Foamie motorhome

Canvas covered foamies (Thrifty Alternatives...)

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Foamie motorhome

Postby redveloce » Tue Nov 27, 2012 11:31 am

I'm not actually thinking of doing this (yet), so this is just a boredom topic.

Has anyone considered rebuilding an old motorhome, or building one from scratch as a foamie? It seems like there would be a lot of potential weight savings, and there are tons of incredibly cheap rotted out motorhomes out there. Personally, I think it would be cool to 'restore' a 60's or 70's winnebago as a foamie, to see how much weight it could lose and still end up looking mostly original!
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby GPW » Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:33 pm

Anything’s possible !!! Would be Nice to eliminate all the parts that do Rot ... That alone should be worth the effort ... :thinking: ... a view not shared by the RV Industry which makes BIG Profits on repairing rotted structures on relatively new vehicles ... :twisted: :frightened:
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby redveloce » Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:39 pm

GPW wrote:Anything’s possible !!! Would be Nice to eliminate all the parts that do Rot ... That alone should be worth the effort ... :thinking:


Exactly! Also, just imagine how crazy you could go if you went the custom route. Some front wheel drive cars have a complete sub-frame with all running gear, suspension, and steering components bolted to the sub-frame. Imagine building a big teardrop with seats and a windshield, and one of those drive-trains mounted under/between the driver and passenger like a van!
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby redveloce » Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:42 pm

GPW wrote: ... a view not shared by the RV Industry which makes BIG Profits on repairing rotted structures on relatively new vehicles ... :twisted: :frightened:


Hmm, I wonder if it would be possible to build replacement walls from painted, canvas covered foam, and just screw the original aluminum siding to the outside? Perhaps that wouldn't last, or would drastically affect the structural integrity of the panel?
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby GPW » Tue Nov 27, 2012 4:33 pm

Perhaps if you were to combine foam and square PVC pipe Framework , then you could drill and attach the Al to the PVC like that ...? :thinking: no need for canvas , the Al becomes the skin and nothing Rots ... :thumbsup:
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby redveloce » Tue Nov 27, 2012 4:35 pm

I figured the glue/canvas skin would add rigidity that just aluminum siding screwed on wouldn't.
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby loaderman » Tue Nov 27, 2012 6:19 pm

I too had thought of this.
Get a cube van, truck or something.
Either need the frame work or the fibreglass/canvass skin.

Wonder about licensing it.

Even thought about building the best mileage motor home. Can't remember which website but I saw on that got over 30mpg
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby mezmo » Tue Nov 27, 2012 9:34 pm

Hi redveloce,

Winnebago in the 1960s & 1970s built their units with "Thermopanels"
which were a sandwich/composite of an interior plywood panel
+ foam + an exterior aluminum sheet all bonded/glued together.
They were used for the floors, walls and roofs of their motor homes
and travel trailers of that era. They already did what you're
proposing !

http://trade.mar.cx/CA329198

Potential builders would be following in good footsteps.

Cheers,
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby Bogo » Tue Nov 27, 2012 10:03 pm

I had a Micro RV project which was to put an RV back onto a Toyota 4x4 pickup. Frame was to rotten so I scrapped the project. Anyways, the back was to be a small hard sided pop-up and would have provided full standing height inside when up. Wall construction was aluminum/foam/aluminum panels for the walls and ceiling. The floor was to be aluminum tread plate with hat channel supports. Spray on foam was to be used under it to insulate it. The frame was to be 1/8" aluminum angle and folded plate welded at the corners. The AL/foam/AL panels were to be glued or VHB taped to the inside faces of the frame. I had the perimeter external frame to better handle tree limbs, etc.. I also needed strength to maintain the shapes of the lifting top and the bottom. If you are not going off road, then just fiberglass/foam/fiberglass panels fiberglassed together at the corners should do fine. I was careful with my weights, and was able to manage to keep the weight under 600lbs. The original pickup bed it would have replaced weighed close to 300lbs.

This thread http://forum.ih8mud.com/expedition-buil ... isers.html over at IH8MUD has a similar design to what I was eventually thinking for the back construction. There is also a thread on the same vehicle over at Expedition Portal.
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby donrebyct » Tue Nov 27, 2012 10:17 pm

loaderman,
The MH you are thinking of is the first generation Vixen, a FWD class A with a pop top hinged on the road side. It had an Audi diesel and stick tranny. This model was built in the mid 80s, and reportedly would get 30 mpg. It was replaced with a fixed top that didn't cause much drag, and the powertrain was a Buick V6 with auto tranny. It was supposed to get around 20 or so mpg. They were fabulos MHs, but didn't survive the late 80s; too small and practical. Google Vixen MHs for a few good websites.
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby Aligator944 » Wed Nov 28, 2012 5:34 pm

I found this a while ago, pretty sweet!

Image

Image

Has a wood interior:
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby Wobbly Wheels » Wed Nov 28, 2012 11:39 pm

^^ NICE !!
---------------------

A verbose story, and a caveat since a project of this sort would likely start with an old donor rig...
Feel free to skip to the last couple paragraphs.

