Our Sweet "Bump" RV - 1971 Ford Scamper

July 14, 2011

I subscribe to the Amherst Buy and Sell Facebook Group, and I see things for sale posted in my news feed all the time but never pay much attention to it.  On July 13, 2011, I saw a beautiful old RV listed for sale and after I read the ad, I hollered excitedly to Jeff and told him to go on the Amherst Buy and Sell site right now and look at the RV for sale.

The funny thing is, other than stating to each other that we were getting tired of tenting and our tenting days were soon over, we had never ever discussed buying an RV.  However on this day it seemed that we were reading each other's minds as we never even discussed it...Jeff got on the phone right away and called the number in the ad and made plans to see it the next day.

On our way there, I told Jeff I was half expecting it to smell like mold and mildew being that it was a 1971 model and probably had leaks.  However we were pleasantly surprised - it didn't smell at all.  We just loved the camper, took it for a test drive and fell in love with it even more.

It is a 1971 Scamper, built on a Ford F350 chassis cab truck with a walk-through (cutaway) from the camper to the cab of the truck.  These campers were made by Pre-Built Mfg. in Lethbridge, Alberta.  The truck had 115,000 miles on it.

Below is a video of the previous owners showing us around the Scamper, and us taking it for a test drive.

So after the test drive, Jeff and I both loved it and wanted it.  Even though the interior of the camper really needed some freshening up, I was already having visions on how I was going to add my personal touch to it and make it "ours".  So after some negotiating on the price, it was a done deal and we drove her home!

After we got it home, I took some pics of the interior.  

There was a double air mattress in the cab-over bunk.  I found it extremely uncomfortable and I would never get any sleep when I slept on it.  We remedied that last summer (2012).  I had two single self-inflatable air mattresses - very thin but good insulation factor.  I put those on the floor of the bunk, side by side, as a base.  Then I bought two 1.5" memory foam toppers at Wal-Mart and put those on top of the air mattresses.  That made the biggest difference in the world!  I sleep like a log now and I think that bunk is even more comfortable than our own bed.

The kitchen is fully equipped, with propane appliances (fridge, stove and oven) and they all work.  It has a Hydroflame radiant heat furnace, which is vented to the outside to both draw in fresh air for combustion and also to vent the exhaust gasses outside.  I started the furnace up and it works great.  We have a CO detector and I ran the furnace for 3 hours with the detector inside, and checked it every half hour to make sure it was working right and that the detector didn't go off.  The furnace worked perfectly, and the CO detector never went off.  To be extra safe before we ever use this heater I would like to get a propane detector too.  We like to boondock camp (not in campgrounds) so this type of furnace is perfect for this type of camping.  The furnace uses no electricity whatsoever, so it will not run down the house battery.

This is a heater for using when the truck is running.  There are hoses that run from the engine to this little radiator.  It works too.

I had lots of ideas on what I wanted to do with the interior.  Below is a list of everything we did:

• We primed and painted all the wall paneling, the fridge, the drawer fronts and cabinet doors on the right side.
• My mom helped me mactac the kitchen cupboard panels with a dark brown checkerboard-type mactac.
• I painted the bench by the door and the outer panels of the dinette benches dark brown.
• I made new curtains for all the windows.  Jeff and I went to the fabric store and picked out the material together.  We chose a dark brown checkerboard type of material, and I lined the backs of the curtains with white thermal backing.  This helps keep the heat out in the summer, and keeps the heat in when it's cold outside.
• I also made new covers for the all the bench cushions.  Jeff helped me pick out that fabric too.  We found a nice fabric on sale that had dark brown stripes to match the curtains and beige stripes to match the walls, and it also has pale yellowish-green stripes that match the table and counter-top.  It complemented the decor perfectly!
• The final touches for the interior were some fake plants (velcroed to the shelf), a rug outside the bathroom door, and new bedding that matched the rest of the decor.

Below are the "after" pics once all our decorating was done.  The one thing we wanted to do but never got around to it yet is replace the vinyl floor tiles with new ones that match the new decor.  We might work on that this summer.

One problem we encountered after our second trip in the Scamper was the dump valve.  It broke, but luckily it broke AFTER the black tank had been dumped and rinsed.  I am on a vintage RV forum and I posted on there asking if anyone knew where I could get a dump valve like this.  Everyone who responded said they were obsolete and I would never find one.  I then got in touch with a gentlemen who used to build Scampers, and I sent him some pics of the old dump valve and asked him how I go about replacing it.  He wrote me back and said "my God, I haven't seen one of those in about 30 years."  He was very surprised that it still functioned up until our last trip.  So he told me which dump valve I should buy, and gave me detailed instructions on how to install it.  The dump valve I was supposed to get had an elbow at the end which angled downwards.  However the RV dealer ordered in the wrong one (a straight one, with no elbow) and I said the hell with it I'm not waiting two weeks for another one so we put this one on anyway.  The downside is it's a bit more difficult to hook on the sewer hose.

