How to Inspect a Used Pop-Up Camper

what's up guys it's simon from lakehub today we're talking about buying a used pop-up camper i'm going to show you exactly the things the methods that i use my priorities for inspecting a used pop-up camper i have my second camper now that we're on our second camper bought and sold our first one bought our second one and we're actually on the market for a third my very first camper was a total fixer-upper we completely raised and removed the roof removed the air conditioner completely rebuilt the roof and so i know what a roof looks like on the inside and this was an aluminum skinned roof that we did just like this one right here so i've got a lot of experience with what's going on inside a pop-up camper a lot of repairs that we've done and uh i'm gonna share with you a couple tips too especially one hanging around to the end because i've got one tip for how to upgrade your pop-up camper for free [Music] all right the first spot to look is the roof so there are three types of roofing materials that i've seen in pop-up campers you're going to have aluminum skin like this this is a single sheet because it's a small box this is a small camper otherwise there would be a seam right here in the middle and it'd be made from two sheets of aluminum and then they wrap over the end boards like this and um that's a pretty that's pretty good material there's also fiberglass those are tend to be like just flat sheets and a little more of a boxy construction and so you'll have a trim piece right here it's just more you know the trim the trim is a place to fail so more trim more places to fail then the third style i see this a lot on used coleman campers coleman brand is abs plastic and those are going to be no trim it's going to be like all smooth corners looks really rounded and those are fine until they start to crack and they almost always start to crack in the corners in fact no matter what material it is the corners end up being the first place to get compromised so you see we have like all this aluminum trim right here and then we have plastic corner caps you can get replacement caps you can get these on online you can get these on amazon or camping world you can also get them direct from the factory factory replacements um there's boards joined underneath the skin underneath the aluminum skin there's boards joined with a bracket you can see that once you pop it up a little bit and stick your head behind and then it's just you know puttied up like crazy with waterproof putty and then um and then cocked you know kind of around that around the outside or it's on the inside but around the outside of the joint it's cocked up and then the cap is placed on top and screwed in if this this cap has been cracked if the seal has cracked at any point in time and then rain gotten in then that's a place for water to get into the end boards and start to rot from the inside out that's a problem area that means you need to start to take the roof apart and repair it i've done that job it is a total headache don't do that job if it's got fresh that means that it's been well cared for and that kind of sets your mind at ease a little bit if everything is is sealed up and tight no cracks or gaps you can see this one um you know it's it's it's it's clear but it's like right on top of the old stuff so the best the best method is to cut and peel off the old stuff like what's been done right here and then completely fresh re-cock it so you would just want to inspect the trim all the way around and make sure that it's fresh trim and that you know nothing has been left unsealed for any amount of time you'll want to look at the ac unit this one's nice and flat if you look at it from the side you can see that there's no sagging or bowing so that's good that tells me that the frame is has remained dry since day one and um and then look for any you know puck marks um holes that have been patched up from hail if this thing's been in a hail storm then it's it's just gonna be trouble it's gonna be trouble it's gonna be never ending trouble you're always going to be patching holes so keep that in mind if you see any holes patching on the top that means hail and that means that you're just going to be chasing those forever so that might be a deal breaker for you but that's where you start you always start the roof before it's popped up so we have the lift system here make sure that you're leveled on all four corners before you start lifting up otherwise one corner is going to do a lot more work than it has to and uh it's there's not a lot to it you know it's a cable pulley you know winch type of system and it works until the cable breaks if the cable breaks then you've got some bad news you know but um but otherwise they'll they'll last a really long time so what you want to do is just put eyeballs on the cable itself check for any fraying if there's fraying then that's bad news that means it has been maintained and it's it's wearing out so that could give you some trouble actually touch it if it's greased up then that means it's been well maintained or it's just not that used you know if it's been just been straight from the factory to a garage then that might be the case too uh so if it's greased up then that also means it's gonna be all quieter open because uh from time to time as it's spooling up on on the winch it'll double up the cable will double up on itself and then it'll shift over and settle back in so you might hear a loud like pop coming right from here when you're cranking up or down usually when you're