Dealing with it!

Now that we had the Avion home, it took some time to deal with getting it off the trailer and into our garage for the winter. To get it off the trailer I used an electric boat trailer winch so that I could control it going down the equipment trailer's ramps. I also attached two conventional tongue jacks with castors to the front corners of the utility trailer, so that it would have four wheels.  While a little scary, this worked out well!

The next step was getting the Avion into the garage. I knew that the camper itself would clear our door, but apparently I am not so good with numbers. We ended up removing the rims from the utility trailer and tried to roll it in on the hubs, but this proved to have too much resistance. Eventually we ended up using a set of $4.- Magic Carpet Sliders under the hubs on carpet scraps while pulling with the electric winch which we now had attached to the Shasta which is deeper inside the garage. Yes our garage is pretty big, that's another story maybe for a future post.

Bringing the Avion C-10 Truck Camper Home

Retrieving the Avion took a bunch of planning. The camper was in the Canton Ohio area, about a 500 mile round trip from our home near Buffalo NY. While it seems like it would have been simple enough to just put it in a truck, I don't have a truck (yet). I also didn't feel comfortable borrowing one for this task, and didn't feel confident that it would be secure enough for travel not really knowing gate condition of the tie down points.

The Avion did come with a small utility trailer that its currently sitting on, however that trailer isn't quite up to the task of the length of the journey. My plan is to use the utility trailer as a dolly for the Avion while I work on it, it's made from an pop-up tent trailer and fits very well.

So to transport it I ended up renting an equipment trailer that worked out extremely well, having electric brakes, good tires, and a valid registration. I also took along good friend who has experience moving vintage vehicles, lots of ratchet straps, and took it slow. We ran into some minor lake effect snow on the way out, but the weather was fine on the way back.

A new project!

We are super excited to be at the beginning of another vintage camper project! The camper is an Avion C-10 truck camper. I think it's a 1965 model, but still need to do some work to confirm the year. I'll post some updates here once and a while as we learn more and start digging in!