This is the old dump valve:

And this is the new one.  We've used it many times and it works great.

Below are the specs on the chassis of the truck.  It's a Ford F350 dually, with a 390 FE engine.  It has an Autolite 2100 carb (which currently needs replacing).  It has a Dana 70 rear-end.

I was doing some searching on the internet about Scampers, and I found this brochure.  This brochure is for a 1970 model and ours is a '71, but they're pretty much identical.  The interior layout is a bit different.  However it was great finding this brochure as it gave all the specs of the camper such as it's tank capacities, length, height, construction, etc.

Below is the truck's owner's manual compared to our 2011 Hyundai Elantra's.  Quite a difference!

The spare tire under the camper was in really bad shape - we'd never be able to use it so we bought a good used one last year.

The truck was painted about ten years ago, and the painter sprayed over the emblems.  I've read that the emblems can be very brittle and difficult to get off without breaking them on vehicles this old, so that is probably why the decision was made to paint over them.  I bought some chrome-coloured paint and black paint, and used one of my artist's brushes to hand paint the emblems to make them look better than they were.

This is Jeff changing the oil.  Look at the door of the truck...these old Ford trucks are known as "bumpsides" or "bumps" because of the raised ridge on the sides of the truck.  Only the 1967-1972 era Ford trucks have these "bumps."

Our neighbour just happened to have a 1971 license plate in his shed and he gave it to us.  I love having the vintage plate on the truck and think it really suits it.

Jeff really wanted to get a set of half-moon headlight covers for the truck, so we ordered these off Ebay last summer.  I think they really suit the truck!

I love old stuff, and I had this little washboard in the basement.  I thought it would be a great thing to keep in the camper. It is velcroed to the wall (in a house on wheels velcro is your friend!).  I figured if we ever ran out of underwear while on a trip at least we've have a way to wash them. lol

Another thing we wanted to do to the truck was spruce up the engine a bit.  I degreased the engine with engine cleaner, then we wanted to paint the air cleaner and valve covers.  Here is what the engine looked like before:

First we cleaned up the air cleaner with a wire wheel and got all the rust and old paint off it.  Then Jeff sprayed it with Dark Ford Blue engine enamel.

I ordered a new air cleaner decal for it, and here is the finished air cleaner back on the engine.  We didn't do the valve covers this year as that's a pretty big job we weren't ready to tackle yet.

People kept asking us if we had named the camper yet, and we hadn't...we figured let's just use it and maybe one day a name will come to us.  Well the name did come to us on the Margaree River last summer.  We were salmon fishing and I said to Jeff we should name the camper "Shady Lady".  A Shady Lady is a type of salmon fly.  We got our friend to make us up some "Shady Lady" decals for her and here they are installed:

And lastly, below are some pics of her in action:

Every year the son of the camper's prior owner lets us store it in the garage where it has slept every winter for the past 12 years.

Here is a short video of her coming out of winter hibernation last year.  Jeff pumped the gas pedal a bunch of times and after cranking it for about ten seconds she started right up.

In spring of 2015 we replaced some sections of floorboard and put new sticky tiles down:

Below are links to all of my posts about the Scamper:

Scamper Floor Repair and Floor Covering Replacement

1971 Scamper Upgrades - Propane Regulator and Norcold N300.3 Fridge Install

RV Maintenance - Propane System

RV Maintenance - Appliances

RV Maintenance - Caulking, Vinyl Trim Inserts, Rubber Roof Coating

RV Maintenance - How to Winterize Your RV

RV Maintenance - How to De-Winterize Your RV and Sanitize the Fresh Water System

1971 Scamper Upgrades - Electrical

1971 Scamper Engine Upgrades

Jeep Stuck in Quicksand

It is September 27, 2008, and Jeff came up from the valley.  We wanted to pre-run a trail as the Jeep Club was coming up the next day for a run here and we wanted to make sure there were no trees down or anything.  One of the cardinal rules of Jeeping is to never go alone.  And just because Jeff and I were together in one Jeep, that still constitutes Jeeping alone (without another vehicle along).  However the last time I ran this trail was in the summer, and everything was quite dried out so I told him there was nothing we would encounter back here that could get us into trouble.  It's a really beautiful trail, and it was a beautiful warm fall day.

