These late-seventies Dodge RVs are a favorite with the…home-on-wheels crowd. Eugene is pretty tolerant about them, especially in certain neighborhoods, and we have a program where folks can park them for a few weeks at a time in designated places. But this one was in a downtown parking lot after hours, and being administered to. Must have required attention right then and there, although no one was around; at the parts store? What caught my eye was a profusion of jacks and stands under there. Time for a closer look.
Looks like the radiator was getting drained; a familiar task on my same-vintage Chinook when I had a two water pumps go bad, because of an out-of balance fan clutch. But why all the jacking up? There’s gobs of room to work under there. In fact, I don’t carry a jack in the Chinook; nor a spare tire, as a matter of fact (unless I’m heading to Mexico). It’s just too heavy to bother; both to try jacking, and the spare. Ten years and no need yet. I should not have written that.
Yup. Karma gonna get you.
“…Karma gonna get you.”
and instantly.
Broken engine mount maybe cetainly a lot of lifting gear under there.
Lesse…
2 jack stands, a bottle jack and a smaller floor jack. Wanna bet either jack is too little by themselves to do the heavy lifting of this old beast.
I also notice an owie in the grill area.
Yeah, some kind of draining is or was in order it looks like.
The tire treads don’t look to new there either, but adequate for now if I’m not mistaken.
I’m starting to wonder if a bottle OF Jack was involved here, along with all of the other jacks.
LOL!…
I’m going to guess that the owner is less skinny and more claustrophobic than Paul, so he’ll take all the headroom he can get.
And Ciddy, I’d say those skins are from Reagan’s first term, decent-ish tread or no. 🙂
Capn,
Those skins may WELL be ancient, but you’d think they’d be dry rotted by now. Either way, they ain’t new one way or ta otha.
They’re also seriously mis-matched. The passenger side is an ancient bias-ply, the other a radial.
I almost bought this exact model some 5 years ago. I belive it was a -70 or so, imported from -somewhere US, to europe. The owner had some issues with it, but was also very stingy. Note that old camper like this is not very common in Europe, hence it makes sense to invest some money in them, because they are still and easy sell, after say $10 000 of parts and upgrades. As several of the tires was just like this one, very old and very questionable to drive with, he needed some new tires so he could sell it, or one wouldnt even be able to drive the thing home.
Anyways, the tires were some unusual 16.5 inch size, which might have been common once in history, but not anymore, and not in Europe. Those things where very expensive, and he ended up getting some mismacted tires from a junkyard. Mismatched in the sense that he had 2 different sizes on the dual rear axle on the right side.
On the good side of things, he pointed to some electrical gadged under the hood, and PROUDLY declearing: “This one is NEW! I bought it and installed it myself!”
I looked like some kind of alternator rectifier or something. I didnt really take much notice. That and the fact he had “repaired” the leaks with several pounds of silicone allaround, made me decide againts it. I would buy a vehicle if someone over time atleast spends on normal wear parts. On this thing everything was just getting closer and closer to blow up.
Oh, the seller also strongly suggested to get some kind of tow insureance, “just in case the tranny blows up on your way home or something”. Right.
Apparently it just did that a few days later.
Now that’s quite a story. Good call on walking away from that.
I think that the radiator came out the bottom on those Dodge vans.
Yup, and I’ve dropped mine at least twice without any jacking.