Tape or glue camper box to the frame?

[dancam]

I need to secure my camper shell to the frame. I am using 14x 3/8 carriage bolts, 2 on each crossmember. However the frame if fairly flexable and because my camping box is an open top foamie with only a 1/2inch plywood floor i would like to tape or glue the bottom for more rigidity.
I have good industriel double sided tape, but its a lot of tape and its not thick, not much room for all the dips and waves in the metal. Also im not sure how well it will adhere the paint on the pmf to the paint on the frame.
Would an adhesive be better? Loctite 5570 looks like a good product but unsure on price/availability/work time and if it will adhere to house paint or just melt it...
Any suggestions? Thanks.




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[greygoos]

I dont think tape or adhesive will make it any more rigid. I assume you are going to stand on the floor? I would build a torsion box or at least go to 3/4 ply. Going from 1/2 to 3/4 will only add 25 pounds or so.

[dancam]

I dont think tape or adhesive will make it any more rigid. I assume you are going to stand on the floor? I would build a torsion box or at least go to 3/4 ply. Going from 1/2 to 3/4 will only add 25 pounds or so.

Thanks. If they stick it would prevent the frame from sliding on the box, you dont think they will stick?
With the plywood the original frame design was more rigid so i went with 1/2. Now its built and i have hight and weight restrictions, so no torsion box and no time or desire to rebuild. 3/4in ply would have added 40 pounds i had figured to this 5x10 trailer which was originally supposed to be lightweight...
Trailer itself has become heavier due to design changes and miscalculations so now we can carry even less stuff than the minimal amount we were going to be able to.



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[greygoos]

The bolts will prevent it from sliding.

[dancam]

The bolts will prevent it from sliding.

I doubt it. If the bolts were going on the perimeter sure, but they cant. They are going 7-11 inches in on the crossmembers. Middle is 7inches, ends are 11 inches in. Crossmembers are pretty thin and not rigid. The trailer will see pretty rough roads.

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[Tigris99]

Most adhesives wont hold up to that.

Option 1, drill through floor straight through steel in the outer frame of the trailer and bolt down.

Option 2, clamps: flat pieces of steel with a hole drilled in them. Bolt through floor and through the steel plates. Plates over lap the outer frame. Only do it near corners and use large washers under the bolt heads in the floor.

Im not quite sure what your towing with that has your weight requirements so low yet able to handle rough roads. Almost any car has a 1000 lb towing capacity and you are way below that by far. Doubt your trailer weighs more than 400 lbs with the plywood and foam box.

My project i can still lift the entire one side of my camper off the trailer one arm to put blocks under it. And trailer itself i flipped over no problem by hand. So i know yours cant weigh much at all, its only thin gauge steel.

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[dancam]

Most no, there are plenty of structural adhesives that will but none that i know of will adhere to paint well enough or the paint will delaminate, thats why i planned to use tape originally.

Im not sure how well the photos worked but the only reason i am not doing option 1 is because i cant. If you see the camping box the wall is as thick as the outside of the frame. If your able to zoom in on the frame photo you can see where i welded tabs on the front and rear to bolt through on the crossmembers as well as the holes drilled through the middle ones.

Welding the tabs to the outer part of the frame and shimming them would have worked better than what I did. Tomorrow i will look and see if thats a possibility to have them close enough.

I did have a build thread but when i asked this question on it nobody said anything so i started this, also photobucket killed it, there are no more photos.

But anyway, this frame is not as light as it looks and that 3500 pound braked axle is heavy. There is a 12ft long top half that goes over it, its a pop-up trailer. Then a 'nose cone' if you will. Water tank underneath and so on. My max weight goal is 1800 pounds loaded and that will be hard to stay under.
Anyway, thanks!


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[Tigris99]

Really staying under 1800lbs still isnt hard at all. How many gallons is your tank? Water is 8.34lbs per gallon. So 10 gallon tank, 85lbs.

Trailer is still less than 1000 lbs. But say 1000 to round up. Foamie built if it was 200lbs total for the entire camper part id be shocked. But for giggles 400lbs

Your at 1500lbs round way up on everything. You have some serious "wiggle room" for weight.

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[dancam]

Really staying under 1800lbs still isnt hard at all. How many gallons is your tank? Water is 8.34lbs per gallon. So 10 gallon tank, 85lbs.

