What if: Interior, the bed

Finally! I'm getting around to the good stuff! The interior layout.

An interior overview with roof and front wall out of the way

I'm going to take this in small chunks, one section at a time, spending several posts on the interior before moving on to the systems, but with everything all crammed into such a small space there's quite a bit of overlap so there will probably be some mixing of sections.

The bed:

The key to making the layout workable and comfortable for me is not designing for a crowd that will never be, but for the one that will.  To this end the camper will have a single bed. No, not one bed, though that's true as well, but a bed wide enough for one person but no more.

I can hear the comments now, but for my circumstances a bed for one makes a lot of sense.  For the past 30 years I have never had anyone else wanting to share my camp bed with me, (Go ahead, make all the jokes about it you want; I do; it's either that or cry.) and I don’t see that changing. And it's not like there's a lot of extra space in this camper to be wasting on bed-square-footage that will never get used.

Since 2005 I have spent an estimated 1700 nights sleeping on a 30” wide bed and have never found it to be a hardship. But just to give myself a treat, I’ve designed this bed to be very luxurious 32” wide. I've placed this bed crosswise in the camper, right against the front wall.

So that’s great but a prime challenge with pickup campers is balancing floor space with placement of heavy items, specifically the water tanks and batteries.  With this layout the obvious place to keep these out of the way and the weight where it belongs, forward and low, is on the floor under the bed. But, not having access to the driving compartment from inside the camper, means I also won’t have access to a swiveling passenger seat to use as my bark-o-lounger.

Even with lots of bulky pillows to plump up on like Cleopatra, the bed will make a pretty crappy chair because, due to the shape imposed on the camper shell by the pickup bed, the top of the cushion is 26” off the floor. A normal chair seat is more like 16 to 18” off the floor. This means that sitting on the bed will be like sitting in a high chair with my feet dangling, or on a bar stool without the benefit of the bar to prop my elbows on. (Or so I gather from watching TV. (Never been in a bar Mom!!)) Neither of which is very conducive to sitting down to a leisurely dinner or easing back and reading a book.

I’m usually not a fan of tricky, gimmicky solutions. I’ve used some in the past and a few have worked out quite well, such as the nesting dining table, work table, end tables, office storage & entertainment nook that my wife and I have in our home base and use the crap out of every day, but often, especially in the limited space of an RV, such things end up being too much of a compromise to function very well in any of their iterations and also tend to add a lot of weight for not a lot of gain.

This gimmicky, but highly functional, setup is in our living quarters. Below the TV nook are two drawers that contain our respective computer stations (Laptops) which can be used standing up by simply opening the drawer, or the laptops can be moved to the table. Under that is a 24"x48" dining/work/game table on castors with hinged leaves to make it 48"x48". Below the table are a pair of small file cabinets on castors, one for each of us, that we also use as end tables when watching TV

But I really like having a chair so I did some experimenting and came up with what feels like a workable solution.

By careful placement of batteries and water tank I came up with a space up there against the front wall wide enough to squeeze in a chair, except of course, the bed was still in the way.

I solved that by splitting the mattress into two sections with the break falling somewhere under my ankles where it won’t be noticed when trying to sleep. Now I can tip the larger section of the mattress up out of the way against the front wall. Then by also lifting a hinged section of the mattress support, space for the chair is opened up

I had to split the mattress to make this work because at one end there’s not enough room to tip the mattress all the way up, (More on that in a future post.) but this won’t go to waste as it makes a very handy little place to roll up the bedding and toss the pillow into during the day. 

At night it takes 60 seconds to convert the space to a bed ready for me to crawl into.

Lower the mattress support along with the main section of the mattress, unroll the bedding, which is already hooked over the foot of the bed, and hook it over the head of the mattress, toss in the pillow then finish up by tossing in myself.

When in bed mode the chair, and its accompanying ottoman, tucks neatly away underneath. With the mattress raised the chair is revealed in all its glory.

But more on the chair in the next post.

What if: Speaking of truck

In the past when I've gone to RV shows, I've encountered the usual lines of people at the doors of the artfully staged rigs, complete with fresh cut flowers on the table and artificial grass and plastic plants under the awning, all impatiently waiting to get inside to see what color the curtains are or how many it can sleep, but I have rarely seen anyone crawling around underneath, checking out the running gear or asking to look behind the electrical panel to check out the quality of the wiring job.


