The last new major appliance purchase for the Avion C-10 was the truck. (Warning this is a long post!)
I refer to the truck as a “camper appliance” because we’ve never owned a truck and I’ve never really had aspirations to get one, I usually drive Subaru's and small VW's - for us the truck is just a part of the Avion Truck Camper. I liked the idea of putting the Avion on a vintage truck specially to show at rallies and some local car shows, but the whole reason we are doing the Avion as a project was to use it for real traveling and pairing it with a newer vehicle makes more sense. After looking on and off for months for a lightly used truck that ticked enough of our boxes we decided that ordering a new one spec’d the way we wanted would work best for us. We estimated that the Avion would weigh about 3000lbs when loaded, so to have enough payload capacity we needed at least a 3/4 ton truck like a F-250 or 2500 series. While half ton trucks have high tow ratings they are just not built for driving around with 3,000lbs sitting in the bed. Our slide-in camper was originally designed for a 8’ bed and while some folks do put them in the now common 6' beds we wanted a long bed so that the weight would be centered correctly and so all of the floor that was designed to be supported would be. Ideally we wanted a nicely trimmed cab for comfort when traveling long distances on the highway. We also decided decided that extended cab would be ideal so that we would have some extra storage space, and we wanted the capability to occasionally have extra passengers. The extended cab trucks are also a few sheet shorter overall than the now more common full crew cab, the combination of extended cab with long bed results in a truck that is the same length as crew/short bed trucks that are everywhere these days. The Avion has almost no outside storage compartments, so we plan to use the trucks rear seat sort of like our “basement” area.
In a looking for lightly used 3/4 and 1 ton trucks with 8’ beds we found that very few had nicely appointed cabs because most of the these trucks are built as work trucks, the ones that do have higher trim levels seemed too fancy for what we wanted and sell for as much used as a new one built the way we’d like it. We also preferred a gas engine, based on my research the gas engine would be quieter and less expensive in the long run for fuel and maintenance, and most of higher trim level used trucks that we found were diesels.
So we looked at options for what we get new from Ram, GMC, and Ford. Initially I thought a Toyota Tundra would be in the running but the payload is below 2,000lbs and the fit of the camper didn’t seem like a good match. We ended up deciding on a Ford Super Duty, a couple of the key reasons were that the fit of the camper on paper looked like it would better than the others and familiarity of controls and things to our Ford Flex which we we hoped would help ease the transition to driving a giant truck. Initially we thought we would get an F-250, but in double checking payload capacity we decided to go with an F-350. By going with an F-350 the the payload is little over half its payload capacity with the loaded Avion compared to an F-250 which would always be close to it’s maximum payload. Our thought is that half payload is probably the engineered sweet-spot for best driving experience. The way we spec’d the truck the difference in cost between the 250 and 350 was less than $1000 and the physical dimensions are identical so going with a 350 became an easy choice.
So here’s what we got, it’s a 2021 Ford F-350 Super Duty, 4X4, with Super Cab and an 8’ long bed. It’s Lariat trim level which has leather seats, a fair amount of creature comforts, and a nice grill and rims. We also went with the new 7.3L gas engine, codenamed Godzilla by Ford it is a classic pushrod design with fewer moving parts than many modern engines and was designed to be used in Super Duty trucks, RV’s and Motorhomes, and other commercial vehicles where low cost maintenance and reliability are important. It's expected to be very common over the next decade which could help a lot if we need a mechanic while on the road someday. It claims to have about the same gas milage as the recent 6.2L gas engines that have been typically used in the Super Duty trucks over the last bunch of years but has noticeably more horsepower. We also got the somewhat new 10 speed automatic transmission which has been used on a bunch of Ford vehicles in the last few years. We went with 4x4 and an electronic locking rear axle as "insurance" to help us get out of any situations we might find ourselves in. Another reason we got the locking rear axle is that I've seen discussions on online camper forums praising its use when backing onto a pair of blocks to level your rig. Because we ordered the truck as a custom build we were able to get the Camper Package which uses front and rear springs that are selected assuming that there will be a slide-in camper in the bed. This package also includes a rear sway bar, we might upgrade to a Hellwig Big Wig sway bar but are going to spend some time using the OEM set-up before we decide. There is a really cool video about Fords development work and testing for Super Duty’s with slide-in truck campers here..
