars and bounced on them trying to pull myself up and allow my weight to drop off. This set up is going NO WHERE... The bike rails then were fitted on the crossbars using the normal mounting attachments. Once I was happy with the fitment and location of the bike rails, I cut down the crossbars to a size that would leave me with other options in the future. For safety reasons and being a guy who likes back up plans to back up plans, I will use a double securing system and safety tether to keep the bikes in there place as we travel down the road to our next great adventure! Now we have to go get Michele's new bike...
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Dually Tire Valve Extensions: When
we first took delivery of our truck camper, I noticed the tires
needed a bit of air. Once we got our rig safely home, I set off
to perform this simple task...(Insert,
Evil Laugh HA HA HA...).
When first starting this job, I had no idea how hard it would be
to access the valve stems. Anyone who has tried to add air to a
set of dually tires with inward facing, short valve stems
realizes just how difficult it can be to get the air chuck on
the valve stems. I tried everything I could think of, but I
could not get the air chuck in the correct position to add air,
although I managed to allow air to escape with each failing
attempt. After crawling under and in between the dually wheels wells a number of times and embarrassing myself in front of my neighbors, I finally came to the conclusion the tires/wheels had to come off. The only way to properly service the rear tires was to jack up the 12k pound rig and remove the outboard ties, this turned a simple 10 minute job into an hour long taxing endeavor. There has got to be a better way… To remedy this dilemma, I decided to add a set of valve stem extensions. After some internet research I ordered a set of Camco RV Dual Wheel Valve Stem Extenders for Inner/Outer Dual Tire installations. This kit is designed to bring all the valve stems to the outside rim and to make it easier to service the tires as well as check air levels. The installation was pretty straight forward, screw the steel braided lines on to the valve stems, route the air lines thru the rims and mount at an easy to access location. This took the task of airing up the rear tires from over an hour to just a few minutes. |
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