That same phenomenon results in people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home because they like the color of the bedrooms with no thought at all for whether the roof structure is solid or the wiring adequate or the foundation cracked.

 In case it's not clear, I'm not one of those people. (Though I might be tempted to ignore the bald tires and lurking aliens for a really well done naked lady on the side of a rad vintage van!)  But I promise this will be the last post focused on the foundation of the camper before finally moving on into the interior.

It's pretty much a given that a slide-in camper has to have a truck under it if it's going to move anywhere; although here in Texas it's not unknown to be passed by a 30' goose-neck trailer being drug down the highway at 80MPH just before the beginning of hunting season with a pickup camper sitting on one end and the rest taken up with camp-jeep and deer blinds and smokers and barbeque pits, none of which have been secured very well and all of which are jiggling and bouncing around so bad you just hope nothing comes flying off just in time to go through your windshield. (Oh, and if you're really lucky one of the trailer tires, which haven't see the road or an air-gauge since last hunting season, has gone flat and is either already shredded down to nothing but sidewall or is smoking so bad you can't see the road.)

But I think I'll just stick to the traditional pickup.

2 or 4?:

You mention pickups and camping in the same sentence and it just screams out for 4-wheel drive. But I'm not quite sold on that, even though I'm just as susceptible to the glamor of the idea as the next guy.

The reality is, 4-wheel drive means quite a bit of extra money to spend, a whole lot of extra moving parts to go wrong, and noticeably fewer miles per gallon, and for what?

I had a 4-wheel drive once. Old school; manual transmission, manual high/low/neutral transfer case, manual locking hubs. I had it because it came as a package deal underneath an Alaskan Camper.

I drove that truck (And felt pretty macho doing it truth be known.) until the steering box nearly fell out of it, yet I never once needed to use the 4-wheel drive. In fact, as far as I can tell, unless you're really trying to find bad conditions, (And I'm not that guy!) most roads and many tracks can be negotiated with 2-wheel drive as long has you have the clearance.

Tim and Amanda Watson  have been full-timing for over two years pulling a 25' Airstream; much of that time boon-docking high up in the western mountains; yet they admitted in a recent post (I guess how recent depends on when you read this post!) that they have rarely had to actually resort to 4-wheeling to get where they're going, even on 4-wheel drive roads.

An alternative that costs significantly less than 4-wheel drive and has far fewer parts, is a locking differential.

I won't get into how differentials work here but they do so in such a way that if I get into iffy traction the typical 'open' type of differential has a tendency to send most the engine power to the tire that's spinning but little to none to the tire that still has traction, and wah-lah! I'm stuck!!

When a locking differential senses this happening it transfers some of the engine power back over to the tire with traction. Not quite, but almost as good as 4-wheel drive!

The cab:

You may not remember, since it was so many posts ago now, but at one point I mentioned that the truck will be a supercab.

This is a compromise between the standard cab with its very limited space inside and the relatively spacious crew cab which, when combined with an 8’ bed, has a pretty long wheelbase and, despite so many doing it, really shouldn't be wheeled around a tight parking lot as if it were a compact.

By removing the basically useless ‘seats’ that are jammed in behind the front seat of the supercab and adding some custom shelves/brackets, I can move some of the stuff that lives in that last 2 feet of the van, space which I had to give up in the camper in order to keep the length reasonable, into the truck.

These are things I would want along with me in the truck anyway, like the inflatable kayak & gear, my backpack, tool bag, sleeping bag & ground pad, tire repair kit, air compressor. All things I will either want with me when driving to trail heads and boat launches or emergency stuff for when I’m not right there at the camp site with all the amenities of the camper.

I’ll also keep some of the outdoor stuff like the Easy-up awning and my camp chair back there too.

The pickup bed:

Nothing fancy to talk about here. As long as I avoid oversize chrome trim rails on top of the bed sides and macho headache racks, my generically dimensioned camper shell should fit with no problem.

F150 or F250:

I can't answer this question yet. I would prefer the F150, but haven't gotten far enough along with the design to calculate weights yet.

I am a firm believer in published GVWR's. After all, it took a lot of engineers smarter about this stuff than I am, and a whole bunch of testing, for the manufacture to come up with that number in the first place, not the least factor of which is the ability to stop all that weight safely without destroying the brakes.

