New owner? Things I wish I had known on day 1

[2024Ford]

We love our pop-up truck 1251camper. We wish we had known on day 1 that: A) the refrigerator door will slam into the drawer pulls and dent when opened on a grade. Make a paper towel dispenser (I used a dowel and wire) and place it on the drawers: avoid three little dents on day one. B) The heavy table will fall on the floor and do damage. Unscrew the table from the mounting bracket and replace it with a smaller, lightweight table from a cheap TV tray. Then, when it falls from the bed, counter, or your hands, it will not dent the floor. C) Read the instructions a couple of times. D) Turn off the water pump when not using water. The faucets in the shower are easily accidentally turned on. A slow on-and-off cycle will start slowly draining the water. E) The drawers will slide open in transit dumping contents on the floor and hitting you on the head when you enter OR the contents will slide back and out onto the camper electronics. Make a net with Velcro attachments to cover the content of each drawer and secure the drawers with a cord (similar to the fridge). Self-stick Velcro drawer holds will pull the printed texture off the drawer frame. F) the inside lights could land an airplane. Cheap puck lights will replace them nicely, and color-changing lights can be set to red to save night vision. G) Replace the fridge cord with bright material so you do not forget to tie it down.

[bikendan]

Did you do a PDI/walk-through before you took possession?

[2024Ford]

Yes, A very nice walk-through on a level lot. And a nice video. They have been great about questions.

[Iwritecode]

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

We love our pop-up truck 1251camper. We wish we had known on day 1 that:
A) the refrigerator door will slam into the drawer pulls and dent when opened on a grade. Make a paper towel dispenser (I used a dowel and wire) and place it on the drawers: avoid three little dents on day one.

B) The heavy table will fall on the floor and do damage. Unscrew the table from the mounting bracket and replace it with a smaller, lightweight table from a cheap TV tray. Then, when it falls from the bed, counter, or your hands, it will not dent the floor.

C) Read the instructions a couple of times.

D) Turn off the water pump when not using water. The faucets in the shower are easily accidentally turned on. A slow on-and-off cycle will start slowly draining the water.

E) The drawers will slide open in transit dumping contents on the floor and hitting you on the head when you enter OR the contents will slide back and out onto the camper electronics. Make a net with Velcro attachments to cover the content of each drawer and secure the drawers with a cord (similar to the fridge). Self-stick Velcro drawer holds will pull the printed texture off the drawer frame.

F) the inside lights could land an airplane. Cheap puck lights will replace them nicely, and color-changing lights can be set to red to save night vision.

G) Replace the fridge cord with bright material so you do not forget to tie it down

Just an FYI, your post is easier to read if you add some space in between your list items rather than one large block of text.

[SS Sixteen O four]

You’re going through growing pains from your switch to truck campers. They’re all lessons that we learn, don’t sweat it. enjoy your camper and have fun

PS - How about a photo of your rig

[Oaklevel]

Yes the pains of new campers...... Most of us go through the I wish this had that......... even building a new house..........

[Mookie58]

Welcome, and congrats on the new truck camper! If a hundred people designed the interior of the same camper you'd have a hundred different designs. After the learning curve you will adjust and enjoy every day in it. I particularly enjoyed your comment about being able to land aircraft with the interior lights. Our new TT has so many LED lights inside I don' think we ever have more than 2 or 3 on at one time.

