Build: Ski Machine Foam/Fiberglass Truck Camper

[DankHank]

Alright guys and gals, here it goes. Trying my hand at a foam/fiberglass truck camper build. The truck camper will be for a 2010 F150 4 door 6.5' bed. I did have a real nice truck camper last year that I ended up selling. It was a 94 SunLite Hideaway, dry weight of 1400lbs. I added 300 watts of solar with 240aH battery setup and also a Wave 8 heater I got for a steal and it really was a pretty sweet setup. It was just so cumbersome and with panels and gear I had to be close or over my 1950lb payload rating. Nonetheless I did a ski trip cross country to Jackson WY and Big Sky MT and it all worked good. Things I didnt like about the camper was first off the weight. You definitely knew that you were hauling a lot of weight, the truck drove fine just had to take it easy. I was not willing to pay up for the fancy frame mounted tie downs so I used bed rail clamp on's that were a pain in the ass. They were a pain to fit on my bed as this year of f150 barely has a gap under the rail. I also didn't come close to using all of the space and storage that camper had. Here some pics of the old setup sorry they are so small.



Instead of going on further about my old camper here is a list of things that I want this new one to improve on or have equipped.
- Weight! (shooting for the shell to be 500lbs or less)
- simpler tie downs that go to existing mounts on my truck bed
- waterproof (had to fix cabover damage and roof seam on my old one)
- better insulation (i did survive a -23 degree night in my old one, but there was lots of drafts and could really feel the cold comming off those plywood walls)
- ski/fishing rod storage
- solar (eventually)

Dimensions: From all of the different camper builds it seems like a foam composite camper is the route to go, especially for a 4 season one. The camper outside dimensions will be 8' long x 7'8" wide x 6'x6" high. It will not be a cabover and the back of it will rest on my tailgate. My old camper was so heavy I would take the tailgate off before loading worrying about all the weight on it.

I started last weekend and made good progress for just working on it Friday night and Saturday. The camper shell will just be foam and fiberglass. Inspired by this build (https://expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/build-fiberglass-foam-truck-camper.205977/) where they used just 1/2" foam and fiberglass my shell will just be foam and fiberglass too. No wood or metal framing. Im thinking about having cedar strips for the door/window frames but we will see. That build did use denser foam than I have but I am going with Foamular 250 which is 2" foam board insulation so I think it will be plenty strong. A little late but anyone have concerns with this?

So I started cutting and gluing the foam on Friday. Here I am gluing the sides to the base/floor piece of foam. I got 2 1/4" sheets of plywood so I would have nice working surface the garage floor at my rental is greasy and nasty. I also used saran wrap below the foam base piece and on my "clamps" so I wouldnt glue this thing to the floor or the clamps. I sanded all surfaces I glued to as it looks like there is some glossy coating on the tops and bottoms of the foam. I wanted to ensure I had a good surface to bond and to prevent any potential delamination. I plan on roughing up the foam before I fiberglass as well. I used gorilla glue, wayy to much...


Here it is all clamped up. For cheap clamps i used 2x4s with screw in hooks and ratchet straps. I really did not need a ton of pressure so this worked good. I figure the glue is basically to just hold things in place before I get fiber glassing. That is where I am bank all the strength comming from. Dont get me wrong I still want things squared and tight when I glue. I used boards on the inside as there was a slight bow in my foam and this kept the sidewalls straight and flush along the edge of the base foam.

Here is how it turned out, looks like I have some glue sanding to do. Oh well at least it all turned out square and solid. I was satisfied with the first glue up and continued on. The glue takes 24 hours to cure so I had to work around that.


Saturday I took the clamps off the base (pictured above). I then got to gluing and cutting the main front and back walls. When I say front and back I mean the wall that will go up against the front of the truck bed and the wall that you will walk into out the back of the pickup.


I had to then wait until Sunday for the glue to cure on these two walls. I decided not to cut the door out yet as I was worried that I would decrease the strength too much and things would start to potentially buckle during the next glue up. Before the next glue up I made sure to get the excess glue off of the base so I would have square corners to glue these wall too.


Here it is clamped up. It was nice to have a second set of hands for this. As you can see the camper is starting to take shape and is upside down with the base piece at the top. I clamped the sides with the 2x4 clamps and used my 8' long plywood to ensure the walls were a square 8' apart. We also used barbecue skewers to keep things flush. A lot more glue sanding to do...


