Restoring a 68 Siesta Pop-up and getting it to fit a newer style truck.

[68 Siesta]

I've been pestered by a couple wtw members to start a thread on the restoration of my 1968 Siesta hard side popup and the mods I have made to get it to better fit the newer truck. Its been a project I have been working on for several years now. I first got the camper in 2002 and camped in it for about 7 years without any other work than routine maintenance. If there is interest in seeing anything I don't include a picture of, I'll try to get something uploaded. I'm not very good at taking progress pictures because I hate to stop working and pick up the camera.

When I first acquired the camper it was sitting on a 1987 F250.

When the camper got to the stage of "junk it or fix it" I chose to fix it. I tediously tore off all the contact paper on the inside walls and repainted, put in a new floor and countertop, built drawers where a hanging closet used to be, added a freshwater and battery monitor and 12 volt power source, and painted the outside to match my old truck. Again, I'm horrible at progress pictures, but here are some shots of the final product.

 

[68 Siesta]

I upgraded trucks a couple years ago which required a number of modifications to get the camper to fit the truck. Most importantly, the camper was too wide at the tailgate to fit the newer Fords so I had to narrow the backend about 3 inches. Luckily there was some closet space that I could take it from. Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight then to take pictures of that project.

The next challenge was to get the cabover of the camper to clear the cab. If you look carefully at the first picture in this thread, you can see the overhang on the camper is actually indented and the cab of the truck fit up inside the overhang of the camper. Because I upgraded to an extended cab truck which a higher cab, I had to add about 5 1/2 inches of spacer between the bed of the truck and the camper to get the cab over to clear.

At first I built a wood platform, but after a while I got to thinking about all that wasted space under the camper and decided to do something about it. In short, I built a steel frame that I bolted to the bottom of the camper, complete with sliding drawers that run the length of the bed. Here is the rough framing:

Because drawer slides that long were cost prohibitive, I designed the drawer to slide on roller blade ball bearings which run along on angle iron I welded to the frame of the spacer.

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I made drawer faces from thin steel plate and painted them to match the truck. Here's a picture of the finished back end.

I have drawer locks that lock the drawers closed for travel. On the driver's side I keep tools, a shovel, recovery straps, an ax, and lug wrenches for my trailers. On the passenger side I have made an outdoor kitchen complete with propane hookup. The drawer slides out about six feet, but you'll get the idea from these pictures.

More to come later.....

 

[DrJ]

This is an awesome restore project.
I've seen the camper first hand and it's top notch work!!!

 

[68 Siesta]

After building the drawers underneath the camper, I decided to do something about the wasted space in between the bed rails of the truck and the camper. So I built drawers that fit there also. Because they don't slide as far, I was able to use heavy duty drawer slides. I went with inlaid pulls for a more sleek look along the sides.

 

[68 Siesta]

The camper originally had an ice box which I could never get to hold ice longer than a day. When I did the restore I put in a new ice box hoping that new insulation would help. It didn't. So when I got a good deal (free-ninety-free) on a Norcold 3 way fridge I jumped at installing it.

It didn't fit the cabinet well, so I had to remodel the cabinet and redo some countops. Luckily I was able to find another sheet of matching laminate counter top.

The reason I got it for free was the previously owner (thanks DrJ) removed it to put in a compressor fridge because the 3 way Norcold didn't hardly cool and often spoiled the food. Because everything seemed to work well in my bench tests, I read the manual to see if I could figure out why it wasn't cooling when installed in the Hawk.

What I discovered is that it was not properly vented in the Hawk. Really, it was just too big for the FWC. Because of the size of it, FWC didn't have enough room to properly place the upper vent. Because the upper vent was installed too low, hot air was always trapped around the rear fins of the fridge that have to be kept cool.

So the tricky part of the fridge install was engineering a vent that worked per the specs of the manufacturer whether the camper was lowered or popped up. I couldn't do two side vents like many pop-ups because the upper vent would be blocked when the camper was in the lower position.


My solution was to vent straight up through the roof. I put vents on top of the cabinet and in the roof directly above the counter top vents. When the camper is in the down position there is about 2 inches of space between the vents and the hot air flows freely out the top.

