I orginally posted this in the wrong forum, so I'm reposting it here.
We’ve had our new Phoenix truck camper since mid June and finished an 8 day shakedown cruise through the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota and 3 more weekend trips around home. See our Part 1 Post at www.expeditionportal.com/forum/thre...ruck-Campers-and-Loving-It!-Part-1-The-Pickup that described picking up the camper and falling for the simplicity and flexibility of truck camping.
On our second day of being brand new truck campers, we experienced porpoising, that sudden onset of a mild to severe fore and aft pitching of the camper. Above about 70mph (depending on the head winds) and mainly on concrete roads, a resonance occasionally caused a rapid buildup of porpoising. Slowing down caused it to dissipate immediately. Sometimes the buffeting slip stream of a semi truck could set it off. The first time it happened, it was severe enough, that we sent an email to Rob back at Phoenix who patiently re-iterated what he told us earlier about a “truck to cab blanket” (a small inflatable inner tube to support and absorb the shaking) and the 3M Clear Bra to prevent paint damage to the roof of your truck. He reassured that porpoising was not going to cause structural damage to the cab over. Being in the middle of our shakedown cruise, we did not want to try to stop, find and install the truck to cab blanket, so we just slowed down when it happened.
We did some additional research and found very little scientifically sound information in the various forums about the causes or solutions to porpoising. Yes I believe Lance Cabover shocks will eliminate it, but they are expensive and seemed like over kill for our relatively light weight camper. Upgrading the truck’s suspension might help, but there were very mixed reviews on how effective it really is. Plus it’s expensive too. The Truck to Cab blanket seemed to work for most people, but didn’t have a lot good reviews about its durability or having to change pressure when going up and down mountains.
So I thought about this and decided to try a simple experiment that cost me $4. I bought a 3 inch diameter swimming noodle – those stiff foam floatation tubes kids use in the pool. I cut 2 sections about 8 inches long and squeezed them under the cabover near the edge of my truck top and took a high speed drive down a nearby concrete highway. It worked great, no porpoising at all. It also seemed to add a lot of overall fore/aft stability to the camper.
I had one reservation. I didn’t want to concentrate any pressure points on the cabover or the truck top, so I decided buy a large piece of foam for under the cabover to distribute the pressure. I also bought a 12 by 60 inch 3M Clear Bra to protect the paint - $30. The foam is called Drylast and is for outdoor furniture pads. It is designed to let water run right through it. It’s an open cell foam with a density of 1.8 lbs/cubic ft (measure of durability and nothing to do with stiffness - higher is better) and a 25%IDL of 60 lbs (a measure of stiffness – higher is stiffer). I’m not an engineer, so didn’t really know if it would be stiff enough so I hesitated a bit since it was fairly expensive. A 12 by 60 by 3 inch pad was $50 with shipping. Maybe it turned out to be a bit too stiff, but not much.
When I got the foam, I cut a slight “V” shaped leading edge to help shed wind (probably over thinking a non issue). I also cut a deep “V” shape on the back side and “shaved” the center down an inch to about 2 inches thick so there would be less support in the center of my truck top. I want most of the support on the sides where the truck and the cabover have more structure. I lifted the camper a couple of inches, installed the Clear Bra in about an hour, laid the foam on top of the truck with 4 self adhesive Velcro pads on the camper side (top) side to help the foam stay in place and lowered the camper back down. The foam pad is centered over door supports/frames to minimize any forces on the top of my truck. That weekend we went on a 600 mile camping trip and had zero porpoising and significantly better overall stability of the camper in the truck bed. Unlike the Cab to Truck Blanket, I don’t have to worry about it bursting when climbing high mountains. Next time I take the camper off, I may shave another ½ inch from the center. The camper seems to set about ½ inches higher and I don’t want to add any unnecessary forces to the cab over.
Think hard about it before you try, but for my camper, this works great and only cost about $80 for a long term solution to porpoising.
P. S. Rob from Phoenix is a big believer in minimizing the steep front edges on the truck to help minimize wind damns to cut wind resistance and improve gas mileage. Based on a limited sample, I went from about 13.2 mpg (1300 mile sample of interstate driving) to 13.8 (600 mile sample of interstate driving) when I added the foam closing the gap between the truck top and the cab over. If you follow Rob’s logic, you want to minimize the gap between the truck top and bottom of the cab over to prevent a wind damn. The foam helps fill in the gap. In full disclosure, I also took off my Happy Jacks for this last trip which probably had a bigger effect than the foam?
The Experiment with the swiming noodles.
