Rough Road Raindrop

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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby Louisd75 » Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:15 pm

More little things getting done. The past couple of days were spent cleaning, marking, masking and generally doing prep work for spraying bed liner onto the parts of the trailer that take the brunt of gravel coming off of the truck. I'd been wanting to do something like this for a while but wanted to get some more gravel road time in to see where it would help the most. I wound up doing most of the nose of the trailer and the fenders. Really, I probably could have gotten away with just doing the front of the fenders but I figured it was the same amount of work to mask half of the fender vs the whole thing.

I used U-Pol's Raptor Liner. There are a few different brands out there and they're likely all very similar if not the same. I went with Raptor because it was free from a friend who had it leftover from one of his projects. It came un-tinted, which gave me the option of picking whatever color I wanted. My buddy had tinted his to match his Sportsmobile's factory paint. I ran across TCP Global's website. They have their own version of spray on bed liner but they also carry Raptor. They also sell bottles of tint needed to shade the bed liner. They have a lot of colors to choose from off the shelf. I wound up going with Dove Gray:

https://tcpglobal.com/pages/custom-coat-bed-liner

I didn't take any "during" pictures as I was gloved up and didn't want to risk getting any on my phone. I'm pretty happy with how it came out though. I've got one spot that I accidentally put my hand on before it was dry, which is a huge bummer because once you smooth out the texture it doesn't come back. It happened while I was removing the masking tape. I can respray it, but I'll need to re-mask everything and I used up the last of my masking tape and paper on the job. I'll run it like this for now and probably add another coat down the road to cover it up.

It took two bottles @ a liter apiece for several coats of each fender and the nose. I probably have four coats on the fenders, three coats on the nose. I put the coats on light and worked slowly. It didn't dry completely between coats but it wasn't runny either.

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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby aggie79 » Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:53 am

Looks great! :applause: :thumbsup: :applause:
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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby Louisd75 » Fri Apr 17, 2020 8:12 pm

Well... bummer. :thumbdown:

I did the bed liner a few days ago. After curing for a couple of days I was looking it over and realized that the bed liner was lifting up on the inside corner, between the body and tongue box. It did it on both vertical sides of the tongue box. It looks very much to me like the bed liner shrank as it cured and pulled off the trailer as it shrank.

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This picture was after I did one vertical cut down the corner to try and see if the bed liner lifted off of the primer or if the primer lifted off the body. The bed liner definitely lifted off the primer. It also split as I was trying to lift it up to see. Since it split, I figured that I'd give it a pull to see how much it would come up. I was pulling with a bit of force and couldn't get any new areas to lift up, so at least I know that the issue is localized.

I'm still in the process of fixing it. Currently waiting on materials for plan B. Plan A, though it had potential, did not work. For plan A, I pulled back the material and ran epoxy down the inside before smushing the bed liner into it. I tried rigging up a clamping caul but the seam was so far back from the edges that I couldn't get anything to work without drilling holes. So, the epoxy cured and the bed liner didn't stick down very well. On to plan B.

Plan B involves cutting out the lifted up sections. I'll mask around them as best I can, then spray several new coats of bed liner over the bare spots until I've reached the level of the original attempt. I'll mix small batches and do light coats until it's built up enough, then I'll remask the entire trailer and do two additional coats to try and blend it. It's going to be some work.

On the plus side, it will give me a chance to fix the hand smudge that I made when I reflexively put my hand on the tongue box before the bed liner had cured. My wife and neighbor (who was socially distancing at the time, so there's no way he got a good look) said that it's barely noticeable. I think they're just being nice because it's the first thing I see now. Well, maybe second after the big 'ol crack:

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Oh well. On the plus side, the weather is getting better every day, so I should have more good chances to get this done before our next trip.
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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby tony.latham » Fri Apr 17, 2020 8:31 pm

and realized that ...


Ouch.

T
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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby Louisd75 » Wed Apr 22, 2020 2:20 pm

Well, after the discovery of the bedliner not quite working in a few spots it was time to figure out a fix. There were a few issues to work out first.

Up first, I removed the areas where it had lifted up. I just pulled it off and tore it from the bedliner that stuck. This wasn't that big of a deal. The stuck bedliner is on pretty good so it was pretty simple to tear the lifted stuff off. If I worked at it, I could also pull the well attached bedliner up but that would bring the primer with it. The stuff that didn't stick didn't pull the primer up at all. (hopefully that makes sense). I cleaned off the bad bedliner, prepped the surface again and planned on applying more bedliner in small batches to fill in where I removed the bed liner until it was close to the same thickness as the bedliner that remained on the trailer. Then, I would respray with an extra coat over all of it to try to blend it all together and make it match.