cranking up if that happens that's normal that's totally normal but if it's a super loud one it sounds just bad it sounds really really bad but just know that if it's greased up well then that tends to happen a little bit less have it up a couple feet you have enough room to be able to kind of stick your head up and up inside here and take a look stop and do that inspect the end boards these boards right here will run the length of each end um if if that's the way it's built at least for you know aluminum and fiberglass that's going to be the case and then you'll be able to get a visual inspection of the corner that is nice and dry no rot that looks beautiful so this tells me there hasn't been any damage into the corner which is good so put eyeballs on each corner from the inside and that'll tell you the true history of what's been going on here if that looks like it's been replaced well that's you know some more questions to ask you can also see that there's you know been kind of a mess here in this in the top of the canvas this is super common this is very common in old campers because of this seal so once the seal starts to get hard like it is right now this is called the bulb seal you can replace this you contact the factory and they sell it to you by the foot um and it's it's kind of a pain to replace but it's that's a good move every now and then so that you can prevent this but this really is not when i get to talking about canvas i'll talk about mildew and this is not what i'm talking about this is pretty pretty darn normal this is just from sitting and moisture getting underneath the seal say on the road the front ones usually looks worse than the back one too the tip about checking the corners from the inside you're not gonna hear that anywhere else right here leg hub that's the kind of info you get give me a little one of these simon what's a likey all right once everything's popped up you're going to be inspecting the canvas that's the next thing you're going to be looking for three things you're going to be looking for perforations like holes or rips tears you're going to be looking stains and you're going to be looking for mildew mildew is an indication that it was packed down when it was wet and if there's mildew on the canvas then there's probably mildew you know up inside the edges of the ceiling and could be other other problems going on it could be you know in the furniture and all all other kinds of stuff that that's gonna that's an indication of other nasty things that you're gonna have to deal with possibly the rips and holes are they there are patch kits there's like tape and patch kits and stuff um if it if they're small not a big deal patch them up and it'll hold i've had to do that before if they're big and it's like a catastrophic perforation then you you really want to rethink this because this is an eight foot box this canvas starts at twelve hundred dollars used and um and that's a factory replacement and i wouldn't go any other way on on replacing the canvas on a pop-up so 1200 on up from there so you could be in for a couple thousand dollars if you're looking at a bigger pop-up camper on replacing the canvas it's also it's a job i mean it's for a do-it-yourselfer it's not terrible but um you just have to work slow and careful and it and there's about a million screws holding this thing together so if you see stains on the canvas that's indication that there has been a water leak in the past when it was packed down so there's if it's not leaking anymore then it's been repaired and that could be a weak spot so any stains at all for me personally that's a deal breaker i'm out i don't need any more projects in my life i've done that before but if you're up for it just know that if you see stains on the canvas that means there has been a leak before in the ceiling so something to look for and something to be very very wary of all right once everything's popped up and you're inside now you can start pushing around on the ceiling check check the entire ceiling one place is around the air conditioner so if even if you didn't notice any sagging from the outside you'll still want to push around it this is going to be framed in there'll be two cross members going all the way across the roof this way and then two short support pieces right here a 14 inch opening and sometimes um if you can if you could what's the best way the best way to check the air conditioner and check the ceiling around the air conditioner is to take this panel off and then you'll be able to see and reach up in there because sometimes the gasket if you the gasket's universal and it starts really fat and it gets compressed down with the weight and if it's done unevenly sometimes it just takes a little bit to settle in and needs to be readjusted the condensate from the roof can in the air conditioner is just like dumping condensate onto the roof and it spills off it could spill back inside so it's possible to have you know a little bit of water damage around this frame but honestly if it's like this this is really solid there's no there aren't any soft spots at all it's not giving at all and so this is a pretty good ceiling you can tell from the inside also the corners make sure you're checking the corners again those are going to be the weak spots right around the air conditioner and then around the corner in the corners so you're pushing on that you're pushing if there's any spot that gives at all anywhere it's time to investigate okay same thing with the floor so same thing with the floor you're going to be going into the