The side and front views of the foam on the truck.
We’ve had our new Phoenix truck camper since mid June and finished an 8 day shakedown cruise through the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota and 3 more weekend trips around home. See our Part 1 Post at www.expeditionportal.com/forum/thre...ruck-Campers-and-Loving-It!-Part-1-The-Pickup that described picking up the camper and falling for the simplicity and flexibility of truck camping.
On our second day of being brand new truck campers, we experienced porpoising, that sudden onset of a mild to severe fore and aft pitching of the camper. Above about 70mph (depending on the head winds) and mainly on concrete roads, a resonance occasionally caused a rapid buildup of porpoising. Slowing down caused it to dissipate immediately. Sometimes the buffeting slip stream of a semi truck could set it off. The first time it happened, it was severe enough, that we sent an email to Rob back at Phoenix who patiently re-iterated what he told us earlier about a “truck to cab blanket” (a small inflatable inner tube to support and absorb the shaking) and the 3M Clear Bra to prevent paint damage to the roof of your truck. He reassured that porpoising was not going to cause structural damage to the cab over. Being in the middle of our shakedown cruise, we did not want to try to stop, find and install the truck to cab blanket, so we just slowed down when it happened.
We did some additional research and found very little scientifically sound information in the various forums about the causes or solutions to porpoising. Yes I believe Lance Cabover shocks will eliminate it, but they are expensive and seemed like over kill for our relatively light weight camper. Upgrading the truck’s suspension might help, but there were very mixed reviews on how effective it really is. Plus it’s expensive too. The Truck to Cab blanket seemed to work for most people, but didn’t have a lot good reviews about its durability or having to change pressure when going up and down mountains.
So I thought about this and decided to try a simple experiment that cost me $4. I bought a 3 inch diameter swimming noodle – those stiff foam floatation tubes kids use in the pool. I cut 2 sections about 8 inches long and squeezed them under the cabover near the edge of my truck top and took a high speed drive down a nearby concrete highway. It worked great, no porpoising at all. It also seemed to add a lot of overall fore/aft stability to the camper.
I had one reservation. I didn’t want to concentrate any pressure points on the cabover or the truck top, so I decided buy a large piece of foam for under the cabover to distribute the pressure. I also bought a 12 by 60 inch 3M Clear Bra to protect the paint - $30. The foam is called Drylast and is for outdoor furniture pads. It is designed to let water run right through it. It’s an open cell foam with a density of 1.8 lbs/cubic ft (measure of durability and nothing to do with stiffness - higher is better) and a 25%IDL of 60 lbs (a measure of stiffness – higher is stiffer). I’m not an engineer, so didn’t really know if it would be stiff enough so I hesitated a bit since it was fairly expensive. A 12 by 60 by 3 inch pad was $50 with shipping. Maybe it turned out to be a bit too stiff, but not much.
When I got the foam, I cut a slight “V” shaped leading edge to help shed wind (probably over thinking a non issue). I also cut a deep “V” shape on the back side and “shaved” the center down an inch to about 2 inches thick so there would be less support in the center of my truck top. I want most of the support on the sides where the truck and the cabover have more structure. I lifted the camper a couple of inches, installed the Clear Bra in about an hour, laid the foam on top of the truck with 4 self adhesive Velcro pads on the camper side (top) side to help the foam stay in place and lowered the camper back down. The foam pad is centered over door supports/frames to minimize any forces on the top of my truck. That weekend we went on a 600 mile camping trip and had zero porpoising and significantly better overall stability of the camper in the truck bed. Unlike the Cab to Truck Blanket, I don’t have to worry about it bursting when climbing high mountains. Next time I take the camper off, I may shave another ½ inch from the center. The camper seems to set about ½ inches higher and I don’t want to add any unnecessary forces to the cab over.
Think hard about it before you try, but for my camper, this works great and only cost about $80 for a long term solution to porpoising.
P. S. Rob from Phoenix is a big believer in minimizing the steep front edges on the truck to help minimize wind damns to cut wind resistance and improve gas mileage. Based on a limited sample, I went from about 13.2 mpg (1300 mile sample of interstate driving) to 13.8 (600 mile sample of interstate driving) when I added the foam closing the gap between the truck top and the cab over. If you follow Rob’s logic, you want to minimize the gap between the truck top and bottom of the cab over to prevent a wind damn. The foam helps fill in the gap. In full disclosure, I also took off my Happy Jacks for this last trip which probably had a bigger effect than the foam?
The Experiment with the swiming noodles.
The side and front views of the foam on the truck.
