1968 Siesta hard side pop up restoration.

[460Ford]

Growing up my dad bought and fixed and flipped campers as a hobby. He came across one that he had to keep. It was a 1968 hard side pop up camper. Growing up my 3 brothers and I spent all the time we could get camping and running around in the outdoors. My brother just older then me ended up with the camper when my dad upgraded to a custom built 10' Alaskan flat bed. At the time, I had my own Four Wheel Grandby Camper so I was happy just to see it stay in the family. Flash forward 15 years and my brother sends me a message he found another 68 siesta camper on ebay for 330.00. Not only that he had bid on it and turns out he was the only one who did. He won it and even better was he was giving it to me for my Birthday. A few minor details-1st it was 2000 miles away from my house-2nd while listed as "Clean, dry and ready to camp" it would need some work. So the week of thanksgiving, we drove 2000 miles in 3 days to go and pick it up from Portland OR. We get in night and starting to get dark. 30 mins before we arrive the person we bought it from had something come up and wouldn't be able to be there when we picked it up. Well thats odd, as we have told him for a month when we would be arriving. But we were told it was in a field and just go and pick it up. Turns out the "field" was more of a junkyard. Literally. Dogs, wire fence, front office the works. It just seemed all kinds of shady but no one cared or seemed to notice we were there. So we loaded it up and headed back home. We knew picking it up that it wasn't even close to the condition listed, but we didn't find out how bad until we could get home to the work shop to really get into it. It raises and lowers with a jack and pulleys and again the ad said it would go up and down great. Not so much. Once we got a set of jacks and split the two halfs we knew it was to the point it should have stayed in the junk yard. I am not going to lie, there was a short conversation if that should just be taken to the local dump. From the pictures below you will see that wasn't what happened and while its been 5 times more work and money but has been a blast doing a project like that with my brother. Below is the current photo after 6 months of weekend work.

 

[460Ford]

Here are the pictures along the way

 

[460Ford]

More pictures

 

[460Ford]

More pictures

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[460Ford]

more pictures.

 

[460Ford]

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[460Ford]

This is what we started with

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[460Ford]

My brothers 1968 siesta camper

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[460Ford]

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[Climber Rob]

Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Sock Puppet]

That thing is awesome! Incredible transformation! Kudos to you and your brother on a job VERY well done.

 

[Smileyshaun]

I hate eBay for that exact reason , bought a 3 car trailer off eBay that looked in great shape and it was .... on one side , the other side wasent re painted , had bald tires , no brakes and none of the lights worked . almost the same situation " oh I can't meet you but it's out in my field just go pick it up "

 

[460Ford]

Making some real progress. Hope to be able to get it mounted to the truck this weekend. Trim is done, solar is done and new Fantastic fan is mounted. The new fridge I had seems to be dead on arrival. So that will likely have to be replaced at this point.
int.

 

[460Ford]

That thing is awesome! Incredible transformation! Kudos to you and your brother on a job VERY well done.

Thanks, its been a blast to do a project like this with my brother. We live 400 miles away and this has been a great to keep us working on things like we used to 20 years ago. With all of the work we have done, we hope to get 20 years out of this camper before it needs another overhaul.

 

[460Ford]

I hate eBay for that exact reason , bought a 3 car trailer off eBay that looked in great shape and it was .... on one side , the other side wasent re painted , had bald tires , no brakes and none of the lights worked . almost the same situation " oh I can't meet you but it's out in my field just go pick it up "

Its sad how many dishonest people there are in the world. Looking back I'm glad we took it and went as far into the project as we did. While much more money and more work then we ever could have imaged, it forced us into going much further and will have a much nicer camper in the end. And considering how much they are asking for new campers, We are in this pennies on the dollar. We joke that this is the 10% camper as that is about how much we are into it compared to my other brothers new Hallmark Pop up camper.