Hey guys

Just looking to see if anyone has experience in putting a slide in camper in a truck like mine. 95 f150 Eddie Bauer ext cab, 6.5 ft box. I just want to see what people use is it a 6ft camper or 8ft with tailgate down? (don't really like that idea) any input would be great! Also any dimensions of the camper would be greatly appreciated.

 

The truck will need upgrades to carry a slide in of any weight, airbags, overload springs, sway bars, and 6 or 8 ply tires. All stock these old 1/2 tons are overloaded at 1000lbs, it'll carry more but any load that adds weight up high and wind side loads will make it a handful to drive without the above additions.

 

I had a '95 F-150 SuperCab (extended cab is a GM-only term) short box that I used to carry a slide-in camper. I have an 8' pop-up camper. I took the tailgate off when I was hauling the camper and just let it hang out the back (I did add another 2x2 to the frame on the bottom of the camper at the back of the bed). As far as the 8' camper in the 6.5' bed, that worked fine. I've had three different trucks since that F-150, all have carried the camper, and all were short boxes.

But like Conanski said, an F-150 really isn't the right tool for this job. I got the camper I did because it was as light as I could find (~1100 lbs empty). I special-ordered it with nothing in it, no sink, no stove, no fridge, no furnace, to keep the weight down. Then I put Firestone Ride-Rite air bags (helper springs) on the rear of the truck (plumbed separately for more roll resistance). I had previously put a 2.5" lift on the truck, and 33x9.50-15 load range C tires. The lift worked OK (with the air bags), but I had to change to LT235/85-16 load range E tires.

This worked OK, but I wasn't legal by the time I put my family and camping gear in it, so I definitely wouldn't recommend it from that standpoint alone. But also all of the trucks I've had since then were made for loads like that and they hauled it better stock than the upgraded F-150 (those trucks were an '08 F-250 CCSB, an '02 F-350 CCSB and my current '97 F-250 CCSB).

Here's a couple of pics of the camper on the F-150.

 

Hey truck looks deadly exact same colour as mine. Not too worried about that considering I have had 1500+ lbs on the tongue. Yeah little different but it handled it pretty well. Truck has 4'' lift running 33s.

 

It's not so much the weight as where the weight's being carried. I had very little trouble towing trailers with over 1000 lbs tongue weight with that truck. But put that 1000+ lbs about 3 feet higher and it's a new ballgame. Driving home from picking the camper up was SPOOKY! Just trying to go straight down the freeway was terrible as every little wind gust made the truck sway and swerve, and the subsequent steering correction only made the sway worse. With the air bags it was tolerable, and then with the load range E tires it stopped being scary. But still it's a lot better with my F-250 stock (also load range E tires of course).

Another thing the F-250 feels better doing is passing weigh stations. I always sweated coming up to one with my overloaded F-150. Sometimes the signs gave me enough reason to relax, that I was exempt for one reason or another. But it's a lot nicer being legal, and not having to worry about how we might continue the vacation if the Nebraska highway patrol wouldn't let us leave the weigh station until we off-loaded enough to be legal.