So if I can keep the weight low enough an F150 it is, but if I can't it will be an F250

Memories from the road: How to get thrown out of the front seat!

Since Dad had a pretty demanding job that took him out on the road to various construction sites all day long, it wasn't at all unusual for us to be heading north to some distant camp site in the dark on a Friday evening.

What was unusual this particular fall Friday evening was me sitting in the front passenger seat where I had nothing but windshield in front of me.


You see, us kids were pretty much permanently relegated to the back seat unless it was Mom taking us to a doctor's appointment or something like that. (Often something that took all the fun out of riding up front!!) And since there was three of us kids the fight for a window seat was perpetual and sometimes downright nasty with frequent foot stomping (But Dad! His foot was on my side!!) and the occasional elbow. At least until I finally figured out that the middle actually has a better view during a long trip through the west,.




Instead of a great view out whichever side window I might happen to be sitting next to, (assuming I won the window-seat fight.) along with the back of one of the parental unit's heads to the front and a crappy view out the far side of the car; by sitting in the middle I had a good view out either side window and a great view right through the middle of the windshield.

I'm not going to explore the implications of why it took me so long to figure that out, (Honest! I got to ride the long bus with all the other kids, never the short bus!) but once I did it was a win win for me. I got the better view, though I kept that a secret from my siblings lest we start a whole new I-want-that-seat war. And Mom thought I was just the best little kid and kept praising me for making the sacrifice and volunteering for the middle seat all the time. (Milking that one for all it was worth I would put on my best martyr face and keep the real reason to myself.)

But anyway, for some reason, this particular fall evening Mom traded spots with me which is how I came to be sitting up front next to Dad. It was pretty fun riding up there in the second most important seat in the car. In fact I was feeling pretty smug about this obvious indication of my superiority over my siblings.

But it was a feeling that didn't last. . .

Now high school football in Michigan is nothing like in Texas where they broadcast Friday night games live on TV, but in certain circles it was still a big deal and as we headed north we passed a football field over on the west side of the freeway. It was mid-game, the field all lit up and the stands full.

By some evil twist of fate (You'll understand the evil in a second.) just as we went by, the ball was snapped, the quarterback faded back, set himself, faked, and then launched a long pass. Now I didn't travel in those circles, the ones where sports in general and football in particular are big deals, but by the time the pass was thrown I was half out of my seat and leaning towards Dad as I tracked the action out the other side of the car.

When that ball went into the air I could see the play unfolding in front of me. "look out, Look Out, LOOK OUT!" I shouted as the ball arched down towards the intended receiver far down the field.

I never did see if that pass was completed. You see, I was the only one in the car paying attention to the game, consequently shouting 'look out' into my dad's ear had him pretty freaked out; convinced that we were about to be in a massive wreck.

Now if you're not a man you might not know this, but when we are scared, especially with an audience there to see our less than manly reaction, the next thing we do is get mad.

I didn't immediately get thrown out of the front seat, after all we were going pretty fast (In those days speed limits were not one of Dad's strong suits.) but I sure wished I was sitting somewhere else! I'd have even settled for sitting all by myself back in the trailer at that point!

As it was, I think the next time I was allowed in the front seat

is when I was actually driving, years later. . .

What if: Getting it on and off the truck

Before getting to the interior of the camper there's still a couple items on the outside to discuss, not least of which is the system for getting the camper on and off the truck and making sure it stays there. (On the truck that is. Loosing your camper while going down the road is a good way to ruin a perfectly good, or even a not so good, road trip!)

By far the most common standard here is to use corner jacks and tie-downs.

Corner Jacks:

 

The corner jacks can be manual, which are not very conducive to frequent use and require running around and around the truck lifting or lowering each one a few cranks at a time so I don't get everything irrevocably out of balance. And believe me, having a camper weighing a thousand pounds or more towering high over my head while tottering on 4 spindly jacks is not a time I want anything to be getting out of balance!!

Electric corner jacks with a remote are much easier to operate, therefor likely to get used more often.With this setup I push either the up or down button to move all 4 jacks together. If things are out of sync, such as uneven ground under the camper, I can operate each of the jacks independently to get everything lined up again. All by straining only my thumb muscle.

