Bud777

The Campanche now lives in the outer banks in North Carolina. I gave it to my nephew who needed it more then I did. It was a wonderful rig and gave us many happy memories. I just had a feeling that it had more work to do.

Lovely bride and I were thinking about taking the rig down to Baja to watch whales and naturally I started thinking about flats. That led to looking closer at the jack supplied with the rig. As far as I can tell it is the stock comanche bottle jack. It actually isn't a bad way to go, but I cannot find anything about the rating. 2-ton? 4-ton? more? I think the conversion probably brings the GVW up close to 4 tons, maybe a little over. Does anyone know the actual rating of the OEM jack? I can get a higher capacity jack, but the all have the pump levers, not the screws handle. With the duallys, there would not be much travel for the handle. Has anyone seen a larger capacity bottle jack with a screw type mechanism? I am hesitant to do the trip without the ability to change tires easily. Spending the night on the side of the road in Baja doesn't seem to be a good idea.

I was looking for a way to have compressed air for an exhaust jack or for re-inflating tires and I had an crazy idea. Maybe everyone has already been doing this, but I wondered what would happen if i took an air hose and added fittings so that one end could go into a spark plug hole and the other end would fit on the tire or exhaust jack. Then I could run the engine with one cylinder missing and use that as an air compressor. This sounds too simple to work, what do you think? Hmmmmmm, on second thought, maybe it is not a good idea to pump the tires full of a combustible air/fuel mixture. Other than that, great idea :)

I will try to get some pictures for you when it drys out a little. Ben posted some on one of the Jeep forums. Here is the link to those pictures: http://comancheclub.com/topic/36044-the-campmanche/

We took the camper out for a shakedown trip last week. I thought you might like some pictures. The idea was to take it easy and just learn things like, what else we needed for extended trips, how far we could comfortably cover in a day, how fast we used different tank capacities and just generally learn how to use it. We live in Portland Oregon, so we decided to take it from the northwest corner of the state to the extreme southeast corner. It was a round trip of about 1400 miles. If you are not familiar with eastern Oregon, it is vastly different from the tall firs and constant rain usually associated with our state. This is high desert, the northern edge of the Great Basin. The mountains are fault block uplift, but there is also a lot of volcanic activity. It is remote, empty and pretty amazing. Think of it as the Nevada desert, only fewer people. Our first night was in a primitive campground at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge which is usually a great place for bird watching. We seemed to miss them this year, so we moved on to a desolate area of craters and lava flows. This was about 8 miles down a dirt road. The next day we went around the Steens mountains to the north and headed to the Alvord desert on the eastern side of the mountains. They looked like this: We camped below them for a night and then set out to find some hot springs. Nothing is marked, so we went down some wrong turns like this before finding them The hot springs were great and hard to leave. By this time, we were getting used to the camper, everything was working well, and our only concern was running out of gas. 100 miles between service stations is not unusual, and even then, they may be out of business. Returning from the hot springs, we headed directly toward the mountains and got this view Leaving the mountains, we headed further east, almost to the Idaho border. There, a gravel road goes for about 50 miles to a canyon called Leslie Gulch. This is seldom visited, but i think it can stand up to Bryce or Arches for what it offers. After an approach that takes you slowly up to the edge of the plateau, the road drops about 3000 feet in 7 miles through a canyon. Here is the view out the windshield... and a stop for a hike on the way down The climb out the next day was just as beautiful. The rig climbed out easily, although 40 mph was about the best we could do. After leaving the canyon, we followed a rough track north another 50 miles. This lead us through an amazing little canyon called Succor creek As we were headed up this road, my wife reached for the binoculars and examines the road ahead. She said, "Well, damn!". I said, "What?" She said, "Pavement" That about sums up the trip. We were just enchanted at the scenery and delighted with the rig. There are a few little things to be done, but it does everything we hoped it would. It give us access to places we would not attempt in a normal RV, allows us to travel with the two dogs, and doesn't break the bank on gas. We averaged 14.9 mpg over the entire 1400 miles with a high of 18.2 and a low of 12.8. You can cruise at 55, but much abovet that things start to get a little loose. My only real concern is the range. I believe we have the 18 gallon tank, so we have an effective range of about 250 miles. That is workable, but 400 would be a lot better. I bought a couple of 5 gallon gas cans that we will add to the rear bumper or carry on the roof. I think you can see one of them in the pictures. The plan now is to add all the little things we found and head to Monument Valley next week. I am not thinking about any major modifications for a while. I wouldn't mind replacing the gauge cluster to add a tach and real gauges. And a rear view camera would probably make things safer, but that is about it for now.

Hi I am new to the forum and wanted to introduce myself. My wife and I just bought the MJ motorhome from Ben. I was very impressed with the support offered by this board. it was a big part of my decision to buy it. We live in Portland, Oregon and Ben was kind enough to drive it down to us from Battleground. When I saw it online I was out of the country, so I had my wife look at it and make the decision. She grew up in a car family and has a real talent for anything mechanical. We just retired last year and are looking forward to using it quite a bit. After getting things sorted out, we plan a trip to Arizona via Utah and then a trip to Yellowknife in Canada. The plan is to never use an interstate. The rig is is great shape. The exhaust leak was a combination of a split in the down pipe (now welded) and a leaking exhaust manifold gasket (now replaced). I don't plan on converting to 4X4 until I see how much we need it, but a select-able differential might be the first big upgrade. With that big rear overhang, we will not be doing any rock crawling, and with all that weight on the rear dualies, i think having traction to both sides on the rear might be enough for sand and mud. Maybe a winch, bit we will see how it goes. Given that this is one of 3, maybe 2 of these, I sort of feel like this belongs to all of us and i am just taking care of it. I'll post here before making any changes to see what the community thinks. I look forward to getting to know all of you Bud