A new guy with a 10' cab over.

[Toyman01]

New guy here from South Carolina. Yes I know I'm not in the west, but I haven't found much on Alaskan Camper forums on the net. I picked up a, new to me, 1971 Alaskan two weeks ago. I had been looking for an inexpensive pop up truck camper for a while and this one popped up on Craigslist. It had been sitting under a oak tree for a number of years and I bought it very cheap. I'm getting it ready for a 3000 mile round trip to Canada this July.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

After a meeting with the pressure washer. It started off green.

Naturally the first thing I did was try to put the top up. I found out the front stops were broken when the top popped off the tracks. That lead to finding out how extensive the rot was.

The ants were not very happy with me.

Rot replaced.

Back together and it goes up and down again.

The refrigerator actually came back to life. It's working on 120V and propane, the stove works too.

It's been a crash course on camper repair and there is still a lot of work to do, but it's a fun project.

 

[Taku]

Nice to get an old camper up and running. Very nice!

 

[Wandering Sagebrush]

Looks like fun! Alaskan campers are pretty cool!

 

[thisoldcamper]

Welcome - from South Carolina - I guess we're the East Coast Chapter of WTW. That's a good looking camper, from the looks of the decals on the fridge, that thing has done some partying... or is fixin' to.

 

[ski3pin]

Welcome to WTW and that's a nice looking Alaskan. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Toyman01]

Welcome - from South Carolina - I guess we're the East Coast Chapter of WTW. That's a good looking camper, from the looks of the decals on the fridge, that thing has done some partying... or is fixin' to.

I cleaned the interior this afternoon. The decals on the refrigerator didn't survive the experience. I'm pretty sure the previous owner had some out of body experiences while camping. I'm not sure he was all there when I bought it from him.

After the cleaning, I installed the last piece of trim, so the exterior is as good as it's going to get for a while. Next on the list is cleaning the hydraulic system. It's pretty nasty and it looks like the previous owner was topping it off with brake fluid, which is known to be hygroscopic. UPS was nice enough to drop off a gallon of new oil this afternoon. At some point this weekend I'll pull the pump, tear it down and clean it, blow out the lines and refill with fresh oil. That will be a nasty job, but I should only have to do it once.

 

[craig333]

Wow, seen dry rot before but never an ant infestation. Coming along nicely.

 

[Buckwheat]

Welcome and thanks for saving a classic

 

[Mike S.]

Welcome! Lot of good information about Alaskans here. if you can not find it in the files just ask, someone will have done it and be more than willing to share. The work is almost done then now the fun begins.

 

[Freebird]

Find out what you can by searching the web first, but, if stumped, the factory is generous with its sharing of information about their campers.
They are a class act, indeed.

Oh, yes, welcome to WTW, and congratulations on your purchase.... and project.

 

[Ripperj]

When you have the pump apart and drained, I would put new oring on the pump piston and the cylinders

 

[Toyman01]

I ordered a new lever for the door since keys didn't come with the camper. I thought I had made a pretty good guess on what fit. Imagine my surprise when the new key worked in the old lock.

The oil has been changed in the hydraulic system and it's working better than ever.

I also figured out a mount for the new side clearance lights. The new lights were narrower than the old and left me with exposed screw holes that needed to be covered. I used some starboard to cover the ugly.

Then I energized the lighting circuit and discovered the rest of the lights didn't work either. The fixtures are so deteriorated I ordered new lights.

I've slowly been changing all the rusted screws for stainless. That alone has done a lot to make the camper look better.

More to come as I get it done.

 

[Jollyrogers]

Loving the work you have put into your camper! Welcome, from Virginia!

 

[Happyjax]

I like the look of the Alaskan. It is on the list along with FWC, ATC and Hallmark.

 

[Toyman01]

The original refrigerator fan was amazingly inefficient, not to mention noisy, so I replaced it with a muffin fan. It worked well, but still sounded like it could achieve liftoff. I ordered a quieter fan, but it didn't have the CFM I thought it needed. Naturally, more is better.

Yes, I know I should have made both holes the same size, but I wasn't going to spend the $40 on a hole saw the proper size and this was as close as I had.

It's cooling just as it should and now you can't hear the fans run at all.

 

[Toyman01]

I did some more work on the Alaskan yesterday.

The seal between the top and bottom has been replaced. I didn't know about the pirelli seals when I was looking for parts, so I ordered standard slide out seals. It's installed and seems to be working fine for now.

I'll be saving all the metal strips so I can use the correct stuff when this goes bad.

Next up was air conditioning. Since the roof on my camper is questionable, I didn't want to throw a roof A/C up there and then try to drive 3200 miles. I decided to use the portable A/C I used in my enclosed trailer. That means the toilet has to go outside in its tent, but I'm OK with that.

It's not going to be perfect, but it will get us through this trip. This fall/winter, I'll be pealing the skin off the roof and rebuilding it. It will get a roof A/C then.

Ducting for the condenser fan exits the camper just behind the truck bed rails. There is a set of bulkhead fitting with caps on the way for these.

 

[Toyman01]

Next up was low voltage wiring. I decided to abandon the 120V system in the roof and run all the lights on 12 volts. I've also abandoned the 12 volt plug in the side of the top. All that wiring will now be fed from the interior of the camper and permanently wired to the house battery and truck running lights. The house battery will charge off the truck when running and off a 100 watt solar panel when camping.

The drop for lighting and running lights you can see on the left of this picture. When the top drops, it coils on the seat.

I've got some work to do hiding the wiring to the charge controller, but it's pretty much done.

I'm hoping to get the 120V wiring done today. It will run in the bottom of the camper only. There will be a couple of plugs for the A/C and charging electronics and a 12v power supply and that's about it.

 

[Toyman01]

I finished up the 120v wiring this morning. She's plugged in like normal rather than cords run everywhere.

Then I moved on to other things. The upholstery was nasty to say the least. Time for some new duds. Since I'm cheap, I did it myself.

Old nasty:

New Hotness! :

They aren't perfect, but for $17 each, they are good enough for a camping rig.

 

[thisoldcamper]

Everything's looking good! I like the slide out seal, that should work great and it's white. The new upholstery will help you sleep better... I'd probably wake up itching all over after sleeping on 40 year old seat covers.

 

[Toyman01]

I started on the clearance lights this afternoon. The majority of the round clearance lights were grommet mount rather than surface mount. All the metal parts were corroded badly. This was the best of them.

The lenses and the bases were in good shape so I decided to use them.

This is my fix. Rather than replacing them I'm gutting them and converting them to LED. The LED bulbs are designed to replace halogens in yard lights.

I think they will work just fine.