In order to vent the hot air out while the camper is in the up position, I built a "chimney" that fits perfectly between the cabinet and the roof when I pop it up.

The chimney just stores on the lower bed of the camper when I travel and I slide it into place when I set up. I also added two small computer fans to in the cabinet vents to help air move up and out. They are wired to a switch next to the fridge. Might be overkill, but the fridge works amazingly well installed in this way.

 

[68 Siesta]

Recently, I decided to replace the old retro back-up lights that have never worked since I owned the camper with some higher powered LED lights. I welded up a bracket to make them fit and got them all wired up. Love them!

 

[DrJ]

The amount of storage in this camper is amazing.

I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone else with side drawers - let alone side drawers and pull out drawers the entire length.

 

[97grandby]

Great work! Love the outdoor kitchen. That was about the only thing I saw at overland expo with all the off road cargo trailers with roof tents I envied was the out door kitchens. Sure makes it nice to be cooking outside where everyone else is at.

 

[DrJ]

How did you get huge slide out drawers to roll out?

Do they hang down after you pull them out all of the way?

 

[68 Siesta]

I used roller blade ball bearings as slides. They are bolted to the drawers and run along 1 inch angle iron. The drawers do sag a bit when extended to full length. I'm thinking of adding a leg to the end on the one I use as an outdoor kitchen.


Sent from my iPad using Wander The West

 

[DrJ]

What kind of things do you put in your side drawers?

How deep are they?

Do you think that other campers could be modified in that way too???

 

[Manfred65]

@DrJ: I think you can modify all campers this way. But you will have to raise the camper to get enough freee space for the drawers.
68 Siesta got the place with the big drawers beneath the floor.

@68 Siesta: You did a great job restoring this camper. Thumbs up! Compared with this our work was amateurish.

As an Alaskan-Fan (waiting for the lottery-win or an old one to restore) i like the siesta hardwall-popup very much.

Thank you for sharing your work and your ideas.

 

[68 Siesta]

@DrJ: I think you can modify all campers this way. But you will have to raise the camper to get enough freee space for the drawers.
68 Siesta got the place with the big drawers beneath the floor.

@68 Siesta: You did a great job restoring this camper. Thumbs up! Compared with this our work was amateurish.

As an Alaskan-Fan (waiting for the lottery-win or an old one to restore) i like the siesta hardwall-popup very much.

Thank you for sharing your work and your ideas.

I've followed your build thread and your work was anything but "amateurish"! It was incredible.

Thanks for the kind words. I wish I would have documented my rebuild as well as you did.


Sent from my iPad using Wander The West

 

[Cyberhog05]

Awesome!!! I just bought one of these yesterday. Fit great in my 93 f150 extended cab. This is my first camper I've owned. It's really hard finding info on these siestas. I have so many questions for you lol, great work man. Your thread helped me talk my ol lady into buying it because she could see what you have done! For $350 I'm happy.

 

[Manfred65]

Hi Cyberhog,

congrats to your buy,

but we need piiiiiiics

 

[68 Siesta]

Awesome!!! I just bought one of these yesterday. Fit great in my 93 f150 extended cab. This is my first camper I've owned. It's really hard finding info on these siestas. I have so many questions for you lol, great work man. Your thread helped me talk my ol lady into buying it because she could see what you have done! For $350 I'm happy.

Nice work!!!

You are going to love it and I'll answer any question I can! There isn't really any information out there on them. I've learned by 15 years of trial and error. Post up some pics!


Sent from my iPad using Wander The West

 

[68 Siesta]

Saw another old siesta on eBay and couldn't resist another restore project. My brother and I drive to Portland to pick it up.

 

[68 Siesta]

The ad said no soft sides, just needs a cleaning and is ready to camp. Wasn't exactly as advertised. We had a hard time scoping it out before we loaded it because the lift system was inoperable. When we got it home to the shop and got it popped up we found more soft wood on the upper portion than hard. So we completely separated the top portion from the lower portion and began tearing off rotted paneling.

 

[68 Siesta]

 

[68 Siesta]