Troopy (re)Build

Lachstock

Member
Hello Expo!

I have been a long time reader and decided to post up the build I’m doing on our Troopy Camper which I’m getting ready for a drive to Europe later in the year!
We bought the troopy at the start of this year after having a non-pop top version with a roof top tent.. Now rooftop tents are great until you mount them two meters in the air! So after deciding we’d get a pop top we started hunting! Found a good example of an ex hire camper which had had plenty of mods done including dual spare carrier, hot water heat exchanger under the bonnet, underbody water tanks, all water filters and pumps etc and of course upgraded suspension including airbags! All in all it was a pretty good deal :)

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After a few weekends away in it after we bought it we decided the existing cabinets weren’t going to be suitable (who needs a clothes rack??) for our needs for around 12 months on the road.. So I started hunting for some new cabinets. After reaching out to a few of the major manufacturers in Aus for camper drawers and fit outs all the quotes were coming back at 3k+! So decided to try it out first as I reckoned I could get it built for about 1k. I found a guy on upwork who is a cabinet designer out of Romania who I sent my concept sketch to and he got to work (I’m brushing over the 100,000 measurements I made in the back of the Troopy prior, cause that was rather tedious) designing up the cabinets. All in all it cost a couple of hundred bucks after a few revisions etc. In the mean time I got to work removing the existing cabinets from the troopy and cleaning out the 15 years of gunk that had accrued underneath!

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I decided that ply was the right material and went to Allboard out in the eastern suburbs and got them to quote up all the cuts and surprise surprise the price came back a $770! Huzzah! A few weeks later I was driving out of there with a Troopy full of cut plywood sheets!

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Continued...
 
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Lachstock

Member
Continued...

Over the next few days I got to work assembling them and it has all gone together incredibly easily! There's a lot to be said for the accuracy of CNC!

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I had a change of heart with the doors which we originally supposed to sit in front of the frame, I trimmed them down so you could still see the ply grain from the front as I reckoned it looked a lot better.. Also started adding the coats of oil that'll protect everything where needed!

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I'll update more once I get the sink in over the weekend and when I go to reinstall them into the Troopy! Hoping like hell that all my 100,000 measurements were correct!

After the cabinets we're getting the pop top skirt redone and increasing the roof height when erect by 150-200mm for a bit more headroom when upstairs in bed..

More to come….
 

TroopyTravel

New member
Awesome! Looking forward to watching this unfold. Just about to start re-building our ex-Britz too. May I ask who you're taking it to for adjusting the roof height?

Thinking of a re-canvas, but an extra bit of head height would be pretty sweet...

Cheers,
Ant.
 

Lachstock

Member
Hi Ant,

we're taking it to a mob out in eastern Melbourne, spent a lot of time contact many different pop top repairers and these guys were the ones who were interested in having a chat about it. http://www.adpcaravans.com.au/

I did all the measurements on the springs on the top of ours, and they're only extended to 50% of their available height. We're going to try and get at least an extra 150mm out of it and see how it goes. Worst case we'll need to add some struts to help it out!

I'll keep you posted, we're booked in for the 16th of June to get the work done.

Cheers,

Lachlan
 

Lachstock

Member
An thanks all for the positive feedback! there will be a lot more activity this weekend, hoping to hang all the doors and drawers and get the sink in.. Fingers crossed!
 

TroopyTravel

New member
Absolute legend, cheers for the heads up mate! Let us know how you go and looking forward to the rest of the build!
 

Lachstock

Member
So been pretty hectic of late trying to get stuff done around work etc but its coming along nicely!

After getting the wrong sink the first time round (wrong cause I thought it would fit but it didn't) I returned the big one and got a nice rectangular option to fit it.

Was a bit harrowing to cut through the benchtop after sanding and coating etc!

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After getting the hole cut out we got to work adding the final coats of oil etc onto the main body and especially around the wet areas of the sink etc.

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It cam up really nice so thought we would try a test fit in the back to make sure we didn't need more adjustments.

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And thankfully it literally fit end to end with excat precision I was a little surprised myself, it slotted in perfectly! One thing that we hadn't notice was parts of the floor were a bit bowed so we had to take it out and plane some of the bottoms to match them up with the floor. Once we had done that it was perfect! So all in all it took very little work to get it into the back!

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All in all it has come up pretty well considering, now I need to finlaise all the plumbing and bolt it off to the wall and floor where the previous cabinets were fixed to. Should be a pretty straight forward exercise I hope. Also need to add all the door architecture like catches etc, something I probably should have done before installing it but its only makes it a bit more tedious.

Next projects before it goes into the shop for the new pop top is to finish off the rest of the rear trims etc to make it all look uniform :)

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Started trimming up the rear door trims to get them rebuilt out of something that's not chipboard like the original units!
 

Loubaru

Adventurer
Great looking/fitting woodwork. Having spent hours cutting/planning/sanding to get stuff to fit perfectly your money spent at the CNC router sounds like a great idea for a project this size.
 

Lachstock

Member
The CNC work was definitely worth it, if I had to cut all those panels out it would have been a debacle compared to this!
 

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