From this point I am going to clean up the glue and start fiber glassing the base. I plan on glassing from the base just down to the ratchet strap or so to make the whole bottom more solid. I have resin and a roll of 1.5oz chopped strand mat on the way and plan on using 2-3 layers, maybe 4-5 on all joints. I am absolutely going to do some test pieces before glassing the camper to see how much strength I gain with each layer added. I will post the results. I have used 2 part epoxies in the past for potting electronics but have never worked with fiberglass or polyester resin.. I chose 1.5oz chopped strand after talking to someone who does custom fiber glassing for a living. Also just one of my observations, but from all the posts I have seen everyone always has issues/bubbles with corners and woven cloth when making these. Please chime in if you have any advice for me on that or any thoughts on the camper design and build in general! Thanks everyone, really excited about this build

 

[java]

Ski bums ****** Thats all! Following along

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[highwest]

I’m excited to see your build! I have bounced ideas like this around in my head for a while, but never had the guts... I have used polyurethane and PVC foams in small to medium sized projects on a sailboat. Polystyrene is so much easier to come by and cheaper. One product that I’ve found to get a more flat finish in the glass is peel ply, you may consider using this on visible surfaces so that it requires less fairing to get it flat before paint. If budget allows, of course...

 

[Ducstrom]

Any plans to fillet and fiberglass the inside corners?
How about interior seating and cabinetry to help brace and strengthen the box struture?
I made mine caboverless too. I find the campers without cabovers look strange and that's coming from someone that has one. I'd recommend a small bump out over the cab for storage in the camper, unless you have other plans for over the truck roof, like a ski rack.
Might also help with aerodynamics.

 

[DankHank]

highwest: thought about the peel ply but for the price and the fact I have a nice orbital sander I am going take on the dust and sand it all.

Ducstrom: I plan on fiberglassing the entire inside. Not sure how many layers though less than the outside I think. The fiberglass is supposed to arrive today and im interested to see how fast it builds up as I add additional layers. As for the corners I am getting fairly light duty fiberglass compared to a lot of builds I have seen. I will just have to layer it up instead of one thick layer like I have seen a lot of on here. I am going to do a 90 degree test piece and see how well I can work this 1.5oz chopped strand fiberglass into the corner with a putty scraper or pizza cutter or something like that.

As for the ski storage I was trying to keep things as simple as possible thus no cabover, but now you have me rethinking it. Since my inside floor width is 44" I was going to take 8" of that and make a long tall narrow compartment (8'x8"x22") that goes the length of the camper. This easily fits 3 pairs of skis and potentially 4. That would result in my floor width being 35" wide once that is built out with 1" foam. If I was planning on the cabover I would have probably cut my "front" wall differently too. I am going to do some drawings today or tomorrow and make the decision.

 

[java]

I love having my skis verticle and accessed from the exterior FWIW. Wet skis dry/drain a bit that way.

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[DankHank]

Alright I have both made some progress and had a major set back since the last update. So I got my big fiberglass order in that included the roll of glass, resin, catalyst, and rollers. I went to lay up a test piece and the resin I bought melted/dissolved my foam! The resin I bought was Isophthalic Polyester Resin. Doing a quick search online I found that any type of polyester resin will melt both styrofoam and polystyrene (what I have) and the only foam it is safe on is polyurethane foam. Should have really done my homework on this one.. I called the company and they are letting me send my unopened 4 gallons on to one of their customers. They emailed me a shipping slip so I didnt have to pay return shipping either, super nice of them. So all in all I wasted a gallon of resin, bottle of catalyst, and my time. Frustrating because it could have easily been avoided. By the way I expect the total camper to take around 15 gallons of resin. I now have 12.5 gallons (10 epoxy, 2.5 hardener) of US Composites 635 Thin Epoxy System (4:1) on the way, supposed to come Thursday. I have seen this stuff used on this forum with good reports so that is what I choose. Would have probably ended up finding it anyways as it is one of the cheapest fiberglass epoxys I could find. I also found there is no harsh fumes with epoxy and the stuff I got can cure down to 45 degrees. This will be nice as I will not have to worry about blowing myself up with my garage heater because of flammable fumes. I was kinda concerned about that with how bad the polyester resin fumes smelled. I have also used two part epoxys before (not with fiberglass) so will have some familiarity with the material and know how to properly mix it. Here are some pics of the melted test piece.




In the mean time I did some sanding. I sanded off the shiny coating on the foam and most of the excess gorilla glue with 60grit and an orbital sander. Had to be careful as the sander would bite into the foam if you accidently went on an angle causing gouges. I then hand sanded the whole thing with 80grit to create thousands of scores on the surface for the epoxy to bond to. I found that 60grit with the orbital sander left everything really pretty smooth (ground the foam to dust) and I got a much rougher finish with the 80grit and hand sanding. After that I rounded off all the edges by hand sanding. Cleaned up good and now the entire bottom 'tub' of the camper is ready for fiberglass.



(you can see one of the orbital sander gouges in the lower center of this image)




I also got the two side walls cut and glued. I'm hoping to get the window holes cut out of those walls and get them all sanded today. That's the plan as least. I will then have to try and get all the foam dust off the camper and clean up the garage a little for fiber glassing. I am going to try to do a test piece or two on thursday when the epoxy comes. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

 

[rruff]

I like how you are making about 1000x faster progress than me!

I started a XPS and fiberglass camper a few years ago... stopped... then when I started up again I needed to redesign it. So I changed to PVC foam rather than XPS for piece of mind. It is *much* stronger and the epoxy sticks to it *much* better than XPS. But it is also expensive. I'm using 1.5" thick foam (except for 2" floor/base) and will spend over $3k on foam alone... and that's the cheap PVC from Carboncore.