I had a 24' 1977 Dodge C that I had bought sight unseen (i know, I know) off of a guy who had been a good friend up to that point. I was working out of town for a few months and had seen the RV in his yard but never seriously checked it out - always kept it clean and claimed it got used pretty regularly...good rubber, good windshield, no algae, the 360 ran like a champ, etc.

Anyway, the first clue was when I picked it up and the drums were seized. Not a problem and to be expected from storage...but he said it got used 'regularly'.
:shock:
Something smelled rotten in Denmark but I had already bought the corsage so this is the girl I had to take to the dance...

I called a tow to get it home so I could go over what turned out to be an un-"sure thing" before taking it on the road. When the tow driver picked up the nose, the tin on the back end caught a hummock in the grass.
It was a bit drizzly so he had the tow's windows rolled up and, over the noise of the truck's diesel and whatever he had on the radio, couldn't hear three of us yelling at him to stop until he had torn the back corner open.
The back wall had stayed put as the rest of the moho was being towed off the lawn...

Long story short (longer ?...), I got it to the lot where I could work on it and in the cold light of day (that shouldn't have been streaming through the back corner into the closet) I could see that my good friend had hornswaggled me...good.
I carefully extricated the tin sheets from their perch so that I could repair/replace the damage and still salvage the rest of the camping season in it.
Next I started tearing out the rotten 2X2 framing, shoring up the walls and roof to keep the box square as I went. I kept digging until I got to solid wood: halfway up the back wall to about where the leak was in the back window and 3' up both side walls to about where the last seam was in the roof tin.

Well, at this point I had some figurin' to do. I had the front 2/3 of what was probably an ok rig and just needed new tail feathers...or I had to completely strip the body and rebuild it from scratch.
According to the sticker, this rig had been built in Georgia. Being a country boy from a small town in Canada, I knew they had peaches and southern accents in Georgia, but I had no idea they used chimpanzees to build motorhomes !
The body had been framed from 2X2s which, as I'm sure you know, measures 1 1/2" X 1 1/2". No, the aforementioned chimps apparently had a tendency to lose or eat all drill bits, because the only one they used here was a 1" bit. That includes drill holes in the roof framing in a straight line from front to back to run a speaker cable...which is two wires, each about the size of the tines on a fork. Thanks to their single-minded (and single drill bit) approach to running wire, they created a full length sag in the roof on each side from front to back. That was done in 1976 and it was all downhill from there...

Anyway...the straw that broke this particular dromedary's vertebrae came as I was crawling around underneath looking at how to attach a new floor on which to build an entirely new, lightweight body. Lo and behold, what do I see but a vertical line of fine rust in the frame channel. This "ready to go" moho had turned into a project that was NOT feasible any more.

Did I mentioned the rear diff had leaked (despite being "used regularly") and was bone dry during the 30km wheels-down tow home ?...

Anyway, it turned out to be a lesson into how to turn a few grand into a shockingly small cube of metal...but at least the engine ran.

Lemme tell ya about the trailers next...
:lol:
==========================================================================================
Sorry, yeah...foamy mohos...

Forget about MPG, rot resistance, lighter weight, foam squeaking while you drive, etc...most commercially built rigs run so close to their gross that, by the time you throw in a change of clothes, a case of beer, and a pack of hotdogs, you're over the GVWR. Mine was 10,200 GVW and the weight when I scrapped it was 9850. Yes it was a soggy old rig, but the water weight was offset by other places where the wood framing was rotted away to nothing but a memory (like the cabover).

Ever since my 'adventure', I have been thinking about how to get more out of a smaller, economical platform. My foamie trailer was a natural progression from the foam-cored fiberglass that I couldn't afford to build after my previous experiment with steel stud showed its own flaws. I think a foamie moho is DEFINITELY a doable project.

Seems to me the big difference between it and what's already been shown to work in 'foamie-tech' is in the mounting of the shell. From what I've seen, a moho floor is a few stringers on body mounts and the single ply floor is laid on top of that. A few stringers of aluminum box channel to bridge the mounts would be a start, and one could build a SIP floor onto that. That would take out the flex in a coach body that a trailer's frame normally sucks up.
Had I built the floor in mine stronger (with that in mind), I would have no worries about taking my shell off the trailer and plunking it onto a cab-and-chassis - the whole 'sock' thing.
Last edited by Wobbly Wheels on Wed Nov 28, 2012 11:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby atahoekid » Wed Nov 28, 2012 11:44 pm

That is one sweet Chevy motorhome and the back isn't too far off of GPW's Foamie Conestoga!!!! I'm not a Chevy fan but I gotta admit that is one nice truck!!!
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The Road Foamie Build Thread: viewtopic.php?t=45698
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby GPW » Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:17 am

Quote: “ I had no idea they used chimpanzees to build motorhomes !” .... That pretty much sums up the RV Industry .... :roll: Chimps and Liars !!! :twisted:
Everyone knows how I feel about the RV Industry .... The Biggest fraud perpetrated on the public since “trickle down” economics ... a truly EVIL empire ... :thumbdown:
There’s no place like Foam !
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Re: Foamie motorhome

Postby Bogo » Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:51 am

A couple decades ago I was looking at getting a RV for live aboard use. I quickly realized that I needed to convert a bus myself to get a solidly built one that could take years of daily use and handle sub zero temperatures. When a wall moves under finger pressure, something is wrong... :shock:
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