I had more of the Raptor Liner, but the system is set up in a way where you take the contents of bottles B and C, mix them into bottle A, shake like mad and then put it on. The problem is that it's basically like epoxy. Once you mix it, the clock is ticking. Throwing all the bottles together per the instructions would have made far more than I needed. It took a little bit of digging, but I found the mix ratios by weight. I prefer mixing by weight vs volume as volume changes with temperature. I used a ratio of 1 gram of part A to 0.287 grams of part B (hardener) to 0.064 grams of part C (color). I started by pouring approximately 50g of part A and then calculating what I needed for parts B and C based off of how much part A that I actually used. I used small yogurt cups and it was the perfect amount for mixing. I was able to get three coats on yesterday using foam brushes:

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I figure I'll need another two or three coats to finish leveling things off, but it's raining today.

Something else that I was able to do while I had a partially cured cup and foam brushes was to add some texture to the spot that I had smoothed out when I touched it. I just tapped the brush over the area to give it a little texture. It's still noticeable, but not nearly as bad as before.

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I also finally installed my stabilizer pads. I ran into a snag after ordering these a while back. I got them and realized that they weren't the right size for stabilizers that I'm using. I didn't have time to return them before leaving for work, so I set them aside and figured I'd make them work somehow. I had the welder out working on some other projects and realized that it would be easy to cut and reweld the mounting tabs. So, did that, added some paint and got some nice SS hardware to install the pads with. This should help keep the stabilizers from sinking into soft ground. The pads pivot, so they stay horizontal as the stabilizer moves up and down.

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Hoping for some sunny weather so that I can finish up with the bed liner. In the meantime, I've just gotten about ten yards of waxed canvas. Time to fire up the sewing machine (:
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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby Louisd75 » Mon Apr 27, 2020 9:24 am

I had a weather window yesterday so I finished up (I hope) the bedliner repairs.

I did a total of five very light coats, sanded everything to about the same level, then sprayed one layer over it all to make sure that the color was even.

I don't think it's perfect, but I think if I'm passing by at freeway speeds that it looks great 8)

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There is a slight difference in texture that shows up a little bit in certain lighting. I'm not sure if it would have been more or less work to strip all of the original layers of bedliner off and start over completely. Going this route was challenging mostly due to weather. I could have probably done it in two days if the weather had cooperated or if I had the trailer back in the garage.

Now it's time to put in new vinyl trim. I was debating at the time whether I should buy it by the foot or by the 100' roll. Glad I went with the roll now (:

Oh, and I should probably put the propane tank back on for the furnace.

It looks like there's a good chance that campgrounds are going to be opening up soon, shouldn't take long to get things ready at this point.
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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby Louisd75 » Wed Apr 29, 2020 1:04 pm

Whelp, she's all put back together after repairing the bedliner. I had tried to mask and reuse the vinyl trim insert but that didn't work out as planned. Fortunately I still had quite a bit leftover from building the trailer that I was able to install.

The only thing that I don't like about how the bedliner looks is that it feels like I'm missing something. I'm thinking about painting a 3/4" black band at the edge of the bedliner where it curves across the bow front. I'm not sure I'm quite that ambitious feeling yet. I'll probably revisit this idea in a few months after I've had some time to let this look sink in:

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Or, if you prefer a rainy shot:

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And of course, you can't take apart the propane system and put it back together without testing it. So I climbed in and fired up the furnace. Then, to make it more realistic, I grabbed a pillow and crawled into the covers for a nap. I was rudely awoken several hours later by my wife telling me that dinner was ready. It was her homemade mac and cheese though, so it all worked out :thumbsup:

I'm ready to go camping!
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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby Louisd75 » Fri Nov 06, 2020 4:48 pm

Been a while since I've updated here. We've done a bit of camping since the last post and the trailer has evolved a little bit more. We got a lot of rain during one of our last trips which resulted in water leaking around the hurricane hinge when the hatch was open. My work around for this is a combination of adding a rain gutter adjacent to the hurricane hinge to protect the hinge from water running down the hatch towards it.

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To help further, I added a small piece or rubber weatherstripping between the rain gutter and the hinge. The weatherstrip acts as a seal between the gutter and hinge when the hatch is open.