I've used both setups in the past and frankly I was glad to see the last of the manual system when I sold that camper on. It was such a pain that I used it a total of four times. Once to load the camper into the truck the first time, once to set the camper off at campsite, once to retrieve my camper from that campsite, and, because that campsite experience was such a hassle, only one more time, when I pulled the camper off the truck so the new owner could back under it. All in all those manual jacks, though they initially seemed reasonably priced, turned out to be a pretty poor investment.

 The electric jacks, though much easier to operate, still didn't see all that much use until I repurposed them by putting them upside down inside my next design as the highly over-engineered lift system for a lift-top camper. (The jacks were capable of lifting a total of 8000 lbs but the lid of that camper weighed less than 300 lbs.)

Tie-downs:

In addition to dealing with the jacks when dropping or picking up a camper, there's also the tie-downs that have to be futzed with.

To make sure the camper stays on the truck where it belongs and, more importantly, to protect the safety of the other people sharing the road with me, there must be some way to securely fasten the camper to the truck.

 

The most common camper tie-down system consist of 4 brackets that fit into the stake-pockets or bolt down on top of the pickup bed rails, 4 rings attached to the camper itself, and 4 turnbuckles to go between the brackets and rings.

The brackets and rings are pretty simple. Once the rings, usually eye-bolts, are installed in the camper shell (Hopefully well caulked so they don't allow water in and rot to start.) they just stay there, The simplest brackets drop into the stake pockets and may or may not have a set screw to keep them there. (Some systems engineered for lighter weights just use the torsional racking as the turnbuckle is tightened to jam the bracket into the stake pocket.)

But to use the dang things requires running around the truck once again while screwing/unscrewing each turnbuckle individually, and I know from experience that no matter how well they are plated, turnbuckles will corrode which makes turning them by hand really hard!

In this photo of one of my creations from the mid 90's you can see a couple of the electric corner jacks for lifting the camper on and off the truck. The black T-shaped pieces hanging off the lower edge of the camper are steel tie-down plates bolted into the camper shell. If you look closely at the side of the truck's flatbed you can see 3 bright spots. These are the corresponding bolts that go through the tie-down plates and keep the shell in place on the bed. These plates only cleared the flatbed by 1/8th inch on each side so it required some precision backing to load this thing!!

Even though this system was much simpler to use than the previous camper's manual jacks and turnbuckle tie-downs, this was one of probably less than a dozen times I actually took the camper off the truck. If I remember right, this day I was helping someone move a hot-tub, of all things. . .

The Solution:

So, realistically, in order to take full advantage of one of the key traits of a slide-in camper, the ability to slide it out again, short of carrying along my own personal helper to do it for me! I need a reliable lift and tie-down system that's as hassle-free to use as possible.

For this I’m looking at the Stable-Lift system. (Check your speaker setting before following that link. The Stable-Lift home page has an audio file attached that sounds almost, but not quite, like the theme from Bonanza, and it's loud!)

 Compared to the traditional corner jacks, it looks awkward, a little like the truck/camper is dragging its skirts, but has some real advantages, advantages that fit right in with my requirements for an easy to use, quick and stable system.

The system operates off 12 volts from a simple control panel. Lower the jacks and the camper is lifted on a a nice large, interlocking platform so the truck can safely be driven out from under, or back under, the camper.

When off the truck with the jacks lowered, (Retracted) the camper is nice and close to the ground and pretty dang stable just as it is.

I've never quite understood the obsession with jack-standing a motorhome, travel trailer or camper to nearly high-rise foundation standards, but apparently any movement of the RV by wind or bodies moving around inside bothers some. In that case, instead of bulky and troublesome jackstands or some other form of blocking, the inherent design of the Stable-Lift system stops fore and aft movement and the system comes with a couple of diagonal stabilizers that go from camper shell to jack system that stops any sideways movement.

As for securing the camper to the truck, with this system it's as easy as retracting the jacks.

When the jacks are retracted the rectangular frame that helps make the system stable in the first place lifts up into brackets or saddles attached to the truck frame and secures the camper without the need for any other tie-down systems.

5 minutes to get the camper off the truck and ready for occupancy and 5 more to load it back up. And not having to break camp every time I want to drive to the trail-head sounds pretty good after living with small motorhomes that have to go with me on every little trip.