[jimmoore13]

Some suggestions:

Securing Cabinet Doors and Drawers: Not pretty, but some screw eyes and tiny bungees or caribiners do a great job of lashing things down. Our rig is a little bigger, and it has a pantry cabinet. Contents of the pantry can force the door open. Two screw eyes close together and a small caribiner do a great job of securing the door. Ball bungees around side-by-side cabinet handles do a great job. In our bathroom, the vanity cabinet door is held with a short bungee retained by a screw eye, and the hook on the bungee goes to the cabinet door handle. An open cubby for towels, etc, has been "upgraded" with a couple of bungees stretched vertically across the gap to keep stacks of towels from dumping on the floor. Lightweight plastic dishes won't force open the upper cabinet where they are stored.
If you restrain your drawers, they aren't likely to dump their contents unless you go on rough terrain. If you go on rough terrain, consider adding a "weighted blanket" (e.g. a heavy pad) on top of the drawer contents. Put less stuff in the drawers. ALSO, a big one, pull out the drawers and use tiny screws to secure the drawer bottoms to the drawer side at the rear. Knives love to slide through that tiny crack and cause the drawer bottom to sag.

Refridge Door Conflict with Cabinet Handles: Peel-and-stick soft, clear bumpers at the hardware store (or similar). We've had to do this with kitchen and storage cabinets at home. The doors and drawers don't conflict, but in corners and near walls, cabinet doors open wide enough that handles will hit other cabinets or the wall...the bumpers solve the problem.
...and level your camper. The fridge wants to be level.

Shower faucet not turning off?? Turn it off. If there's a problem with the faucet, replace it. Turning off the water pump is not necessary. And if you hear the pump cycling and you aren't drawing water, find the open valve and shut it off.

Fridge cord reminder: You need a checklist. We all do. There are too many tiny details for prepping to move to do it all from memory for the first year or so. Eventually it becomes routine, but a checklist is very helpful for remembering easy-to-forget things like closing the roof vent and range vent, checking for open windows, stashing everything that must be stored before closing the slide, and so on. Some of this may not apply to you, but there are a zillion tiny details to attend to, often in a specific order. Making and using a checklist will ingrain proper setup and teardown procedure so you don't make a dumb mistake and drive home down 20 miles of dirt road with the roof vent open and open the door to the rig to find it filled with dust.

Lastly, Kwitcherbitchen. The problems you cite are part of jamming an entire functioning home into a super tiny space. You didn't mention anything falling apart, failing, and so on. You wouldn't buy a camper that had screw eyes and bungees all over the place, but if you are off-roading, you need to lash things down. Virtually all campers are designed to be RV Park Queens...nothing wrong with that. But if you boondock, you'll soon learn that you'll need lots more mods to make the rig work out in the wild.

Good luck...and enjoy your camper.

[kpesko]

Hello, if you are disappointed now, wait until the Rieco-Titan roof lift actuators fail and you can't raise or lower the roof! I wish you better luck than so many owners have had.

[Reverse_snowbird]

Thanks for sharing your 'things I wish I had known'.
Perhaps they will help someone else with their camper.

Welcome to the forum!

[2024Ford]

Thank you for commenting. Here are more items on the learning curve. We just returned from 5 days on dirt on the Colorado Rockies:
1. Bungies will not hold the drawer and refrigerator on dirt roads. I need to use ratchet straps.
2. The height of the camper changes depending on the weight of the load (duh!)
3. The refrigerator will need a bit of tightening as it is loosening in the cabinet.
4. Speaking of the refrigerator, heavy items (container of potato salad) will bounce, and force open the door. Once they start to bounce, they inevitably end up on the floor. The shelves have no lips to stop everything from ending up next to the door. Then when the door is opened, all fall out. I am using "L" shaped brass to make lips on the shelves, and avoid any heavy items (also see 8)
5. Check the tie-down bolts.
6. Extra maxi-fan cover is cheap insurance on the road for when a user error tears the first one apart.
7. Move pillows and sleeping bags away from the sides to facilitate vacuum as the top is closed.
8. Balloons have many purposes. One is to fill the space in cabinets as supplies run out so things do not bounce around.
9. Many oil change shops will not do an oil change on a pickup with a camper on it - a problem on a long trip. However, many offer a mobile service that will be happy to do it at your flat location or in their lot.

[Rhumblefish]

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

Thank you for commenting.

