NOPEC
Well-known member
Well, I have been considering this for some time but this weekend decided it for me. The double pane Acrylic windows we installed during our older fiberglass TC rebuild have been one of our favorite (and expensive) mods but we were warned, they are prone to scratches.
As careful as I have been, our style of occasional bush crashing on logging road spurs finally caught up with me. After brushing past what looked like nice soft new growth tips on a Douglas Fir branch, I discovered a very hardened and gnarly dead willow branch had been perfectly hidden behind the Fir branch which resulted the side of the camper and window being raked pretty good as I went by it. The camper is built to be used and it is but it's like getting the first ding in the door of your new car, it hurts a bit. The pictures below don't really do it justice. I do have the polishing kit which I will be using and suspect most of the scratches can be considerably reduced.
I have seen images of usually larger Overlanding rigs with hinged (at the bottom) window guards to act as both protection from the elements as well as theft deterrence. I will be building something like this, I suspect out of fiberglass which I will be drilling to give it a sort of punch plate appearance, to reduce the weight and minimize air build up behind the cover. I will use some sort of perimeter frame with a stainless piano type of hinge and stainless hardware, probably simply a series of bolts epoxied into the frame with a wingnut holding the cover down against the frame. It doesn't have to be "expedition strength" as it is only the bush I am worried about and not thieves.
If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions from their experience, I love to hear about them before I start. I did a search here on EP but didn't find too much related to this topic. Otherwise, I will just charge into this and report on the process and finished product. Seems like Acrylic windows are showing up fairly frequently with both home builds and from the factory so hopefully we can all learn something here.
As careful as I have been, our style of occasional bush crashing on logging road spurs finally caught up with me. After brushing past what looked like nice soft new growth tips on a Douglas Fir branch, I discovered a very hardened and gnarly dead willow branch had been perfectly hidden behind the Fir branch which resulted the side of the camper and window being raked pretty good as I went by it. The camper is built to be used and it is but it's like getting the first ding in the door of your new car, it hurts a bit. The pictures below don't really do it justice. I do have the polishing kit which I will be using and suspect most of the scratches can be considerably reduced.
I have seen images of usually larger Overlanding rigs with hinged (at the bottom) window guards to act as both protection from the elements as well as theft deterrence. I will be building something like this, I suspect out of fiberglass which I will be drilling to give it a sort of punch plate appearance, to reduce the weight and minimize air build up behind the cover. I will use some sort of perimeter frame with a stainless piano type of hinge and stainless hardware, probably simply a series of bolts epoxied into the frame with a wingnut holding the cover down against the frame. It doesn't have to be "expedition strength" as it is only the bush I am worried about and not thieves.
If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions from their experience, I love to hear about them before I start. I did a search here on EP but didn't find too much related to this topic. Otherwise, I will just charge into this and report on the process and finished product. Seems like Acrylic windows are showing up fairly frequently with both home builds and from the factory so hopefully we can all learn something here.
You probably don't want to keep them there all of the time but they could provide good protection and convenient access.