In other news, I've noticed that the battery steadily loses voltage when in storage. I started poking around a bit with my fancy amp clamp and found that the draw is coming from the Renogy Voyager solar panel controller. It wasn't much, but it adds up over time:

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I figured I'd make it so that I could secure power to the controller when it was in storage. The downside is that you can't disconnect the controller from the battery without first disconnecting the solar panels, otherwise (per the manual) you can damage your controller. I figured that the easiest way to do this would be with a disconnect switch that would disconnect the solar panels from the controller at the same time that the controller was disconnected from the battery. I went with a Blue Sea dual circuit battery switch, #6010200. It's similar to the battery isolation switches that I've seen used on various builds, with the exception that this one switches two circuits simultaneously instead of just one. I figured that the best place to put it would be right next to the controller as that's where all the wiring comes together. It was also a good opportunity to clean up the wiring a little inside of my electrical cubby. I had modified the front panel and moved some things around when I installed the solar panel charge controller. I moved a bunch of wiring but I didn't re-wire anything. The result was that I had a bunch of wiring that was much longer than it needed to be, and I had a couple extra circuits for things I'd removed. Additionally, I took the opportunity to shorten the wiring for the Propex, taking out what seemed like 10' that had been previously coiled up in the electrical cubby. I did the same for a coil of extra wiring for Renogy's bluetooth module. No need for 10' of wiring when 4" would do. I stuck the bluetooth module to the back of the controller with some 3m tape. I felt like I hit the jackpot when I fed the wiring into the new crimp connector and everything went exactly where it was supposed to on the first try.

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In other news, the trailer is getting cozier and cozier with the family. We've been able to get away for a few nights here and there. The problems are tending to stay little, which is the way that I like it :)
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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby Louisd75 » Sat Apr 24, 2021 9:55 pm

It's been a while since I've updated. There's nothing really big to report :)

I added another box to the galley to help with organizing. I also made a shelf to hold our cups and a couple of of other small misc things that tend to get lost. Oh, and I made a knife holder. All of the additions were made with that I had lying around in the leftover project pile. Here's what my galley is looking like now:

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We've been using the trailer fairly regularly around my work schedule and the kiddo's school schedule. We spent almost a week checking out areas of Puget Sound that were new to us. We spent two nights at Ft Ebey on Whidbey Island. The gun battery was a big hit with the kiddos, as were the parasailors, passing ships, and tons of trails in the woods. The only downside was that our first night was pretty stormy with rain & hail. Nothing too bad, but our campsite didn't have good drainage so we started off the trip with a bunch of muddy clothes.

We took the ferry across to Port Townsend and headed west out to Salt Creek county park. The spots were tiiiiiiight. I had to disconnect and slightly overlap the truck and trailer to get out of the road. The views and tide pools were totally worth it though. We had a blast.

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The only gripe about the camp was that our neighbor was literally right on top of us. How close? Well... here's his fire ring in relation to my trailer before he showed up:

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I wound up using our picnic table to do all of our cooking on, partly to give our neighbor some privacy, partly because I could better enjoy the view. An unexpected perk was getting to see a ship that I've worked on sail past while I was making breakfast. It's the white smudge above the fence post:

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My oldest has also been given an additional campsite job... solar panel cleaner:

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After Salt Creek we headed back across the sound and spent one night at Bayview State Park. It's smallish but nice. We went with a site that had hookups, which wound up being a bit of a blessing in disguise. The sites that didn't have hookups were definitely not set up for trailers. We would have had to hope that we'd gotten a site that was wide enough to park the truck next to the trailer, and there were only a couple of those. The partial hookup site we had (water & electrical) was sandwiched between an out of commission site and a giant RV bus thing. We only saw the people in there twice. We went on home after that fifth night.

We did another one nighter at Ft Ebey with some friends who were borrowing a Scamp. That was a good visit that I wish could have lasted another couple of nights.

I gave the trailer a good going over after that trip and realized that my bedliner repair on the nose had failed. :x

The area that had come loose was bigger and had taken a rock or two that had caused it to crack and chip. I figured that I had just enough good weather to try and fix it. And by fix it, I mean start over from scratch. I peeled and scraped off all of the bedliner. It was a job. I tried a scraper attachment on a reciprocating saw, but that dug into the aluminum too easily and wasn't effective. I tried sanding it off, which likely would have worked eventually (and messily). I finally settled on using a sharpened paint scraper. I could get it under the bedliner a little and then wiggle it from side to side while pushing it ahead and it worked very well, though my hands were tired at the end. Also, if you do this, wear good leather gloves. It'll save your knuckles from the little aluminum burs that will get kicked up every now and then.

I sanded the entire area after scraping with 80 grit on a random orbital for the big areas and an oscillating tool for the corners and tight spots.

