{"id":232,"date":"2016-12-01T23:36:45","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T23:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/?p=232"},"modified":"2017-02-13T04:28:36","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T04:28:36","slug":"1981-fwc-fleet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/?p=232","title":{"rendered":"1981 FWC Fleet"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had been looking for a lightweight trailer or slide-in camper for the T100, when an older Four Wheel Camper turned up on craigslist cheap. The downside was it needed repairs to just about everything. I convinced myself I needed another project and jumped in. <\/p>\n

\"Now<\/a>

Now I have a camper<\/p><\/div>\n

The first repairs on the list were to fix a soft floor near the door and a rotten cabover. The floor was intact enough that epoxy wood filler firmed it up, but the cabover was completely trashed. I cut that out and installed a fresh piece of plywood. Both lift panels were rotten as well, but the truck came with an intact replacement for the front panel. With that in place I had myself a somewhat functional camper shell.<\/p>\n

\"Work<\/a>

Work begins<\/p><\/div>\n

I tore out all the paneling and insulation so I could start from scratch. The orignal camper design had storage on the left with a long bench on the right. I switched the plan to a front dinette and started building. <\/p>\n

\"Progress\"<\/a>

Progress<\/p><\/div>\n

As all that was going on, I started actually getting to use the camper. I spent a surprisingly comfortable week at Burningman and several weekends in the Rockies. <\/p>\n

\"Desert<\/a>

Desert life<\/p><\/div>\n

On one of those weekend trips I ended up on an offshoot of the Switzerland trail behind Boulder. I was part way up a steep rocky hill when the 4wd cut out completely. The T100 has a vacuum actuated axle disconnect system for the front wheels when the system is in 2wd, bouncing over the rocks must have knocked a line loose or caused an actuator to fail. Whatever it was, it left me stuck backing down a trail and eventually sliding into a tree. Manual locking hubs jumped to the top of the upgrade list. <\/p>\n

Back to the camper, next up was going to be adding a water tank and installing insulation and a heater. But before I got that far I decided the rear overhang was too much. The older Fleet campers are long enough that the tailgate has to stay down for the camper to fit in a short bed pickup. The T100 starts out with a terrible departure angle and the tailgate down only makes it worse. More importantly, I hated how it looked. I briefly debating getting a standard cab T100 with the longer bed, but instead saw a Phoenix camper on craigslist and moved on to camper #2. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had been looking for a lightweight trailer or slide-in camper for the T100, when an older Four Wheel Camper turned up on craigslist cheap. The downside was it needed repairs to just about everything. I convinced myself I needed another project and jumped in. The first repairs on the list were to fix a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carbio.org\/carlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}