How to build your own Carbon Fiber Camper making your own Composite/Foam panels.

[ebrabaek]

Well.... I sure like the second handle better than the first one. The first would fit perrrrrrfect on a 70's hippie bus, groovy and curvy and all...... The new one belongs on a Paaaaaanzer.
Old one.....





New one.....





Holes drilled and countersunk for a quad of M4 Stainless bolts. Now it was on to over drilling on the door and filling with Thixotropic...... You know the drill..





Now curing. Tomorrow I will re drill through the THIX and then bond the handle to the door. This way I am distributing the pull and push loads to the back and the front Composite layer. Life is good.

 

[ebrabaek]

Holes re-drilled in the Thixotropic.





Masked and then sanded..... Make sure you get through the top coat and down to the carbon. This is verified by the carbon reveling itself like in the pictures





Then as there ,ight be a bit of torque on this handle I decided to dive in the Scrap Carbon Pile, and fetch a piece of flat panel and bonded that to the back side to distribute the torque from the M4 lock nuts.





Then the handle was bonded in place with Thixotropic. All surfaces was masked with urethane tape to minimize clean up. I had the car in the sun so temps of the panel went to 170 deg F. Even THIX becomes runny at that temp.





Then a bunch of clean up with rubbing alcohol. A trick here is to unmask as the THIX is like a almost hard booger.....(Dont ask me how I know)..... This way you can work it with rubbing alcohol, and the cleanup is so much easier. I totally dig it.

 

[ebrabaek]

As promised earlier, I might as well introduce these to the world..... Made about 14 years ago for a SUV we had at the time to hold my bike racks. We sold the SUV shortly after making them, and I thought this would be a great purpose for them. Perfect fit too.







They are made from my same go to 5.7 oz 2x2 twill and Max bond 1618. Here is a cross section. They are extremely quiet and I swear they add lift..... Shaped like an airfoil. NGX foam in the middle with a M4 nut for comparison.

 

[ebrabaek]

When I started it just planned on showing how to make the panels, but as the whole build is now in here, I changed the title of the threat to better illustrate that.

 

[pigsammy]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing your techniques, this really helps de-mystify the process.

 

[ebrabaek]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing your techniques, this really helps de-mystify the process.

Thank you.
You are quite welcome. I am happy to help making this an easier and less complicated process.

 

[Teardropper]

I think you've watched a couple-three of Mike Patey's YouTubes.

 

[ebrabaek]

I think you've watched a couple-three of Mike Patey's YouTubes.

As a fellow aviator I indeed have. Not from a composite standpoint, but as a fellow aviator it is always crazy fun to see and admire the engineering mind of this Utah Flyer. Our flying realms are vastly different but seeing and following Draco was so impressive. Cant wait for 2.0. He has the tooling. My methods are a bit more of a Garage gangster.....

 

[Teardropper]

As a fellow aviator I indeed have. Not from a composite standpoint, but as a fellow aviator it is always crazy fun to see and admire the engineering mind of this Utah Flyer. Our flying realms are vastly different but seeing and following Draco was so impressive. Cant wait for 2.0. He has the tooling. My methods are a bit more of a Garage gangster.....

As an old Avid Flyer builder, I've watched his videos open-eyed.

Tony

 

[ebrabaek]

As an old Avid Flyer builder, I've watched his videos open-eyed.

Tony

Yeppers....

 

[ebrabaek]

Hello! I'm building under bed storage boxes right now and was wondering about your latches for the door. Brand and where you bought them, if you remember. Thanks!

Also, the town where I live is Ruidoso. Pretty much everybody is too lazy to pronounce it correctly, but it is phonetically correct, being Spanish for "noisy water". Ruadoso is fairly common and not too far, but Riadoso is more likely, devolving to Riadosa often. 🤪

It breaks my heart watching the destruction of your beautiful city. Hopefully you will have a place when it is all set an done. Gavilan Canyon looked horrible. Im sorry my friend. We have so many great memories there after 30 years

 

[ebrabaek]

Went on a long weekend trip to Albuquerque, NM. Bout 400'ish miles each way. On the way down we spent 7 hrs in torrential downpour which included small hail. We escaped the real big stuff that dented the car but in storms that yielded over 1 inch in 30 minutes. The storms caused flooding in the four corners and Las vegas, NM area. There were quite the wind along with it. There were quite a bit of water intrusion in the back from the tail gate and about a foot forward. Ironically it was not entering at the back door of the camper but at the OEM gap between the sides and bottom of the tail gate. Absolutely no issues with the corners or any of the bonding anywhere. I still have work to do on it, like at some point a rear window, light pods to mention a few, and will post the updates here. On top of that the truck got a little over 25 mpg with three people, and bags over said 400 miles, which includes 3 mountain passes, one conglomerate of a storm and lots of 75 mph highway run so Im pretty exited.

 

[rruff]

It breaks my heart watching the destruction of your beautiful city. Hopefully you will have a place when it is all set an done. Gavilan Canyon looked horrible. Im sorry my friend. We have so many great memories there after 30 years

Thanks for the kind words. I was pretty angry when they (once again!) dinked around with an obviously dangerous fire until it was too late...

Finally got some wireless internet. Slow, but better than nothing. I'll probably make a thread about it soon.

 

[ebrabaek]

Thanks for the kind words. I was pretty angry when they (once again!) dinked around with an obviously dangerous fire until it was too late...

Finally got some wireless internet. Slow, but better than nothing. I'll probably make a thread about it soon.

It is good to hear from you. Yeah.... NM's then biggest fire (whitewater/baldy) near Glenwood originated in Mogellon. I happen to fly over it at 41000 feet back in early may 2012. I called it in as two tiny plumes..... I took pictures and magnifying them they were just smoldering and could have been put out by dropping 4 smoke jumpers. It took 2 weeks before anything was done and by then it was too late. I created a firestorm locally in El Paso where we lived as I produced the picture of the fire two weeks before the authorities claimed it was started.
Anyway it did not go well and perhaps another place for that story but I'm feeling your pain.

 

[ebrabaek]

Howdy everyone.
Been a month or so and I thought I'd check in. It has been quite hot in the grand valley with temps near or just over the triple digits. The camper is doing great, be as it may parked in the garage overnight. None the less outside all day in our airport. Skin temps are in the 160-170's F. No heat stress in neither the fibers or Thixotropic seams. I have still not done any furthering with light pods, rear window etc, but I suspect that as fall arrives that will be the uhmmmmm fall/winter projects. I continue to see between 24 and 26mpg with the occasional 29, depending on trip length. I truly am missing seeing through in the rear view mirror so I suspect that as soon as I can find a suitable rear window, that will happen quick. There are no water intrusion beyond what is to be expected from the natural openings between the tail gate and truck bed. The car wash blowers seems to find those gaps with ease. Thinking about putting a logo on the camper as I have quite a lot of people asking where I got it. Ohh dear.... Here we go.