A few tips:

Round your outer edges more.

Fillet the inside edges. I use a mix of epoxy, microballoons, and fumed silica. A plastic spatula trimmed to a rounded shape works well.

To enhance the epoxy/XPS bond, sand all the foam, clean, and use a dog brush (the kind with a bunch of sharp tines) to score the foam. A Woodpecker tool or something similar might be better if you can find one. At any rate I suggest making plenty of samples and destroy them... pull them apart, whack them with a hammer, see how much weight they can hold before breaking, etc.

I've been buying epoxy from Ebond. It's <$30/gal (plus shipping), and I like it better than US Composites. I've been getting cloth from Fiberglass Supply and Fiberglass Site.

Chopped strand is the weakest cloth. Since you want it to be light I think you'd be better off with woven or 0/90 + 45/45 biax (what I'm using).

It's going to be tough to do a good glassing job with the foam already glued together (vertical surfaces). It's also hard to maneuver when it starts getting heavy. It's easier to glass on a flat surface, then glue the pieces together into the final shape, then glass the seams.

Consider making a cabover, for storage if not sleeping. With the materials you are using it's easy to make curved shapes; good to have an aero nose over the cab.

Good luck!

 

[bahndo]

Something else to consider is that chopped mat has a binder in it that dissolves in styrene (poly/vinyl ester resin) and wets out and conforms nicely. Switching to epoxy I think you will find it harder to wet out and more difficult to work the air out and get it to lay down. Although more expensive a woven fabric will work better for your application.

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[rruff]

I was just going to mention that! Most mat these days is epoxy-friendly but not all.

 

[DankHank]

Thanks for the responses, this information is huge! Sounds like I got the opposite of what I need.. Never thought about the binder and what it's made of. Since I have it I will at lease try a test piece and see what happens. However, I am taking your guys advice and think I am going to go with a woven cloth. In this build(https://expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/pod-custom-camper-design-stage.54664/page-4), he uses the same epoxy I have ordered and multiple layers of woven cloth. His test results are convincing and I am leaning towards 8.5oz 2x2 Twill Fiberglass E Cloth, 8.9oz Fiberglass E Cloth, or 10oz E Glass all found on http://www.uscomposites.com/cloth.html. He tries the two 8oz cloths in his test. The 10oz is actually cheapest but it does not have a fancy weave like the other two. From his tests I think I will have to do 2-3 layers on the outside and 2 on the inside, I will of course do my own test pieces and decide. What do you guys think of those three cloths, any preferences? Does weave pattern matter that much? Also what do you think will form best around corners?

One reason I originally got the chopped strand was for formability on the edges and corners. Do you think this technique would work for the large pieces of glass I will be laying up?


My plan is to first glass the bottom tub. Then glue on the bed rail hangover pieces and side walls, if I glued them now It would make it very difficult to reach the bottom center to glass. After this ill glass truck bed rail hangover pieces overlapping the previous fiberglass. Once the hangovers are glassed I plan on flipping and glassing each side horizontally, both out and inside, until it gets too heavy to flip.

Great tip to score the foam with a dog brush, going to for sure try that out.

Spent about two hours yesterday cleaning up and sanding the side walls. I drew the window cut outs but did not make the cuts yet.

 

[bahndo]

I know how much time and energy these builds take and I have to admit I cringe everytime I see one using polystyrene foam (xps or eps). It can work as a core but the skins need to be very thick. What happens is when the structure is heated (ie: left in the sun) the foam out gasses and causes the skin to delaminate. If the skin is thin is will balloon or puff up until the temperature is reduced. At this point the damage is done and the skin and core are no longer working together and all mechanical properties are lost. If the skin is thick enough and the foam is really just being used to hold it in place til it cures then it's not as big an issues, yes it's not as strong as it would be if they stayed bonded but the skin is able to carry the load. I really don't want to be a Debbie downer here but I have seen it happen multiple times and it's just a real bummer to spend a bunch of time and money for nothing. Somewhere on here there is a pop up build, they guy ended up moving and left the camper in the driveway and it started delaming. I'm not sure if he ever recovered it of end up scrapping it. Again not trying to be a downer, just sharing my experience and knowledge.

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[DankHank]

bahndo: Thank you for the warning and I will be sure to post hear as a caution for others if that happens with mine. It usually doesnt get crazy hot here in central WI and im also going to paint it white to try and keep it cool. Do you know roughly what temps this gassing occurs? Also what do Bahn campers use as their core?

 

[bahndo]

No sure on exact temp but I would guess around 120*f which a white surface can definitely hit in direct sunlight. We use diab divinycell pvc and pet foam for our shells.

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[Ducstrom]

When I did testing on my foam/epoxy bond I found I didn't need to score up the foam. The foam failed before the foam/epoxy bond everytime.
I was bonding foam to plywood though, not fiberglassing foam