We ended our last update by finishing the restoration of a slide-in camper for our 2001 Ford F-250 pickup's truck bed. With just a few thousand dollars and hundreds of hours of nasty, sweaty work replacing rotten wood, we’d basically built the GRM version of those fancy motorhomes you see in the owner/driver lot of the world’s premier endurance …
Gooseneck: I drove someone else's truck/race trailer once...I'll never go back to a bumper pull.
Currently tenting on the trailer after unloading the car which stays high and dry. Plus canopy along the trailer for shade/dry area.
A nice budget combo would be 40ft low deck gooseneck + slide in camper mounted on trailer (box side areas replaced with tool boxes and storage) + race car on the back. Neighbor does this with a mud truck.
We did something similar to tow a 3,000lb boat on a single axle trailer with a 13-1/2' slide in camper on an '87 GMC K2500.
Since it was about 25 years ago we had to improvise, and used solid bar stock for the extension. Due to the receiver hitch angle we had to notch, bend, and weld the extension to get the right height. We also added chains from the extension to the step bumper corners to reduce sway along with extensions for the safety chains to maintain the connection to the tow vehicle frame,
It towed nicely and never had any issues, but did get some funny looks at the boat ramp.
8 to 9mpg at 75mph is nothing to be sad about, that's quite excellent for a combination this size.
newrider3 said:8 to 9mpg at 75mph is nothing to be sad about, that's quite excellent for a combination this size.
considering that bricks probably have a better drag coefficent?
We did this for YEARS. We always traveled in a slide-in and towed the boat. Dad fabbed up a sliding bumper and it was brilliant. It had a fold down step for the door.
Basically he bolted two sections of heavy channel on the frame and made a bumper with two longer channels on it. When the camper was off, you slid the bumper in and put a pin in it. With the camper on, you pulled the pin and slid the bumper out. It was plenty heavy duty for our 3000-lb boat, but would have needed a bit more heft for a car hauler.
I ran into this problem when towing. Short bed truck with an 8' camper meant the tailgate was always down. My solution was to build my new trailer (not pictured) with a long tongue and fold away jack. Worked great!
Pretty obvious Torklift isn't a GRM advertiser... LOL
Having run their products for close to 30k miles of camper + 24ft enclosed race trailer I can confirm their stuff is expensive, but worth it. No one else makes extensions that can handle more than ~800lbs tongue weight (with WD) which is right at the limit for a lot of enclosed trailer setups at 10%. Especially if you need to go longer than 24". I can go up to 1500lbs tongue weight (with WD) on my Torklift 28" extension, which provides a lot more overhead.
Slide-in + trailer is definitely one of the more versatile setups... truck - truck/trailer - truck/camper - truck/camper/trailer. Covers all the bases without having to maintain/register/insure a separate RV. It's not without drawbacks, but checks a lot of boxes.
BTW, I'd hit a truck scale and check your axle weights if you haven't already... I've yet to see a camper that isn't significantly heavier than its "brochure" weight. 
My FIL goes to tractor shows and he popped a slide in on the top portion of a gooseneck so he can use the rest of the trailer for his tractors. It's a pretty sweet setup.
I like this idea just because it's so ambitious. It's well past the line where you actually have to do it correctly or its automatically a deathtrap. Seems like the right amount of effort went into the assembly AND the testing, and now it tows well. I don't know that i'd ever try to replicate this type of arrangement for myself (rather just be towing with a small RV because i don't have much actual need for a large truck), but to see it done well still makes me smile.
Ok, it's time for the old guy to question 75mph towing something at or near weight capacity? With yesteryear braking technology and the same for handling. The idea is to avoid a crash, any idea how far you travel in distance at 75 MPH and then add the braking distance plus reaction time?
I would be very interested if you or your staff has ever tested a panic stop of your "rig" at any speed.
Any good RV magazine will tell rv drivers to not drive 75
Ok, I should have read the past project up dates, two thumbs up on the brake update and testing the stopping power!! Still think you tow too fast. You guys do a great job of upgrading things so again two thumbs up!!
I usually keep my rig under 70 because pushing that barn door down the road above 65mph results in fuel mileage dropping like a stone.
My OBS DI 7.3 was 58 mph. Anything above 60 on up to 78 was about the same mpg. After that, I don’t know, cause, like was said, wasn’t gonna run her that fast!
now the FL50. Never found a sweet spot for mpg. 10 empty, 8 towing. All the way up to 80 +. Out west. Don’t know if faster would have hurt that... that’s all it would do! But only towing half it’s rated capacity, stopping was never a problem.
In reply to asphalt_gundam :
is this your neighbor? Just a quick internet search found this rock crawler with a slide in on the gooseneck.
Looks pretty sweet
https://www.truckcampermagazine.com/off-road/extreme-rigs/truck-camper-on-a-gooseneck/
I actually see the truck camper + gooseneck combo fairly often when I take the Trooper to the mountains for rock crawling. It was a non-starter for me for a few reasons, mostly because I didn't want to go back to racing out of an open trailer, especially without much storage in the truck for tools and gear.
Still amazed at the 8-9MPG mark. Our 14 Escalade gets a whopping 6mpg towing the 22ft enclosed at highway speeds regardless of what's in the trailer.
You'll need to log in to post.
