Aug 5, 2018 – A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single trip across the yard…
After sitting forlornly in a back corner of our yard for almost 12 years the 1965 Avion truck camper was finally moved closer to the workshop so we could begin the renovations. Loading it up took about an hour
and the truck was pretty much level under the weight of the camper which lowered the rear about 3″.
I loaded the camper with nothing under it in the truck bed to see what the clearance would be under the wings and cabover.
- Front wall of camper to front box rail – 3″
- Cabover to roof clearance ~ 0.5″
- Wings to box sides ~ 0.5″
- Tail light clearance – 2″
- Door threshold 34.5″ above ground
- 80″ to cabover bottom
- Overhang at rear 27″ from licence plate
- truck height when loaded
- right rear -3″
- left rear -2 5/8″
- right front -0″
- left front +3/16″
- Camper could be 1″ forward and still have 1″ tail light clearance and bumper would clear pan
The jacks worked fine for raising and lowering, but the attachment points obviously need to be reinforced .
The biggest job will be repairing the damage done by a tree to the roof just back of the front cap. Since this area will be opened up anyway we will take this opportunity to extend the cabover section of the camper. Combined with extending the bed by a foot at the aft end this will allow us to change the 46″ wide east-west bed into a north-south bed.
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