How To Straighten FWC Camper On Truck Bed

I wrote about how turnbuckles are used to hold my Fleet Model Four Wheel Camper to my Tacoma.  I also reviewed my, and other frustrations with the turnbuckles that are supplied by FWC

This blog will address what happens when the turnbuckles loosen and how to realign camper.

When you put the camper on the truck the camper is on 4 jacks and as you lower the camper a little hand pressure can align the camper before it finally makes contact with the truck bed.

Once the camper is straight and on the truck and held down with turnbuckles, I remove the camper jacks as they are heavy and more than one FWC has caught the still installed jack and tear it off the camper or bend it.

I don’t want to carry the weight of 4 jacks back and forth across country so I remove mine.

But, what happens when the turnbuckles loosen and your camper vibrates out of alignment on the truck bed?

I usually know I have an alignment problem and therefore loose turnbuckles, is the symmetry between the camper and the truck bed, as shown above in alignment.

  

The other way of knowing the camper is out of alignment is the gap on either side of camper to the side of truck bed.  Driver’s side above.

Psssenger side above 

The gaps above ore closely the same and therefore in alignment.

So, this year I see an alignment problem, that resulted in the turnbuckle being loose.

In the past 2 years of camper living I just tightened the turnbuckles as is, and not try to align the camper, without the camper jacks.

I asked Joanne to use her new recovery jack for her Jeep.  I planned to lift the corner of the camper’s passenger side and push the alignment back into place.  The jack was too short for the height of the camper.

What did I do?

I’m the stick figure above facing away from the camper and back against it.  I pushed and lifted and bounced the camper a bit and it moved a little.

With the front drivers side turnbuckle secure I got my friend Susan to push the camper’s rear from the rear drivers side above.

As I bounced she pushed and we were able to realign the camper as you see in the pictures above.

I couldn’t believe we did it with no major effort.  This is doing it on flat ground.  It could be easier on a forward slant.

Now you know how to do it too.

Brent

macaloney@hotmail.com