I bought a 1994 Jayco 1208 popup camper at the beginning of last spring for ~$2,000. The guy we bought it from kind of screwed us over. When we went to look at it, it was popped up. When I went to buy it, it was in the down position. Me being a naive first time popup buyer, didn't think to have him crank it up or down to make sure it was in working order.
You guessed it. We got it home, and one of the cables is broken. The left rear corner doesn't go up. So, the solution was that I would crank it while my boyfriend pushed up the bad corner and propped it up with a 2x2. This seemed to work fine. What I didn't realize is that was putting extra strain on the other three corners.
Which brings me to my sad story from this past weekend. We went camping for the weekend, and when we tried to crank it down, the RIGHT rear corner would NOT budge. It was stuck in the up position. We tried everything. We tried to get this thing to budge or close to 2 hours in the rain. We were at a rustic campground in the middle of nowhere. Finally, out of desperation, my boyfriend took a giant log and just whacked the bar until it snapped in half, and we could get it cranked down and towed back home.
So, normally I would just trash the camper and cut my losses. But, here's the thing that is making me hesitate. I spent the majority of the spring completely renovating the camper.
Here is an album I made detailing the renovation. In retrospect, I realize that the time spent renovating would have been better spent fixing the pulley system.
Should I bother trying to salvage it? We are both very handy. But if it's not worth it, it's not worth it.
I would need to replace the right rear support bar, and redo the entire pulley system. The top could probably use some TLC too. I think there is some rot in there.
This is not the first place I posted this, but someone told me to come here. So far, the consensus is that I should try to repair it. The big thing is - am I even going to be able to source that corner support bar?
Give it to me straight folks.
Thanks