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Hi ButchFNJ,
I’m still working on the project, if you can believe it! The weather here tends to go from too hot to too cold in a flash, limiting the time I am willing to spend in the garage. Anyway, I am done with all assembly except for fixing the fit of the doors… Now I just need some good painting weather. And yes, I will not be going natural with the trailer except the interior, although I doubt the imperfectness of the wood would detract from appearances.
It turns out that the chipped out bits of plywood are hardly visible under the epoxy. I never got feedback to my original post other than in this forum so I can’t offer much advise except to be very careful of any unfinished wood before it gets some epoxy and/or fiberglass on it. Unfortunately these problem areas can be worsened (and maybe caused) by wiping down the sanded wood surface with a rag dampened with alcohol.
Good luck with the build and have fun!
I am quite a long way from installing my headliner kit, but I will do some experimenting on it using the small trim router I bought for this project and report back. (Anything to keep me from working on those ill-fitting doors, which have been laying around since last November!)
Yes, it’s worth it, for me, to pay shipping both ways from Reno, NV. I hate to spend so much on this project and then not be able to look at the end result. I know the tall fan doesn’t look that bad, but it’s not how it represented in the teardrop model.
Yes, I suspect that because of the angle of the gutter you are probably not getting enough glue on the bulkhead side of the mating equation. I seem to recall dripping some glue on the bulkhead above the gutter and hitting it with accelerant just as the glue touched the gutter. I definitely recall doing A LOT of sanding in that groove to get the upper galley gutter to slip into the groove in the bulkhead
I wrestled with the bottom gutter for a long time, and still got it wrong. My mistake was jamming the lower gutter up too high on the side panels resulting in a slight, outward bow of those panels. I ended up cutting the fillet between the gutter and side panel and regluing it to get everything straight again.
Looks good, Bob. You’ll never notice it in the finished product.
I wanted to chime in and say that now is a good time to address the door issues you will inevitably face later on in the project. Now is the perfect time, provided you haven’t already progressed to gluing the floor in, to throw an extra couple layers of fiberglass onto the insides of the doors to prevent spring-out once they are cut from the shell. I think that should be a required step during assembly and SHOULD be adequate to prevent problems that everyone will be forced to address at some point if they don’t take preventative steps… You also might want to consider gluing in the door stiffener, although precise placement could be challenging due to limited clampability at this point.
I am forced to do a tedious work-around/ do over in order to get my doors to fit properly so I am 100% confident that a bit of effort at this step will prevent a LOT of stress later on.
Good luck and happy building!
I bought and assembled the CLC box and and think it is a well executed design, BUT it is perhaps 50% more expensive than it ought to be. Same could be said for the galley module. And the headliner. And…well, you get the point. I kinda feel CLC might be trying to recoup some of the costs associated with the relatively affordable camper kit, and they do have us kit builders by the short hairs, as it were. Having said all that, I am very happy with the CLC box and would probably buy it again if I had to.
I have not installed mine yet, but I did make a measurement along the panel 2 – 3 junction from the hatch to the eyebrow locator notch and it is much more than the spec’d 7.5″ (as I recall) stated in the manual. If I mount the eyebrow starting midway between the notch and the galley hatch cut it looks like I will get sufficient door clearance due to the thinner width of the eyebrow at that point. I am wondering if the inaccurate position of this eyebrow indicator notch has anything to do with the mysterious mis-location of the bulkhead relative to the galley hatch cutout marks… Remember that issue? Anyway, I can’t see the harm in mounting the eyebrow a few inches stern-ward for the sake of door clearance.
Thanks! Removing the mounting brackets and using them as a guide increases the accuracy of locating the holes AND means you don’t have to realign the trailer for mounting later. Now I can move this task to the final stage of assembly, after I have the finish on the camper. Great tips for those of us with an unenthusiastic “helper.”
Well, Fritz, it looks perfect in the last photo. Great work! Now, how did you do it? Can the door stiffener really remove the “sprung”-factor by itself. My doors are practically flat (and pretty warped to boot) and I am dubious about getting a good fit. In my case, gluing the sills to the doors helped with the warping – I am hoping the attaching the windows will make it near perfect – but putting the correct angle back at the panel 3 and 4 junction seems to require a LOT of force. To clarify: are you saying that you ground the correct angle out of the door stiffener and muscled the door into position with clamps and tape? It seems like maybe there could be a better design for the door stiffener that would spread the force out over more of the seam between the two panels.
Hmmm…looks like maybe we shouldn’t glue the 2 hatch spacers together. That way at least the controls won’t be recessed beneath (above) the hatch flange trim.
Fritz, do you think your fit will allow for unencumbered control of the dome elevator knob?
UPDATE:
I was successful in glassing the box by wrapping the 50″ wide fabric around the sides although my length of fabric was unable to make it all the way around. In anticipation of running short, I glassed the majority of the back panel (to within an inch of the edges) while glassing the bottom of the box. This was not the most efficient use of fabric as the box is only about 18″ tall (and using 50″ fabric), but it was necessary due to the tapered nature of the box. The result was a clean, uninterrupted wrap all the way around with the only overlap being on the back, which will never be seen. I made 4 small darts in the fabric to make the corners on the top edge and pushpins were not required.
I’m planning to go old-school futon in mine. I haven’t tried it yet, but I think a queen sized futon will fit with just a bit of reshaping/ shifting of the stuffing to get the fit right in the corners. Looking at getting some 2″ EVA foam to provide some insulation and a little cushion, and putting the 4″ futon on top of that. $350 total for all new, quality materials.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Eric, BUT…. it looks like I would need a 2′ X 9.5′ piece of cloth to get the job done! I think I’ve got enough scrap cloth leftover from glassing the bottom of the camper to do it in TWO pieces (with a horizontal overlap all the way around) but that seems even less appealing then the CLC-recommended approach.
Well, I have to admit that laying down the expoxy-saturated fiberglass tape on the fillet joints of the transom was a real treat. Thanks for the tip! Although I went through a few more pairs of gloves than I would if using a brush to wet out the tape I much prefer this method. I did, however, still struggle with the little frayed bits of fabric at the ends of the tape blemishing an otherwise clean job. Any suggestions for making tidy, flush cut ends on these joints?
