Like Father Like Son......I bought an old camper!!

So Craigslist has struck again...and I bought an old Apache Royal camper. While playing around on the internet last night I came across one and I thought that is cool I should tell dad, who isn't even done with his bus yet. Of course being true to form my father gives me words of encouragement and then next thing I know I am calling this guy to set up a meeting. After waiting for a while I hear from him and he says come on over tonight and look at it. So then we are headed for an hour long drive to the other side of town..... in the dark to the middle of nowhere. Did I mention the dark? I think I heard banjos....yup definitely heard banjos.

After a little bit of jury rigging we kind of had lights and then the trip began on really cracked up tires with an hour to go. But we made it home and now the project begins. More pictures to come.

On the way home after checking the bearings and the tires.

Trailer tires are hard as rocks, even without air. I used my trailer to get building materials for making a camper out of it. I never even noticed the tires had 0 psi until after I'd made about half a dozen Home Depot runs with it.

Pretty neat little hard sided pop-ups.

I'm definitely interested in your progress.

So I didn't get a lot done today and tomorrow is not looking much better but we did make a little progress. The rollers for the walls seemed to be jammed and the whole roof did not want to raise properly. It turns out that the gentleman that I bought it from while he was putting it down knocked a few of the rollers off track and then rehung them wrong. So dad and I got the the rollers back in place and were able to raise the top properly. Of course in all my excitement I forgot to take a picture of it raised, sorry I will try to do better in the future I am still new to the build thread scene.

Being able to see this thing in the day light has definitely reinforced the awesome amount of work that I have to do. I think that I will make a list of what needs to happen so that I don't get lost and or distracted. The first thing that I am going to do is give it a bath. Hopefully I will get time on Sunday to attack that. A good scrubbing on this thing would go a long way. More to come soon.

Dad helping with rollers.

As someone who has been eyeing up a camper project for far too long, I'm super intrigued to see how you get along with this. Will be following with interest! :)

I'm trying to decide if this camper purchase is a vote of confidence towards the completion of Sanford (I can go camping along with Dad and Sanford) or a vote of no confidence towards the completion of Sanford (I can at least go camping since Sanford may not be ready to go)

Of course, I'm kidding...sort of.

John Welsh wrote: I'm trying to decide if this camper purchase is a vote of confidence towards the completion of Sanford (I can go camping along with Dad and Sanford) or a vote of no confidence towards the completion of Sanford (I can at least go camping since Sanford may not be ready to go) Of course, I'm kidding...sort of.

Ouch.

In case you missed it in the hotlink thread, a 1/2" Harbor freight Heavy Duty Drill makes and excellent power crank for raising the top. Just buy a spare hand crank, cut off the business end, and chuck it up in the drill. Make sure to slow down the speed though or you'll rip the pulley system apart.

http://www.harborfreight.com/12-in-heavy-duty-variable-speed-reversible-drill-69452.html

Well I got off work a little early today so I had about 2 hrs to spare before I had to go get the kids so of course I had to go do something to the camper. So me and a brush attacked the camper with intent of making it cleaner. The wife has not seen it yet and I didn't want her to have instant heart failure when she saw it so I figured cleaning it would be a good idea. The results were good I think.

Clean camper top is definitely forward progress.

Look at that nice tail!

I have got some doors to build for the side that cover the fridge and the water tank.

And definitely have to redo some wiring and hoses.

I still have work to do on the front.

This the gearbox that raises the camper using some kind of magic plastic/cable chain that I am pretty sure was designed by Merlin and I mean this fellow,

But in all seriousness this camper has a shaft that goes to the other side to identical gearbox that was invented by Merlin's twin brother. I will be tackling this at some point in the future because I worry about the condition of these two plastic chains.

I also found out that this camper has trailer brakes as well. Those should be fun to tackle too.