Thanks! It looks smoother in pictures than it is up close. We reached the point of diminishing returns and went ahead and painted it. You're right about the sand paper... :o
Now we're ready to restart the fiberglass! We're beginning with the main joints and the inside part of the cabover.
All done! The area around where the cabover meets the shell ended up with two layers, which is good.
We also realized that the 1708 glass mat isn't going to work for the top...
We still had a few finishing details to attend to before the final fiberglassing of the main shell. We needed to test fit all the windows and doors to make sure they were going to work and for once in my life I cut something to small instead of too large! The window had a small seal piece that...
The sealing surfaces for the gasket took way longer than I thought it would by far. Tons of finicky little pieces and I'm getting very tired of stabbing myself with the toothpicks.
Now that gets to cure and then get sanded. Tomorrow the plan is to finish up all of the fiberglass. Eventually...
Our goal for today was to completely finish the main part of the camper shell. To start, I cut and glued in the very front part of the cabover.
We had debated for ages now about what to do at the very front of the camper. Essentially we wanted to do a "nose cone" to give it a super cool...
We were watching one build thread with an aluminum framework and i believe Nidacore panels. We considered that pretty strongly since I can weld aluminum, but decided it would take so much time and be really hard to keep it square. The fiberglass shell seemed easier even though we didn't have...
We're using 1708, which has two sides essentially sewn together. One side is a thin chopped mat and the other side is the weave. The mat side goes against the foam which is why it's rarely visible in the photos. We chose this type mostly on the recommendations of the composite supply place we...
After all the excitement of test fitting the camper, this day was a little underwhelming. It was mostly spent sanding off excess glue and rounding off the edges for the fiberglass. This isn't a difficult process, but it is tedious and I'm not sure I have fingerprints left. What I found worked...
Now that the walls are done it's cabover time!
The floor jack, 4x4, and scrap foam are to jack up the cabover floor on top of that table and keep it from sagging!
All ready to go with the glue and toothpicks!
This shot shows the angle of the cabover part a little better. I'm glad we decided to...
We started to realize that if we were going to be able to keep working on this thing, we're going to need to cut the hole for the door... We bought one of those premade "teardrop trailer" doors off of Ebay and luckily it came with a template.
The door hole is cut!
I have to admit that I got...
Here's the result of that pile of fiberglass from yesterday's post.
The two small pieces are to finish out the sides of the camper just behind the Oklahoma shaped pieces. The large piece is the cabover floor. We decided to have it angled inboard a few inches on each side, mostly because it...
We've gone about as far as we can right now with the main part of the tub so it's time to start working on the sides and the actual cabover part. We thought about the joint between the shell and the cabover for a while because that will see a lot of stress while we're laying in it. The final...
Turns out that we got a little over our heads with the huge sheet of fiberglass on the bottom. It was hard keeping that much resin mixed and functional and the sheet itself was just huge and a giant pain in the ass to work around and position.
The corners definitely didn't wrap around all neat...
So at this point, the camper is starting to turn into a pain in the ass. We still have to be able to move around, but it doesn't sit flat anymore, so we made some spacers with wood scraps.
Since the back part of the bedsides aren't supported, we clamped them to a piece of steel to try to keep...
After sanding off the excess foaming glue and rounding the gusset pieces into a nice concave shape, we glassed in the corners all around.
We did finally figure out what how long it is before the resin starts to set up. Apparently it turns into an annoying jelly-like substance that doesn't...
i'm assuming you mean at the back right? We were originally going to do that and make little storage lockers like a lot of the other campers have, but since we made the inside tub pretty much the entire width of the bed between the wells, there wasn't really a lot of room left. We thought about...
Ok I'm back now! :) I believe I left off where we started framing in the walls to make an actual tub. The forward part of the camper was designed so that the "floor" or base of the cabover bed part was only a few inches above the roof of the truck. Luckily I could do this as one piece. The...
There are lots more posts coming, but unfortunately I'm traveling at the moment which makes it difficult to keep up with regular updates. I promise we'll get everything posted through to the finish. Sorry about the delay! :)
Yes, 1/2" is plenty strong, especially once everything starts...
We just did the joints and a single layer of glass. It doubles the thickness around the joints and the second layer all over wouldn't have been necessary. With a layer on each side it's super solid at least for what we built. I did add additional layers in areas that we knew would see some...
Next we cut strips of fiberglass for the edges of the tub to that they overlapped the existing glass by a few inches on each side
It almost looks like something! The tub will still flex inward, but it's still pretty stiff. Once the end pieces are on it should be super solid. The bedrail...
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