It's been months since I've posted any updates related to our Avion C-10 truck camper project. We are making very slow progress on this camper which we have now had for an entire year. Here's some of the things we've been doing...
I successfully converted the trailer frame that it came with to a dolly by adding four castor wheels, now two of us can move it from side to side in our garage and it sits low enough that it can roll in and out of the garage door.
After what seemed like an exhaustive search of vintage and RV salvage places I finally decided to buy one new 1000lb rated Rieco Jack after not being able to locate a matching vintage one. The goal was to get the camper on 4 jacks instead of only 3. The new jack arrived damaged in shipping, but that turned out to be a good thing as we were able to compare it to the original Atwoods 1000’s and it was clear that we should hold out for a matching vintage one. The new Rieco jack was similar, but definitely of lighter construction so if you plan on going to new jacks for an Avion C-10 or C-11 I’d go for their heavier duty 2000lb version. I posted a want-ad on Craigslist and waited, sure enough a most later I got a call from a guy a few towns aways and now I have a total of 6 matching Atwood Jacks and some extra handles and brackets as well. I did buy new Rieco “extended” brackets to help get the jackets mounted outboard more to allow more room for a modern truck. I have two of them installed using the same holes as the original brackets which puts the mount point where I wanted it, however I’ve found that I’ll need to get some additional steel plates fabricated to allow enough room for the jack heads. I’ll post more on this later once I get the plates made. The new also brackets really help clean-up the look of the side of camper, along with a lot of elbow grease and Simple Green!
Inside the camper I found that there was an extra plywood piece fro give more strength to the wings, the jack bracket bolts were under this piece and the tie-down bolts were through it. I haven't seen anything like this in photo's of others Avion's so this could have been added by a previous owner but I am not sure, either way it's been there a long time. The wings are still solid but I'm going to replace these similar to the way they were because they makes sense adding strength the way it was done and really give up any interior space.
I replaced a window regulator on one of the front windows that had a broken cast housing. I got the replacement regulator from Vintage Trailer Supply, and while it's not a perfect match it works with just a few minor modifications.
We have decided on flooring and bought Marlomoleum tiles, but we can't install them until I repair a section of the floor at the rear of the camper.
We've also made progress on the bathroom re-design, I'll post more on this in another post.
We figured this project might take two years to get it in shape to be out on the road, but so far it feels like it is going a lot slower than we expected!
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