Aluminum Camper Forum

I visited the original LL factory prior to buying my camper. Visitors were not allowed the welding shop, for good reason. I remember peeking in the door and seeing piles of aluminum stock on the walls. We did get to see bare frames in the axle installation area and I began to understand the incredible number of welds on these things! It’s no joke.

Early retired one year ago and figure it's time to travel.  Grew up camping as a child.  Boy Scout tent, Sears 6 person tent from Ohio to San Diego and back, Apache Ramada, last year soft side from Ohio to LA and back and then when my sidlings and I moved on,
 the folks bought three different van cuttoff RVs.
Enough history.  Our tow vehicle is a 2011 Element and feel the 8.0 is just about the perfect balance between enough room and preservation of the Honda.
We just need to look at one in person to get a feel how it will work with our very large Yellow Lab.  I believe 135# might warrant another very. 
Still local to East Central Ohio and wondering if anyone within a few hours drive might have us as a quick guest and allow us to look over their 8.0.  Roxie the Lab will stay home and take our word on this.

Thanks,

Dan and Susan Birrell.

Hi gang,  purchases one of those extended entrance door handles.  The kind that extends out but can be folded to the right or left for travel. My question prior to mounting is:  has anyone run across any pitfalls in mounting this type of handle?

Thanks
Melvin Dale Pempsell

I think that it takes an experienced craftsman to make a good aluminum weld. LL's design required good welds as there were no gussets in place that could have limited or eliminated cracks even with poor welds. So they needed experienced craftsmen to do the welding and sometimes they didn't have them, thus the cracks.

So in one respect it is a marginal design that depends on good welds. Given limited reports of cracks I would suspect that 95% of the time LL did it right and the great majority of us will not experience weld cracks.

FWIW steel is much easier to weld right and even if welded poorly there is enough margin in the design to live with a few bad welds. That is why 99% of RV are made with steel frames.

I wonder how much weight would have been added if LL built the frames out of steel, but all else: floors, sides, roof (at least the older ones) out of aluminum. It sure wouldn't have helped their marketing image though.

And I wonder how much it would have cost to beef up the design of the aluminum frame with some gussets. Doing that might have saved their image.

David

Are we (the royal 'we') looking at an engineering design failure that's destined to affect most of us down the road (literally and figuratively) or failures by incompetent aluminum welders on the assembly line? GK