A cautionary tale in these stormy times

[saDgit]

This is the result of a sudden gust of wind


Wolf Creek are a well-respected American manufacturer but it seems in this case their build quality may have been partially responsible. Full story and more pics are here http://www.doityourselfrv.com/family-su ... 50-rolled/

[Alexd]

that was unfortunate to say the least, made a dent in his Pickuo but he got it repaired so thats good though might not be for whoever bought his written off camper after repair

[sabconsulting]

Oh yeh, I remember this. Here is a link to Nolan (anutami)'s write-up on this. I've used the Woodalls portal for this because lately I have found I can't get in using my preferred rv.net address:

http://forums.woodalls.com/index.cfm/fu ... d/27461157

If I remember correctly Nolan said there was side wind, but as an experienced truck camper owner he wasn't doing anything stupid. There was some discussion about the fact that Northwood seemed to have butted 2 bits of ply together in such a way that the tie-down was able to pull the smaller piece straight off the bottom of the wing of the camper.

Steve.

[zildjian]

Might be worth pointing out this is a (very) rare incident,
this side of the world I can only think of one event anything like this and that was a car running into the side of a member
(side road) here some years ago.

Nobody is insulated from stupidity but then we have an insurance thread on the site and a range of Companies offering truck & camper cover

[sabconsulting]

Might be worth pointing out this is a (very) rare incident,
this side of the world I can only think of one event anything like this and that was a car running into the side of a member
(side road) here some years ago.

Yes, this is a freak occurrence. I have never heard of another like this amongst the US RV community. The closest I have heard of were related to high-speed tyre blow-outs or other road traffic accidents. In some cases the camper stayed attached and both camper and truck ended up on their side.

There was some structural weakness with the way the wing was built in this case - possibly exacerbated by vibration from driving over washboard corrugations in the desert.

This was an extreme sudden sidewind and you have to ask - if the tiedown / wing hadn't failed, would it have overturned the whole vehicle and injured the occupants, like a van blown over on the Severn bridge?

For those new to demountable campers, I don't consider this as something to be worried about - providing you have an adequate tie-down system (i.e. not just some bailer twine). I rate the biggest risk by far as accidentally hitting something when driving with the camper on because you fail to judge correctly how much wider and taller the camper is than the truck.

Steve.