However, there had been some significant rain recently.  There was mud, and quicksand.  I'm sure you can tell where this is going....and there will be a moral to this story at the end!

It did start out as a dry trail...

About 20 mins into the trail we encountered some water, but it was hard-bottomed so it was no problem even for my stock Jeep.

There were also some washouts to give me a little bit of a challenge.

Then, disaster strikes.  I entered the next puddle, which was NOT hard bottomed and I didn't get very far before I lost traction.  I tried backing up but then realized I was starting to sink.  I was stuck.  Jeff and I got out and assessed the situation. I always carry boards in my Jeep to use as a base for the jack, so I thought let's try jacking it up then maybe we can put some brush under the wheels for traction.  So we jacked it up, but it was a losing battle.  As I jacked, bubbles were gurgling up from the mud, and our feet were sinking, as was the jack and the Jeep.  The mud was actually fine sand.  The bubbles kept bubbling until the Jeep was actually sitting on its belly.

So....on to Plan B.

Unfortunately I did not have a winch, but did have a recovery strap.  We tried tying one end of the strap to a tree, and the other end to the back wheel of the Jeep.  Then we put it in gear and gave it a bit of gas to spin the rear wheel slowly, which tightened up the strap as it twisted.  The hope was that with the continual twisting of the strap, it would get shorter and shorter and actually pull the Jeep sideways out of its hole.  It actually did start to work, and the Jeep started to move sideways, but then the strap broke with an incredible bang that sounded like a gunshot!  Oh well, so much for that idea.  We didn't have cell phone service deep in the woods, so we had to walk a couple of kilometers before we got service.  Once we got service, we called a friend to come and get us.  It was about another 2kms of walking before we got to the logging road where our friend was picking us up.

The walk of shame. lol

It was getting dark out and we were starting to get nervous about the local wildlife, of which there was lots of evidence of them being on our trail very recently - coyote and bear tracks, and pretty fresh too!  Thank God we made it out without running into any.

So, the moral of the story is:  Never wheel alone.

However, everyone does at some point and sometimes we just enjoy going to the woods by ourselves.  So if you would rather go alone, make sure you have a winch or at least a come-along, and it would also be good if you had a friend you could call who could actually come in and rescue you.

The next day a bunch of people from the North Nova Chapter of the Nova Scotia Jeep Club came up for a run and they extricated my Jeep for me.  As we approached my Jeep we were so happy to see it still intact, as we were worried that a bear might have tore the soft top open and ransacked the interior looking for the cereal bars that I had forgotten in the Jeep.

And this is just the beginning of many more Jeeping adventures to come with Jeff and I. :)

Tundra Buggy Trip to See Polar Bears, Churchill, Manitoba (October 2006)

In 2006 I spent some time in Manitoba with my ex-boyfriend who was working there doing bird surveys. One of the time periods we were going to be there was in late fall, which was perfect timing for the polar bear migration in Churchill.  In October and November, the polar bears leave their summer habitat and gather here waiting for the pack ice to form on the Hudson Bay so they can go out on the ice and hunt for Ringed Seals, their favorite meal.   We decided to book a one-day package tour with Heartland International Travel & Tours. The tour we booked was on October 28, 2006, and included the flight from Winnipeg to Churchill, the bus to the Tundra Buggy launch site, all day on the Tundra Buggy, and supper in a restaurant after the tour. 

Our day began around 7:00 am, when we boarded the small plane for Churchill. We took off while it was still dark, and got to see a beautiful sunrise while in the air.  This was the smallest plane I've ever been on.

As we flew north you could see the landscape changing into a vast wilderness area that had a lot of partially frozen lakes and light snow cover.  I was video-taping this scenery, and unfortunately didn't get any still photos other than this one but we were above some clouds at this point. 

After about a 2 1/2 hour flight, we landed in Churchill. On the descent, we saw 7 moose and 3 polar bears - so the trip was off to a good start! 

The weather was overcast with light flurries.  After getting off the plane, we noticed a camera crew and soon found out that Al Roker from NBC's Today Show was just getting off of another plane and that he would be on a Tundra Buggy today as well, but he was with a different tour company so he wouldn't be on our buggy. After the trip was over we heard about the show Al Roker did on the Churchill Polar Bears.  Here is the YouTube link for the show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dtGOvPRv0_4#t=145

We next boarded a bus which took us out to the Tundra Buggy Launch site.  This was our buggy:

We boarded the buggy and sat in the very back. We wanted to have close access to the back door where you could go out on a viewing platform to photograph the bears.  There was also a little fireplace in the back.