You bet - if there's one thing we're good at, it's having opinions! The steep learning curve is steep, however, and the newbie has a lot of thinking and/or experience ahead of them to be fully prepared. Sometimes it just works out that way. You've got something (a trailer) that mimics (doesn't replicate) your home (although really pretty different)... that is cheaply built, with imperfect quality control, that has to suffer an earthquake and a hurricane any time you move it anywhere. No doubt, there's an enormous amount of learning to do!

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

Here are more items on the learning curve.

YAY! Hey - thanks for sharing another "things I wish I had known" list. I think these kinds of posts are important for a couple reasons: (1) blows off steam, invites humor, and can lead to some learning/good suggestions; and (2) helps educate other newbies who are being (or have been) tempted in by the slick sales brochure, and the equally slick sales guy who wants to "help you make memories." (he never tells you that one of the memories you might make involves a china bomb going off, or the EXACT moment you find out your truck or tow vehicle isn't up to the task of trucking or towing what you purchased...

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

We just returned from 5 days on dirt on the Colorado Rockies:

:jealous: We love high Colorado! Where'd you go?


A few thoughts for you, cuz you thought 'em first:

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

1. Bungies will not hold the drawer and refrigerator on dirt roads. I need to use ratchet straps.

Bungies are generally better for cabinet and closet doors. Locking the fridge shut is par for the course (so much so that many new fridges come with locking handles or straps). If your fridge doesn't have one, you definitely need one (see item #4). I'd want something that absolutely, positively keeps the fridge closed, not just something that "hopes to." Drawers are a little bit of sticky wicket - you can bungie them together, but that just makes the threshold of them opening higher, doesn't prevent them from getting loose, plus the nature of bungie (and how you attach them) means plenty of mechanical variation that can be take advantage of by pesky physics. Depending on how your drawers are laid out, you might look into CHILD/BABY PROOFING LOCKS such as found at Target/Walmart/Amazon that makes it tough (impossible) for babies to open said enclosures. The marine industry has an abundance of these solutions because of the nature of how boats move and tilt. More expensive RV' manufacturers have taken some notes from boats, but boat solutions tend to be heavy and pricey.

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

2. The height of the camper changes depending on the weight of the load (duh!)

This is a really important one. You need to know how long and tall the rig is in its longest and tallest configuration, and drive/park accordingly. Unfortunately, the amount of dashcam videos showing the wayward effects of newbies forgetting that they are driving differently sized videos is only increasing.

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

3. The refrigerator will need a bit of tightening as it is loosening in the cabinet.

Oh boy, this doesn't sound good. If you have a flush lip fridge, see if you can add a cleat(s) to a side/all around to help it stay in place. If not, you can add larger cleats that are positive against the fridge edges to force it to stay in place.. but it seems like this could be indicative of a larger issue (like the fridge isn't properly secured. A half dozen metal L brackets and screws could help, screwed into the fridge frame and the floor/walls that surround the fridge. You'll need access behind it, though, and that might not be possible.

I'd suggest that - from the rest of your post - you put this thing through a few extremes that us flatlanders don't see (read: still not all that extreme), and that you're going to need a positive solution for the fridge. It'd be nice if it could pull double duty and hold the doors shut AND keep the fridge in place when you're underway. I myself like to get into the fridge when we're on the road (as it's a good place to keep cold drinks cold, or stash a sandwich). So something that lets you get INTO the fridge easily is going to be a good idea.

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

4. Speaking of the refrigerator, heavy items (container of potato salad) will bounce, and force open the door. Once they start to bounce, they inevitably end up on the floor. The shelves have no lips to stop everything from ending up next to the door. Then when the door is opened, all fall out. I am using "L" shaped brass to make lips on the shelves, and avoid any heavy items (also see 8)

I hope those containers are square with flat edges and faces, and have really good seals on their lids! Most of us have all ponied up for adjustable fridge rods for our fridges, and use them to jam all the stuff together and hold it tight while we're moving. They're cheap, and all over Amazon. Likewise, you've got to learn how to pack the fridge (and cabinets) for MOVING, not CAMPING. Once you get to camp, you can readjust your contents to live better (like keeping things off the backwall to keep them from freezing solid in camp, but making a solid block of foodstuffs that can put up with the rock and roll of being underway).

