After reading the guys post about leaving his antenna up,I wanna know some of the mistakes everyone has made at one time or another, this should be interesting & give everyone ideas of things to remember....My worst was when I was new to camping & I didnt slope the awning & about two inches of rain fell while I was gone, I came back to what looked like A 500 pound kidney on the side of my camper, it bent the roller up pretty good but didnt collapse. thats one mistake I wont make again.

 

Tried to use the stabilizers to "jack up" the trailer level. Stripped the heck out of the threaded shaft.

Probably my worse accident, was putting the top of the dinette table back on the posts and pushing it through the window. Luckily it was the removable sliding sash that broke and not the fixed portion of the window.

 

Mine was trying to drive the 3 miles home with a new to me truck camper in the back.

Cash transaction

No tie downs, plastic truck liner.

Hey it weights 2K pounds, it won't move

Watched that baby starting to slide out at 55 MPH.

Torquelifts ordered the next day.

 

First time I ever hooked up the 5th wheel, YEP!! I did it!! The pin was too high...didn't latch and I tried to drive away! Crash!! It was with the old '92 F250. Those side walls on the bed are THICK!! Little dent in driver's side rail and a small crease in the trailer and I busted out the lamp lens under the front of trailer.

If you do that with one of today's 250's, you have a new bed installed!!! It'll crush almost to the tires!

 

not all the way to the tires. about 4-6 inch dent in the side and pushed out a couple of inches. the first time i went to hitch up my 5th wheel i forgot to unlock the handle. once i got that fixed i got it on the truck took it to were i was going to be parking it. had a friend with me that works on tractor trailers. semi trailers have brakes on when they are not hooked up or when the ebrake is on. not on a camper. i was get ready to lower the jacks and he pulled the handle. camper came out of the hitch and fell on my bed. now i have a 08 bed and i make sure he stays in the truck. on my old camper i went to hitch it up and forgot to raise the stabilizer jacks and i was cranking the tounge jack up going damn why is it so hard. once i got it on the truck i walked around and seen i bent the hell out of the rear stabilizer jacks. oops.

 

1) One time I was in a rush (seems like I always am) and was picking up the little Jayco pop up when I had my Kia. We stored the camper in the gf's parents side yard. hook everything up, safety pin in, chains good, lights good, roof latches good, should be all set to pull of levelling boards. Hop in let the clutch out, no go. Wheels are chocked still. pull those out. hop in, let out clutch, seems hung up, but oh no, she's moving. Off the levelling boards, and forward a couple feet, dragging feeling goes away. Go to the rear to find a flip down jack dragged into the grass, and bent rearward at a 45 degree angle. Was able to bend it back, as the jack had no damage, it was just the bumber flange it mounts to that had bent. Hard part was telling the gf that I bent the jack on our 4 month old pop-up. LOL

2) Unhooking the same pop-up 2 years later. Second time towing with the brand new cougar. unhooked and didn't realize the car was against a root. so when I went to let the clutch out and roll forward the car rolled back 3" and put the first nick and scratch in the bumper cover.

3) once I started to pull away with an old pop up after unhooking, and felt the jolt when the safety chains, still securely attached to the tow vehicle, reached their limit. LOL.

4) when the 5er was new to me, once I started to pull away without unhooking the trailer plug in the bed. Luckily my father always taught me to pull away from the trailer slowly to make sure you safely clear everything. so I saw the cord tighten up in my mirror, and stopped. Pulled tight, no damage.

 

Good stuff guys...it happens to the best of em. Spamjohnson, I had a truckcamper once,I got it home with those cheap little ratchet straps, its amazing how much those things will move.

 

On my first fiver I forgot to raise landing gear all the way up.I hooked up raised them enough to get weight on truck.got side lined doing something else.Ending up bending them backward.

 

Went to hook up sewer to drain at camp site. Took cap off to attach hose. "SOMEONE" had opened the drain valve prior to removing cap. I "might" have said a thing or two and the site smelled all weekend.