The Tundra Buggy headed out on the trail and the first interesting sighting we came across was a flock of Willow Ptarmigan, which was a lifer bird for me.  Al Roker called them "Artic Chickens". lol

The next cool critter we saw was an Artic Fox. We actually ended up seeing two Arctic Foxes on this trip, which was a real bonus. 

Our driver, Mark, would turn the buggy's engine off each time we stopped which the photographers really appreciated. The next sighting was a Snowy Owl, and we also saw many flocks of Snow Buntings all throughout the day. This is one of them:

The buggy felt like it had giant marshmallows for tires.  It bobbed and bounced along on its big tires.  The large wide tires prevent damage to the delicate tundra.  

Then we finally started seeing polar bears. The first couple of bears we saw were a fair distance away so we didn't spend much time observing those ones.  The driver knew there were much better viewing opportunities up ahead. When we got near one of the Tundra Buggy lodges we started to see a lot of bears, and at fairly close range. I was very excited when we saw our first bear, even though it was at quite a distance. 

And another one:

Looking down at the ground I saw a huge paw print:

Finally when I got to see the bears up close, I was just beside myself with excitement and couldn't believe I was actually here with these beautiful, magnificent creatures. I didn't know whether to video or shoot stills. My camera ended up winning, as I gave still photos higher priority than video. Only after I was satisfied with the shots would I switch to the camcorder. I think a large zoom lens was the best tool for this trip (I had a Sigma 170-500mm on my Nikon D70) because it allowed me to adjust my focal length as the bears moved towards or away from me. Many of the photographs I took were frame-filling images, many at focal lengths less than 500mm.  

A lot of the bears were just lying around, waiting for the ice to freeze.

It was quite exciting whenever one stood up or walked around.  They looked so slow, lazy and gentle...but I know they would eat you in a heartbeat if given the chance.  They are hungry - and they've been known to cannibalize their own cubs.

At one point while we were viewing a bear the driver pulled over to the side of the trail to park and turned off the engine. The buggy was on a slight tilt to the left. Once it stopped, everyone rushed over to the left side windows to look at the bear, and the buggy's suspension compressed and tipped it sharply to the left and it felt as though it was going to flip right over! People immediately ran back to the right when they felt it tip so it balanced itself out again. Gave me a bit of a scare there for a minute though.  Tipping over in Polar Bear country would not be a good thing!

So after that heart-racing moment, onward we go.

In the top right of the picture above you can see the Tundra Lodge.  This is another kind of tour you can experience (if you have lots of money).  It is a mobile lodge.  You are are driven out to the lodge on a Tundra Buggy and you can spend days at the lodge, sleeping out on the Tundra with the bears.  Below are more pics of the lodge:

Later in the afternoon the sun peeked out from the clouds and created the most amazing light; and the bears I was photographing were on the right side of the light - what luck. 

There is a sad reality about these polar bears. Global warming is causing the sea ice to break up earlier every year, which gives the polar bears less time on the ice to feed (their main source of food being ringed seals), and more time on land in "walking hibernation". The Hudson Bay polar bears are unique in that they become landlocked for a few months of the year. During that time their weight drops significantly. If global warming continues and the ice breaks up earlier and earlier every year, one day the polar bears may starve to death. Today the effects of the early ice break-up due to global warming are causing declining weight in both male and female bears, and female bears are having fewer cubs, and the bears are actually cannibalizing their own cubs. Since the sea ice season is the shortest in Hudson Bay of all the regions of the Arctic Ocean, these bears' survival is threatened as they are likely to be among the first to be affected by sea ice decline. 

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, and it was time to head back. However on the way back we were all treated to great looks at an Arctic Hare, who sat there cleaning his foot while we watched and took pictures. 

When we got back to town, we were taken to a restaurant for supper.  I had Arctic Char and it was delicious. After supper we were given a half hour to shop for souvenirs in a gift shop close by, and the store was crammed like sardines with all the people from the tour.  A half hour isn't much time, and there was so much to look at.  I really wish we had more time. 

It was dark when we boarded the plane for our return flight to Winnipeg. To top off a incredible day, we had a fantastic display of northern lights from the plane. What a great way to end the day! 

I met some really wonderful people on this tour, and hope to do this trip again someday. Many thanks to Don Finkbeiner of Heartland Travel, the trip organizer, for offering a one-day tour which made this long time dream of mine an affordable reality. The book provided to all participants at the end of the tour was a real nice bonus that we weren't expecting.