That spirit of independence that propelled us into the nomadic life also inspires us to tackle challenges ourselves. We are not only hikers, photographers, and writers but also riveters, electricians, and mechanics. We have been progressively rebuilding and improving our home on wheels and our truck for outdoor living and exploration.
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Most of the Avion's exterior is aluminum. But, the very base of the camper, hanging off the truck bed, is made of fiberglass. It wedges in between the interior flooring and the exterior aluminum pan and holds the back water tank. In replacing the floor, we also had to remove this pan to remount it to the new floor.
Towing a trailer or large load requires special safety concerns when on the road. While specific requirements may vary by state, the requirements for lighting is pretty consistent: brake, clearance, and license plate lights. These are all connected to the…
Ladies and gentlemen, the floor of the truck camper is not pretty. After years of patches and general neglect, it is literally falling apart. Try jumping on it. The experience is not unlike that of a trampoline. The concern is for the day that it does not bounce.
No, when I say "wings" there aren't any feathers involved. The wings of a truck camper form the portion of the camper that fits around the walls of the truck bed. These are the points by which the truck is lifted and lowered and the anchor points for tying down the camper. They are incredibly important for the day-to-day use of a truck camper and ours were terribly rotted out. Before we can confidently raise, lower, and move the camper again, it is time to replace the wings.
Do you have a vintage Airstream, Avion, Spartan, or another aluminum-bodied camper? Ever noticed screw heads covered in rust or pitting in aluminum around a steel screw? You, my friend, are the victim of galvanic corrosion. And if you don't want to make it worse, you'll want to know a thing or two about how this happens and how to avoid it.
When renovating a truck camper (or any camper) weight is key. Sure, wood and other classic materials are aesthetically pleasing, reassuring, and seem environmentally friendly. Yet, every extra pound means more gas consumed per mile. We would rather use that gas to travel long distances than to move heavy weights. That (and a lot of rot) is why we decided to replace all the wood in our camper with a fiberglas composite material. Not only is it lighter than plywood, it is also resistant to damp, mold, and fire. All good things! That means that we learned a lot about fiberglas, resins, and other lightweight materials.
An important part in optimizing one's electrical system for boondocking is knowing what one's consumptions will be. If one already has the experience of being on the road, all one needs to do is monitor one's consumption. Sure, we have been nomads for 2 years. But that has been a matter of cooking over camp fires and working in coffee shops, libraries, or truck stops. To guess at our battery usage with all the conveniences of an RV, we an run the numbers to get a vague idea of what is to come.
We settle into a new kind of normal around the Avion Ultra truck camper. Each morning, we wake up and discuss the day's priorities over breakfast. We work through the cool morning and early afternoon. If it gets too hot, we will break from heavy work in the heat of the afternoon to run errants: pick up tools and materials and make runs to the dump. We return to work in the evening, and clean the worksite at dusk. Over dinner, we discuss lessons learned from the day's work and tomorrow's goals. Before bed, we research tools, techniques, and inspiration for coming challenges.
Rolling back the months to when we first moved out of our San Francisco apartment and into Dodgy, we had ambitions, very custom ambitions. We intended to strip Dodgy and turn it into a travel home tailored to our needs. While Dodgy was amazing, with more space than we could have hoped for, we quickly discovered that finding replacement parts and people who would work on Dodgy was an onerous task. So we shifted gears: instead of making Dodgy the end-all-be-all road chalet, Dodgy would be our prototype.