We are using Torklift frame mounted tie-downs that I installed myself, they seem very well designed and installation was pretty easy. We found that we needed Torklift Fastgun Turnbuckles on front because the turnbuckle needs to be removed to open the fuel filler door every time we pump gas. I went with the also well made Torklift Springloaded XL turnbuckles in rear. Ford does not include a 7-pin wiring socket in the bed of the truck with the camper package, so I installed one made by Curtis myself, this was also pretty easy and let me locate it where it would be best for us.
The fit of the Avion C-10 to the truck bed worked out quite well. We bought a OEM Bed Mat and I found that I only needed to add three 3/4” thick cedar boards to dial-in the fit with what we think is just enough clearance over the cab and at the tops of the truck bed sides. Also to note that when we replaced the floor of the Avion I used cedar 2x4’s as the three ribs on the bottom which probably added an extra 1 1/4” of height over the original ribs, compared to a stock 1965 Avion I think we are at about +2” of height to get the perfect fit. We are using a pair of stacked 4x4 blocks between the front wall of the camper and the front wall of the truck bed. This gets us gap between the rear window of the truck and the front of the camper that also seems just right. We had to work hard to down to just the 4” blocks, the rear bumper of the truck has raised areas on its ends near the taillights that collided with the lower grey fiberglass fairings of the camper. I knew ahead of time that this area might be a problem, but until the camper was the truck couldn’t predict to what extent. I ended up modifying a localized area of the campers fiberglass parts to create a recess to fit the raised bumper detail. I just used duct tape to seal this up for our first season but will fiberglass the area and clean it up when I get around to it. Another option would be to remove the trucks rear bumper or to look for an aftermarket bumper that would work better, but for us modifying the camper slightly was easy and no cost. Note that I had planned for this possibility and left empty space inside the fiberglass part where our grey water tank is now located and ran the plumbing, propane line, and wiring to stay clear also.
Actually getting the truck was not without some drama. We decided that it would be good to order the truck so it would arrive in the early spring 2021, that timing seemed do-able to have the camper back together enough to go camping. Typical lead time for a custom order was 10 weeks, so in January 2021 we tried to o put our order in, but were told by the dealer that just a few days before Ford had surprised them by closing the Order Window unexpectedly on Super Duty’s, the earliest by far that they had ever done that and we would have to wait several months until they opened ordering up for the 2022 models. Over the next few days I saw a lot of banter online in discussion forums that many others were caught off guard because Ford stopped taking orders, but I also saw a few folks still claimed to have successfully put in orders at their dealers after the closed date. I decided to try calling a different Ford dealer who is the largest commercial truck seller in our area, they said they could still order us a truck. So we put our order in, then watched as delivery times for vehicles stretched out due to the pandemic and computer chip shortages. I’d call the dealer couple of few months to see if they could give us an update on timing and was told there was no build date listed in the system yet. Then one day in April out of the blue we got a call that our truck had arrived! Just about our original ideal timing. We think we got lucky, because it was a custom order we were able to spec it without a lot of the fancy electronics options and this may have helped it not be delayed as much. It’s also possible that we got lucky with the factories build schedule for producing vehicles with the extended cab/long bed configuration.
The paint color was another thing that caused some drama, we had originally chosen a blue color that ended up being discontinued on the 2021 models and had a hard time deciding on what color to get from those available. We decided to take a chance on a new color called Antimatter Blue, when we put the order in we were able to see a chip of the color, but no vehicles had been produced with this color yet so we could not see it in person. In the end we are very happy with the paint on this truck, most of the time and from a distance the truck appears to be just black, but when the light hits it just right it’s an amazing metallic blue. However when it’s parked next to a black truck it’s obvious that it’s not the same, and the blue tone looks great the anodized aluminum if the camper. I like the Antimatter name but also think they could have called this color “Henry Ford Blue” - you can have blue as long as it’s black.
Overall we are very pleased with our F-350, it is proving to be very drivable and comfortable on the road. The size of the rig is taking some getting used to but beats trailering for ability to stop wherever you want and travel on roads that we might shy away from with a vintage trailer. We’ve even made good use of the truck as a truck without the camper, who knew trucks were so useful!