 

I was in a hurry to get out of town for the weekend and couldnt find my 6" drop reciever hitch for the back of the 5er for my boat. Looked in a few places and figured my dad must have it so I grabbed a 4" drop he had sitting in his garage.

Hooked everything up, drove the 80 miles to the lake, stopped once and everything was fine. The last 2 miles into the park are gravel and washboarded quite a bit. When I went to turn into the campground I looked in the mirror and something wasnt right. Went to the back and found my boat being dragged by the safety chains. When I stopped the front of the boat made a nice hole in the fiberglass on the 5er. I hooked it back up and pulled on in, thankful it happened when I was doing less than 20 mph.

The bouncing had made the latch come up!! I couldnt see how there was enough slop to allow this to happen until I noticed the ball was 1-7/8" instead of 2" I still to this day have not heard the reason my dad even has a 1-7/8 ball. Niether one of us have a trailer that size, but I check now!!!

$700 fiberglass repair and everything looked like new again!!

 

The first thing on the 'to do ' list before setting up: chock the tires.

The last thing to do before pulling away: unchock the tires.

Oh.... don't forget to make darn sure everything is disconnected between the truck and trailer after chocking and before pulling away from the trailer. The break-away cable to the electric brakes makes a loud sound when it snaps in two... trust me!

 

I was backing the 5er into a tight spot where I wanted the back to get as close as possible to the house. I had my wife directing me on when to stop. She was so focused on the bumer not hitting the house that she didn't look up to see the ladder hit the gutters on the house. It was my fault because I told her that I wanted the bumper "as close to the house as possible". Crushed the gutters and bent the ladder. This was the day we brought it home from the dealer.

Same 5er, after getting it level at a camp site I removed the saftey bars for the pop out and started to extend the pop out. It started to "jamb" so I gave it a little nudge and tried again. Turns out that I was hitting an oak tree at the top of the pop out. I was too tall and too close to the tree. It cut a hole in the pop outs awning and scuffed the finish pretty good.

Not a camper but, I had a buddy helping me get my truck and car trailer loaded. While I was getting stuff out of the garage to load, he hooked the care trailer to the truck. We loaded the truck and then I went to drvie the car onto the trailer. The moment the front tires were off the ramp and on the trailer, the trailer came off the ball and the tounge thrusted forward into my tailgate. He didn't latch the trailer, he just lowered the jack, hooked up the wires and cables.

 

i did the same thing when i was 12. dad told me to hook the trailer to the truck so he could load the tractor. i didn't know that the latch was on top of the ball. as soon as the front tires hit the trailer the hitch came off and went through the tailgate. he turned 3 shades of red and I ran for mom. it was a new truck at the time so he was real pissed.

 

When I was kid, we were getting ready to go tent-camping and fishing for the weekend. Mom asked me to move her car ('66 Mustang) out of the garage so we'd have room to load Dad's truck.

I started the Mustang, put her in gear, looked over my shoulder, and proceeded to drive the Mustang into the laundry room. We didn't go camping that weekend.

 

Too many mistakes to list. Darwin must have missed me and my gene pool.

Worst potential mistake was just a couple months back.

Went camping with travel trailer and gas powered electgric generator, gotta have some juice for DVDs and lights while in the woods.

For sound deadening and so potential thieves would havfe to think twice, we use our generator tucked under the rear of the trailer. We ran it all weekend and many other times with no problem. This weekend we ran it a lot so I refueled it.

About half an hour after refueling, out of the corner of my eye I saw flames. The generator was on fire and flames were licking the bottom of the trailer. Luckily I just happenened to be where I could see it, other times I would not have seen the flames.

I was able to put the flames out before serious damage occured. The generator needed to be rewired and some plastic sheeting under the trailer was melted.

My guess is that the generator was hot since it was running all weekend. When I refueled, I think the heat fromg the generator caused the heat in the gas tank to overflow, which started the fire.

I made many safety related mistakes. NEVER put anything with gasoline under the trailer. Let the generator cool down before refueling and so on.

So we were very lucky.

Jim Henderson