I was always against getting ourselves a camper until I realized how much easier it was going to make our lives. Especially since we have very young kids. The plan is to hop back into roof top tenting as soon as we can. Anyways! the camper we bought is a 1979 Fleetwood Prowler camper, it is 18 feet in length and weighs about 3,600 pounds. I happened to be the first person to go look at it while it was up for sale, which was really good since there were five other people waiting to look at it. This camper is in such good shape for the year and price. The interior looks like its been used ten or fifteen times only. The exterior is in really good shape for the year too. Obviously there are a few flaws though, like someone must of jumped on the bed once because there is hockey sticks for legs now haha. There must of been a kid sleeping up in the bunk since there is stickers all over the place. Another thing that bugged me was that the plumbing was bypassed past the water heater, so it obviously must not work. Right after buying I realized there was a broken leaf spring and that the trailer brakes didn't work. Both those were fairly easy fixes. Enough talking, time for pictures.
Almost a forty year difference but they still suit each other very well!
First up, wire in a new trailer plug
This is with the trailer sitting level and next to it is how high my truck is. I either need to buy a new drop hitch or customize this one!
Some of those drop hitches are very expensive, which is why I cut the old hitch up and re-welded it back together! I don't think this is the proper way to do it since there isn't much steel for it to hold onto but I figured it should be strong enough. This hitch has made it 3,000 kilometres pulling the trailer already with no problems so good enough.
The next day after buying it I tried plugging it in and had no power at all. I even called the previous owner and asked him to come over and show me how it worked, he told me there is no special trick. I decide it's time for me to figure it out. First thing first try and find the Inverter, which actually took me some time to find. It is under the bench at the kitchen table.
What I find in there is a terrible wiring job and some loose wires. Voila, and there's power! I thought that was going to be an expensive fix. The inverter works perfectly fine.
There were no window curtains when we bought it so it was pretty bright in there. My wife and I wanted to find curtains that matched well. We ended up going to a fabric store and walked around until we found a roll of this stuff! Matches perfect. I have some family who own a drapery shop and I got them to cut and sew this fabric to fit the windows. This probably isn't the best way to hang them but it was definitely the easiest.
You sure can tell my buddy dustin is enjoying the camper.
This is our first trip with the camper out in Cypress Hills. It took me a few trips until I really figured everything out. Like the awning.... apparently I'v been doing that wrong the whole time. Our last trip that we went on to Little bear lake, I asked one of my friends to come help me with the awning since my wife and I always struggle with it. My friend made me realize I've been doing it wrong all along and Its not supposed to be so difficult lol. I've been putting the legs on the ground when they are supposed to just stay attached to the camper itself.
You can see here the actual proper way to have the awning. We ran into one problem on this last trip though, I went down a very bumpy road to get here and one of my water lines came loose under the sink. It only leaked when the water pump was on. I taped it up good as I could for the time being.
I was very excited to find these retro lights sitting in a drawer! These lights suit this camper so well. Surprisingly there wasn't even a single bulb burnt out.
I found a old battery laying around my garage that works good on the camper. I had to replace the fuse next to the battery to get it all to work though. The battery just powers the lights and the water pump.
Opened up the back of the fridge and found dirt, dust, and a screw driver. I wasn't too hopeful that the fridge even fires up on propane. After pressing the ignitor about twenty times it lite right up! I was very surprised this old Dometic fridge still works. We've done four or five trips now and this fridge works awesome actually, and we run it on propane all the time.
I knew that we had a AC unit sitting around at my work so I thought I might as well install it through the window in the kitchen. The biggest reason for doing this was for our toddler that naps at noon, I know how grumpy he gets when he doesn't nap haha.
This AC unit even comes with a frame to mount to. I also had to add some extra brackets for the AC frame to mount to the window frame. I had to make this water proof some how, so I used some rubber I had sitting around in the garage to deflect the rain. Under the rubber I used a sticky tack type adhesive to seal it all up. I also screwed it to the camper in the same place the window screwed in. I then used insulation to fill the few inch gap between the AC and window frame to keep the noise down.
It worked very well for this small camper. The biggest down side was that you can't drive down the highway with the AC installed. You then have to deal with the whole process of taking the window out and installing the AC unit which was quite a bit of work. We have only done this on one trip so far. If I had the camper sitting in one place for two weeks then maybe I'd install the AC again.