Leveling your Camper Trailer

by Brad Fawkes

 I use a simple and relatively effortless technique to 'fine tune' the leveling of my camper trailer.

My camper trailer has an outrigger leg each side at the rear and a jockey wheel at the front. Two spirit levels (fore-aft and side-to-side) are glued to the frame near the jockey wheel.

After detaching the camper trailer from the car and chocking the wheels the camper trailer may be perfectly level in both planes, but usually some adjustment is required.

LOWER the front of the camper trailer (using the jockey wheel) and than observe the side-to-side level.

Deploy the outrigger leg at the rear on the LOWER side (using an appropriately sized base plate for the ground conditions).

Than start to RAISE the front (by winding down the jockey wheel) which will have the effect of 'tipping' the camper trailer to the side without the outrigger leg deployed, ie will act to level the camper trailer in the side-to-side plane. You can observe with the side-to-side spirit level when this has been achieved, and than simply deploy the other rear outrigger leg.

Now the camper trailer is being held level in the side-to-side plane by its two outrigger legs you can level in the fore-aft plane by winding the jockey wheel up or down to whatever is required (by observation of the fore-aft spirit level).

With a little practice one can quickly achieve a perfectly level camper trailer, as well as having the weight appropriately distributed between the outrigger legs, jockey wheel and the main suspension. The little spirit levels glued to the camper trailer (near the jockey wheel) are very helpful and I believe are cheap and readily available from caravan parts stores.

Thanks to Brad for this article