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

5. Check the tie-down bolts.

Always. Actually - a real deal checklist for setting camp, AND packing up/getting going is a GREAT idea. Pilots use 'em, cause the consequences of forgetting something can be big. Get your phone out, look up a list (to see if there is one, and they are many), edit it to be relevant to YOU and YOUR setup, and then use it. If it needs editing, edit it so that it works for you and your gear. Don't be afraid to put everything on it. Then share it here, so others can take advantage of your diligent efforts!

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

6. Extra maxi-fan cover is cheap insurance on the road for when a user error tears the first one apart.

Uh-oh. Does this sort of have to do with item #2 and not being sure of the height of the rig (vs the lowness of something else)? We've all bought ourselves a replacement part or two, it's the cost of having these things and... the occasional oversight on our part.

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

7. Move pillows and sleeping bags away from the sides to facilitate vacuum as the top is closed.

In our hybrids, we have same sorta problem with pushing the tentage (and PUGs covers, if so equipped) in so that we can close the bunk ends tightly. This might not normally be an issue on a dry day, but when you've got a bunk end with a bad seal and your driving INTO rain on the highway, it can spell L-E-A-K O-F C-O-N-S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-E. Fight the good fight, brother!

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

8. Balloons have many purposes. One is to fill the space in cabinets as supplies run out so things do not bounce around.

This is a great use of balloons. And dish towels. Also even those pillows and sleeping bags mentioned in Item #7. Quite frankly, I find that there's a lot of gear cramming going on, simply to keep everything WHERE ITS SUPPOSED TO BE while underway. Travel Trailers succumb to this in particular, riding more harshly than their Tow Vehicles. Likewise, when you're sitting in your seat, you've got the SEAT acting as a suspension point, too... it masks how rough the ride really is. If you can't set a full, unlidded coffee cup on your dash and drive around with it, then you shouldn't expect anything in the camper (even in drawers) to not behave in the same manner. Unfortunately, it's easy to think of the camper (and its contents) in CAMPING mode, and harder to think about it (and its contents) in TRAVEL mode.

Originally Posted by 2024Ford

9. Many oil change shops will not do an oil change on a pickup with a camper on it - a problem on a long trip. However, many offer a mobile service that will be happy to do it at your flat location or in their lot.

Oh, this IS a good reminder... probably has something to do with lifts or pits and garage heights.... And likely a real pain in the butt to land the camper so that you can go get your oil changed without that giant backpack on. Us travel trailer people sort of expect to have to ditch the trailer before anything like that happened (and, of course, it's a little easier for us to dock and undock than it is for you truck camper people).


The good news is that you're in good company. We've all climbed that steep learning curve on Mt Experience (and STILL have moments where we have to double back over a section or two). Thanks for sharing, I hope you get to the point where you shake your head and smile.

It still beats workin!

[2024Ford]

We love the camper. It is a big step up from 40 years of tenting. I'm not complaining about this stuff and would not discourage anyone from purchasing one. I expected a learning curve as this is the first camper we have ever owned.

[2024Ford]

More we have learned in the first 3 months. These are vicarious experiences observed on our last trip.
1) Carry an electric drill with an adapter for the lifts. Those few that fail do so at the worst time.

2) Using the camper on dirt roads will lead to DYI strengthening the woodwork, plan on it.

3) Check (ahead of time) the capacity of the tire jack. Can it lift the truck and camper (and water and etc?)? Otherwise, the camper must be lifted first, and it may not lift high enough off the bed to raise the truck high enough to clear a tire. The tire must be deflated to remove, and then the replacement aired up (you did bring your VAl-air high-capacity compressor?)