Here's what it looked like at the end of sanding. That's the scraper I used to get the bedliner off:

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After that it was time to break out the mineral spirits to get it all cleaned up. I had a day and a half of nice weather. This time around I wasn't taking any chances. I did three thin coats of metal etching primer followed by two coats of adhesion promoter. It felt like it took forever for all that to dry between coats. I followed those with three coats of bedliner. I made sure to keep my coats light and didn't linger anywhere. I mixed all of my batches by weight, which I think is the best way to go and it let me keep the color consistent between coats.

One area that is a challenge is masking the trim insert slots. On the bottom trim it wasn't a big deal since I didn't bedline the bottom edge, so I could just slip the masking tape into the top groove. On the vertical parts of the tongue box I wrapped the vinyl in masking tape and then installed it. That worked well and I can recommend that method :) When I finished, I just pulled the trim insert out and took the masking tape off.

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So, here she is again:

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I also finally painted my tongue jockey wheel. I also painted the front of my coupler with some key-lime green spray paint to make it more visible in my backup camera.

I'm hopeful that I don't have the issues with the bedliner again. Looking back, I think that my problems may have been related to the primer I used on the first two attempts. It was a Rustoleum product designed for aluminum, but I'm just not confident that it worked properly. In some areas it didn't bond to the aluminum, in other areas the bedliner didn't bond to it. I didn't want to take chances this time, so I used a metal etching primer and adhesive promoter from the same company that makes the bedliner kit, U-Pol Raptor Liner.

FWIW, I've had zero issues with the Raptor Liner on my fenders. That's sprayed on top of Rustoleum enamel paint.

Oh, and I picked up a wireless motorcycle tire pressure monitor system for cheap off the internet. It was a bit of a hassle to get set up, but it shows pressure and temperature of the tire via a replacement valve cap. I'd rather have something internal to the wheel but I couldn't find anything aftermarket that would work with stock sensors without a lot of hoopla. I'll update after I get a chance to use it for a bit.
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Re: Rough Road Raindrop

Postby Louisd75 » Tue Aug 23, 2022 9:09 pm

It's been quite a while since I've updated this thread. There have been a few modifications but mostly we've been using the trailer.

Biggest mod was done to move the bikes off of and out of the truck. When the kiddos were little their bikes were small. It was a hassle to put them in the bed of the truck with all the other camping stuff but not the end of the world. Now the kiddos are bigger and they can actually go on bike rides, so I wanted to figure out a way to bring all the bikes. The bed of the truck is pretty full with everything else. The roof of the truck only works when we don't have the canoe.

I looked at hitch receiver racks for the trailer but didn't really want to worry about dragging the bikes or dealing with a bike rack blocking the galley. The roof of the trailer was another option, but it becomes more challenging to access the bikes in camp when we have the awnings deployed, plus the roof is a bit higher than is comfortable to put a bike into a rack.

Easy solution? Build a custom rack that hinges over the galley hatch. I initially looked at a simple pivot but realized that wouldn't work out very well due to the racks that I have. They're too long and it would hit the trailer when I opened the galley. I slept on it for a couple of nights before realizing that the solution was to use a 4 bar linkage. The hatch would be one bar, the forward rack mount to hurricane hinge would be the second bar. The third and 4th bars would be the rack arm and the little linkage connecting the rack arm to the hatch. If I did it right, the hatch would not actually bear much of the weight, instead it would be suspended from the rack.

So, after finding out that my go-to CNC cutting company no longer has a local office and getting ghosted by other shops, I picked up some steel from my local shop and got to cutting.

Here's where I wound up:

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You'll notice that when the galley is open that the rack is not at the same angle. This is because of the 4 bar linkage design; it's key to the bike racks not hitting the roof of the trailer.

Driver and passenger sides are mirror images. I used some 1.5" 8020 extrusions for cross bars to mount the bike racks to.

Room for four bikes:

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I did wind up having to add some gas struts to help open the hatch when the bikes are on. It takes some oomph without them. When we're camping and the bikes are down, I disconnect the struts at the top and let them hang out of the way. They're too powerful to close the galley otherwise. If I need to get into the galley I'll open it up and set the struts on their bracket till I'm done. It sounds more cumbersome than it is.

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I also added a draw latch to help secure things. I still have the motorcycle luggage locks for locking it. The draw latches can also be locked but they mainly help to transfer the bike rack load away from the galley lid and onto the body of the trailer.

I'm pretty happy with it so far. It survived a few days of washboard road in Eastern Oregon with no issues. I did notice that I lost a little mileage over what I normally do but I'm not ready to declare the bikes as the sole cause, particularly since we were driving in 40+mph winds through all sorts of elevation change with a 21' kayak on the roof of the truck.
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