DIY design noodling-lightweight wedge tent on cabover fiberglass/wood

[rivernstream]

Greetings
First post to EP after much lurking. I am contemplating building a bolt camper with cabover rooftop tent for my Nisan Frontier. My thought is to use mostly 1x4 and 1/8” ply foam sandwich construction for the shell and cabover base (may use 2x4 or lam 1x4) and then connect to roof top tent as shown in this video. This is a common construction technique for lightweight Teardrops. Want to either have barn door or traditional lift up window with tail gate to retain ability to use camper for truck type work. No sketches yet, but here’s a link to the RTT series currently underway, and to the traveling together frankenbuild that also uses fiberglass and wood.
My experience includes restoring a vintage Shasta trailer (ground up), building a stitch and glue wooden kayak, and decades of sewing...so I’m pretty sure I’m up to the task. No welding experience. Interested in feedback on my design thinking so far. I’m going for a light weight and strong...also want to carry kayaks and bikes on top so planning re-inforcement.
Current rtt build inspired Teardrop stitch and glue with rack Frankenstein camper attaching cabover to fiberglass shell
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkHL6o9Ip6S8k3dLSvy4SAsIBX3MFtvAt

 

[GoKiteSurf]

Sounds like a great project! You definitely can do it

I did something similar for the roof but not a sandwich panel (wood/foam/wood). If I were to repeat the exercise, I would have chosen sandwich construction for the bulk of the roof to simplify, save time, reduce the effort input. "painting" all the joint/seams once with epoxy, then quickly a second pass with your microbeed mixed slurry is incredibly time consuming and more challenging approach. I found it to be a race against the clock to get all the seams covered, smooth it out before it sets and use up all the slurry before it fully sets while battling large batches of epoxy natural exothermic reaction that literally can catch fire if you mix enough if not spread out in a fast enough manner..

Here is my build thread for reference:
https://www.expeditionportal.com/fo...l-season-cab-over-pop-top-shell-build.199119/

 

[rivernstream]

Thanks! I watched your YouTube vids the other day...not sure I can come close to your mastery. I am thinking of using poor mans fiberglass for the shell. I’ll be checking out your thread too, didn’t see it on here when I was searching.

 

[mmajsw]

I also watched your YouTube videos and found them very informative. Keep up the good work.