Carbon Fiber Tacoma Bed Replacement Camper - Build Thread
- Thread starter Leighsjor
- Start date
Leighsjor
Member
I’m open to taking a look at the dimensions! It may actually work quite well!
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Leighsjor
Member
I hope you go into production after spending so much time on the mold...
That’s the plan!
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Victorian
Approved Vendor : Total Composites
Epic!
I did this in a smaller scale for a 15 gallon Motorcycle tank . Good luck!
Leighsjor
Member
Nice! A composite motorcycle tank? Or are you referring just to the body work side of it?
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Victorian
Approved Vendor : Total Composites
Sparse Gray Hackle
Geezer
That looks very interesting!
Leighsjor
Member
Leighsjor
Member
After finishing adding the layer of fiberglass to the entire plug I turned my attention to fairing out the large, flat surfaces first. This is when I realized I had gotten myself into more than I bargained for, but such is life - gotta push through the pain and get the job done. I am, however, embarrassed to admit how many hours and layers of compound I spent flattening these surfaces. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there in the composites community that would tell me there's easier ways to do this, but hey - you live and learn, right?
Here you can see exactly how wavy the layer of fiberglass and resin had made the surface. I used a long board sanding block that I made out of an approximately 40 inch long honeycomb cored frp panel. This made for a really fantastic sanding block as it's perfectly straight and really revealed all the ripples through the first layer of fairing compound, but man alive did it give the shoulders a beating!
After many hours of sanding I just had to put it back on the truck to see how things were looking. It's always good to do whatever you can to keep your final goal and motivation intact!
Here you can see exactly how wavy the layer of fiberglass and resin had made the surface. I used a long board sanding block that I made out of an approximately 40 inch long honeycomb cored frp panel. This made for a really fantastic sanding block as it's perfectly straight and really revealed all the ripples through the first layer of fairing compound, but man alive did it give the shoulders a beating!
After many hours of sanding I just had to put it back on the truck to see how things were looking. It's always good to do whatever you can to keep your final goal and motivation intact!
Leighsjor
Member
Continuing with the theme of body work, here's some more progress photos. By this point in the process I had glassed in an upper flange that would be used to attach tent canvas to the lower body portion of the camper. It's well oversized for what I actually needed because this flange would also need margin to attach my vacuum bagging to the mold once it was made.
And here's the driver's side of the plug after a fresh coat of primer. You can obviously tell there's still quite a few imperfections, but it was getting closer! Right around this point in the process I finalized my decision on the plan to only use the sides of this plug for making molds. Previously I wasn't sure how much of the front and back surfaces I would use for making molds. I could have even made a multipart bolt together mold so the camper could be laid up in one rigid piece (monocoque) but I realized that the best way to allow for some flexibility in the structure of the camper as a whole would be to bond midsection panels together to the two side shells in order to have flex joints. As many of you know Tacomas are notorious for their flexible frames. If the camper were one rigid structure bolted directly to the frame I would be concerned about stress fractures in the composites over time. We will talk about this more later as I show how the camper gets mounted to the frame of the truck.