corners into the cabinets right the corners are all going to be cabinets of some type because that's actually part of the structure of the body the cabinets hold the walls up on a pop-up camper so all the corners are always going to be um inside of some type of cabinet or something so get in there push down on the corners and make sure that there are any soft spots of course you can you can kind of walk back and forth too uh but it's it's from my experience it's been pretty rare that there's like a soft spot right in the middle of the floor and that's just not really where the damage comes from it's always going to come from the edges it's going to be water leaking into the edges of the floor and then rotting it from there so ceiling and floor so you want to make sure that you're going to be testing all the appliances too that's that's going to be gas and electric both for instance the air conditioner for my money that's the most important one now even that's not a deal breaker if it works not very well but even the old ones even the old ones work really well but let's say it just doesn't it just doesn't work very well it doesn't get very cold well there's like four bolts that are holding you take a couple screws out to get this whole control plate off and there's four bolts holding it on inside of the opening of the roof it's universal it's like a 14 inch hole and they're all the same they sit on top and just sandwich and so they're really easy to replace and they're they're available all over the place they're like 350 brand new so keep that in mind if you need to bring the price of the camper down to accommodate for a new air conditioner you can also keep keep in mind that you can find them for at least in my area for about 150 bucks used so there's there's all you know pop-ups have a tendency to get trashed when they're left alone um but the air conditioning would still be good so people will part them out and you know you can find one um they're really not that hard to replace a little elbow grease goes a long way so other accessories and appliances you might want to try are the water although i will also tell you that they're not great they're just camper sinks are just not amazing and pop-ups are like the cheapest campers right so in our case we don't have hot water in this camper we've got one handle for the tank there's a there's a tank that we can fill up and then one handle for city water so pressurized city water that we can hook up straight you know up with a hose from a from a spigot straight into the camper and then use that in the drain it just goes straight outside so we have a hose we hook up for that if we're in an area where draining is not okay then you know you need like a gray water container the appliances in a pop-up are not that amazing um okay i'm gonna be real they suck they're not useful they're not useful we totally live out of a cooler this little fridge right here you know on paper this little fridge is great it's full of stuff right now because that's about as useful as it is it's a traveling storage unit it's a cabinet because it's so bad at keeping food cold this is it like a barely a drink cooler i don't even know if it's worthy of putting beer in this is more like a gatorade cooler or a high c cooler it runs on propane it runs on battery it runs on you know 110 but it doesn't matter no matter what what's powering it it just doesn't get that cold it's not made to get that cold it's a little tiny little camper fridge right it's not even a dorm fridge it's a little camper fridge so there's there's a couple gas appliances in here too there's a propane stove that hooks up to the outside right outside the door here some campers are big enough to have a stove on the inside but that kind of freaks me out i mean you know if you're cooking inside of a tent you know you just keep that in mind like this isn't this is not a hard walled camper um there's like gonna be grease popping up on your curtains and stuff that's i don't know that's not a great situation i like cooking outside even if the weather's bad pop up a tent um like a like a canopy tent type of deal and cook underneath that uh we do have we do have the stove that goes outside and it's okay it's it works fine uh it's convenient it goes under the awning you know so there's there's plenty of draft back and forth and the heat doesn't you know get all the way up to the awning it's just the burners are small so you can really only fit one thing at a time on there so it's semi-useful this one has a propane furnace down below here and we only use that like in in case of emergency if it's like super super cold then we'll use that otherwise uh we have if we have electric we have a little tiny space heater like the smallest space heater that they make fills the space up really really well our old camper had um an electric furnace up here and that was nice because it really doesn't take a lot of heat it was like this really low wattage um coil and uh in a fan and it was pretty simple um at first it doesn't feel like there's any heat coming out but then after running it for an hour it fills the space and then just keeps it keeps it cool or keeps it warm all night we also have um a nice exhaust fan which which can be good for kind of circulating the air that runs um you know that runs off electric test all the lights and um if there are any problems i'll tell you almost all the stuff is pretty easy easily replaceable the fridge the fridge is pretty hard to replace and anything gas is more difficult to replace than the electric stuff the