4x4 Sunrader Build Out

Hey everyone, thought I'd share some of the work my wife and I have been doing on our 4x4 Sunrader. It's a fiberglass camper on a 1985 Toyota Pickup. Very few were made in 4x4 so we were super lucky to snag this one. We bought it in August 2017 in Bozeman, MT. We drove it around the west coast for a while and then made our way to Florida to begin a renovation on it. My wife and I have been living in a VW Vanagon for the last two years and decided to make the move to the Sunrader for the extra room, 4WD, Toyota reliability, and cheaper parts. We started the renovation at the beginning of November and are currently still working on it. We've heavily documented the process with photos, videos, and blog posts so I'll try not to be too redundant and post links here. I'll keep posting as we have more to show!

Her name is Amelia and this was her before we started working on her.
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There's plenty more picture of her and her interior before we started the process over at our blog (http://www.boundfornowhere.com/blog/2017/new-home-on-wheels)
Our goal was to start with a clean slate on renovation so we tore her down to the fiberglass and salvaged what we could. We found LOTS of dead mice in the walls which made us feel better about peeling back everything so we could get a fresh start. Here is a video of that process:

Pictures after the first day or so:
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As I'm limited to only 10 photos per post I'll cap this post here. More to come for sure but if you can't wait, you can read ahead at our blog where we have weekly updates on our build.
 
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After tearing the camper apart we got into fiberglassing. A lot of the old appliances ran on propane and because of that they needed venting. That meant there were a lot of holes in the camper that needed to be filled. We're planning on switching all but the stove over to electric. Well, really we're completely getting rid of the hot water heater and furnace and switching the fridge to electric. We got several quotes to get it professionally done and decided that we just needed to do it ourselves so we didn't go broke finishing this thing. We learned to fiberglass from the prestigious school of YouTube. After a few test runs at it we dove in and started filling in all the holes in the camper we no longer needed.

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Prepwork
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Sanding after fiberglass had cured
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Examining the work before fairing
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After fairing
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3 of the biggest holes after the fiberglass cured. This is before fairing.

Video documenting the fiberglassing process.

Fiberglassing ended up becoming a skill that was super handy though out the build so far. There have been a ton of small holes and dings that needed to be filled in during many steps of the process. The unfortunate part of fiberglassing these holes is that it left huge patches of raw fiberglass exposed. It wasn't a good look... So we needed to figure something out for that...

More details on these processes here:
http://www.boundfornowhere.com/blog/build-out-week-1-2
http://www.boundfornowhere.com/blog/build-out-week-4
 
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Update #3
With the fiberglass "done" we started moving on to some other projects. We took the cover of our rear bumper to reveal a scary sight...
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We couldn't unsee this unfortunately. So we took a belt sander and ran it all over, then got a wire brush and went over it all too. After that, we sprayed it down with some black primer. Our plan being to eventually paint it.
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I was tired, but it turned out really nice and it was nice to get rid of all that surface rust. Luckily none of it was bad.

Moving on to some interior work. Originally the bed platform over the cab had a removable cushion which was good AND bad. It was good because it was pretty easy to move into the camper from the cab if it wasn't there. It was bad because it created a horrible crack in the bed and we would have to rock, paper, scissors to see who had to sleep on it. While we were living in it for a few months we realized we never took off that cushion so we decided to make a permanent bed platform so we could have a more comfortable mattress. We also used the opportunity to create a sliding door to the camper so we could close it and have some privacy. We built a new wall, as the original was EXTREMELY bowed, and outfitted it for the sliding door. We also remade the step block up to the bed and stained it dark to match our plan for the rest of the interior. The plan is to have lots of white with punches of dark wood to contrast it.
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I've reached my 10 photo limit, so that's it for now! You can see a LOT more details about this over at our blog in our week 5 update on the build. (http://www.boundfornowhere.com/blog/build-out-week-5)
 
Update #4
Next on the ever growing list of things to do was the clearance lights. The old lights were losing voltage as they wrapped around the front and the last one was barely even on. That obviously was no good so we got some new LEDs and pulled out the old ones so we could rewire the whole thing. To wire I ran one continuous length of wire from start to finish, then I stripped small sections and soldered the lights into those sections. Then, using adhesive lined heat shrink, I sealed them up. Months later I have discovered some amazing heat shrink butt connectors that are meant to have two wires on one side and one on the other. I would absolutely recommend those connectors rather than soldering, although our connections are strong and I have full confidence in them. The whole process was surprisingly easy. We did need to drill an additional hole for each light for the wires to pass through since the lights were a little different than the old ones. After we rewired it all we screwed them in and used Sikaflex all around the edges on the outside and inside holes. Now they are water tight and bright!

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Old lights with covers off.

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Getting holes drilled in.
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Sealing new lights and putting them in place.
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Soldering in the dark. Highly recommended.
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Finished lights looking good. We opted out of installing the middle one in the rear so that we could put a back up camera in it's place.

Additional details and photos can be found here: http://www.boundfornowhere.com/blog/2017/build-out-week-6

Be back with more soon!
 

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