lights like light fixtures and things like that i mean you can get those on amazon you can get those at camping world all over the place sometimes even like rural walmart's will have those northern tool so a lot of that stuff all the widgets and stuff like that are pretty easily replaceable with a couple screws and unplug and replug or you know quick quick twist of a couple wires so uh yeah test all the electrical all right here's the gear that i want you to bring with you when you're checking out a used pop-up camper that you want to buy first and foremost really important is this converter these are inexpensive this is a worthy insurance policy for you because i've checked out pop pop-ups before we didn't have this and we couldn't plug in because the cord couldn't reach you know like the dryer room this is like a you know 30 amp or a dedicated circuit if it was inside your house type of type of deal so to a regular edison plug converter take that with you so there are no excuses for hooking up also just for a little extra insurance extension cord if you bring those two things you make sure to meet the owner at their house not like some neutral location you know normally you know buying used stuff it's a little bit safer to meet in a public space but in this case wherever you meet make sure that there's power and to guarantee that just meet them at their at their house and if you bring these two things you know for sure that your destiny is in your control you can hook everything up and test the appliances the other two things are a headlamp and a flashlight both you're going to want both just so that you can you know crawl underneath and give give things a good look around it might be dark when you pop things up you know depending on the type of weather that day if it's super cloudy or whatever until you have it hooked up you're going to want some extra light so those are the four things to bring with you when you're checking out pop-up keeper you can look at wheels bearings too but i'm gonna tell you for my money that is really low on my list of priorities i know other folks you know the first thing when you're looking at any sort of trailer is to inspect the wheels and bearings look at the tires see if they're expired you know drive it around check the hub and feel if it's hot that means the bearings haven't been taken care of but again for my money these are cheap and easy you know repairs fixes uh maintenance tires are not that expensive we're talking about two tires here i've got like highway speed highway speed rated uh you know appropriately sized tires and i think it was like 120 out the door for peace of mind i do that when i buy a new camper i don't care i don't care what the date stamp is on the old tires i don't care what the tread is i replace them with brand new ones and then i sell the old ones used for about twenty thirty dollars a piece anyway so it's a cheap upgrade and it's definitely worth doing i also pack my bearings that's a pretty simple job and i do that because i put a lot of miles like you know we're going on road trips you know thousands of miles at a time and i'm not taking any chances the reason why i'm not as worried about wheels and bearings and suspension and all that kind of stuff is because this stuff you could you could completely replace this stuff you know i don't know if you have a northern tool in your area we've got northern tool that store has everything you need to replace everything below and forward of the frame i mean the entire tongue and jack and everything leaf springs axles i could do all that stuff in my garage and it's like unbolting and bolting back on it's really not complicated and so because of all that none of this stuff is a deal breaker i'll take it as it is no matter what you know maybe i'll use it to negotiate price if if they're just completely just trash dry rotted and terrible shape then i know that you know it's worth replacing for 120 bucks but otherwise not that big of a concern all right here's your tactic to upgrade your camper for free if you have a used camper and you're looking to upgrade with another used camper but you want to size up this is this is what i did i actually didn't size up but we got about 10 years newer here's how you do it if you can swing it you keep you buy your camper in the dead of winter and you keep two campers if you can swing if you've got the money if you've got the space to do it then sell your camper your old one when it gets warm when it's camping season again when the trees start to bloom like they are right now it's warm it's sunny it's beautiful everybody has camping on the mind in january and february you know it's it's post christmas everybody spent their money it's dead cold nobody's going outside you're thinking man i've got this camper i've got it in storage i'm going to put it on the market i've been wanting to sell it anyway that is the time to buy a camper so we sold the same size this is it was our old fixer-upper camper got almost 10 years newer a couple a couple more cool you know amenities and stuff that we wanted and it was a hundred dollars it was a hundred dollars difference with this technique of selling when it's warm and buying when it's super cold there you go that's it everybody i hope this was helpful to you get out there and get camping don't miss out on my essential gear for camping video talk to you soon

Channel: LakeHub

Views: 125,912

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Id: X16dDVjv0qI

Length: 23min 0sec (1380 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021