Trailer is still less than 1000 lbs. But say 1000 to round up. Foamie built if it was 200lbs total for the entire camper part id be shocked. But for giggles 400lbs

Your at 1500lbs round way up on everything. You have some serious "wiggle room" for weight.

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The trailer is 735 pounds right now with the top, bottom and frame. Still need the front box, plywood cubbies, doors, bed slats, water tank which is 75Litres under the trailer, 50L inside the trailer i think, propane, batteries, up to 50L of fuel.... and so on.
3month road trip with 4 people, need to pack a lot. Bikes and inflatable boat would be nice but probably too heavy.
Clothes, tent, food, cooking stuff and all that for 3 months adds up fast.

Need the fuel and water storage to be able to go through alaska, yukon and the territories.

My build thread with no photos is here http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?t=66816

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[Tigris99]

735 total weight, 400lbs water and fuel. 1135. Rest of the parts for the build itself puts you at about 1300-1400lbs before personal stuff (bikes, cloths etc.)

Your trying to do a lot and got your weight goal really small to carry enough for that amount of time. How much is going in the TV? And i may have missed it but what are you towing with?

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[Woodpecker]

Best option for that, IMO, would be Gorilla Glue and grind off any paint from the gluing surface.
When you spray it with water it really expands and fills the gaps so don't use too much. It's still gonna crack the foam when the trailer flexes.
I use a lot of shish-ka-bob skewers when I do foamies, Maybe you can stick a few of those up through the frame into the foam? Just an 1/8" hole.

[QueticoBill]

I can't tell if the details work but I'd sure trust wood to wood adhesive a lot more than wood to steel. Why not glue dome blocking to bottom if ply deck and than fasteners - bolts - horizontally into the vertical flanges if frame? Seems much stronger. Could be 2 or 3 2x4s across adjacent to the framing members.

I look at the 50,000+ pound containers on highway held by a few pins, read of someone setting their baby in a carrier on top of the car and driving 50 miles before they remember, or a couple of straps holding an expensive boat to a trailer - just not sure you need much to hold the box on.

[dancam]

Best option for that, IMO, would be Gorilla Glue and grind off any paint from the gluing surface.
When you spray it with water it really expands and fills the gaps so don't use too much. It's still gonna crack the foam when the trailer flexes.
I use a lot of shish-ka-bob skewers when I do foamies, Maybe you can stick a few of those up through the frame into the foam? Just an 1/8" hole.

Gorilla glue, interesting. I will think that one over, thanks! i have 31/32 of a bottle left anyway, lol.
The bottom of the box is plywood and the walls are framed with 2x2's including the bottom.

I can't tell if the details work but I'd sure trust wood to wood adhesive a lot more than wood to steel. Why not glue dome blocking to bottom if ply deck and than fasteners - bolts - horizontally into the vertical flanges if frame? Seems much stronger. Could be 2 or 3 2x4s across adjacent to the framing members.

I look at the 50,000+ pound containers on highway held by a few pins, read of someone setting their baby in a carrier on top of the car and driving 50 miles before they remember, or a couple of straps holding an expensive boat to a trailer - just not sure you need much to hold the box on.

Dome blocking? Sorry, i dont know what that is and a google search didnt help.
The idea of putting basically joists on the bottom of the trailer and bolting through the verticle part of the angle iron is interesting though. If i can think of a way to waterproof or rot-proof that wood i may try it instead of the carriage bolts.

And its not really wood to wood or metal to metal, the plywood bottom of the trailer box has pmf over it, soaked in paint and then rockgaurd. So its like a bond between the rockgaurd and metal frame.

Im not worried about the trailer box coming off in the slightest. The 14 carriage bolts are more than enough. What i want to prevent is movement between the trailer frame and box. I dont want the 2 sliding against eachother as they flex and i want this to be as rigid as possible to reduce stress on the pmf. A regular foamie is strong, but cut the roof off and not so much...
Thanks for the help



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[QueticoBill]

"some" blocking. "d" is adjacent o the "s" and my primary laptop died this week. (Shout out Dell - they decided Thursday to just replace it - 2 1/2 years old -and new one arrived Friday. Wish I could set it up so fast.)

I think you would still get a better bond to wood than steel -and could be 6" pieces of PT two-by. Then again I don't know what the "rockguard" is - coating, film, mesh, metal, other - but that may be the harder attachment.

[dancam]

Oh! Ok
Wow, lucky you!
Rockgaurd is gravel gaurd. Um, used on cars and trucks, the textured stuff lower down around the rockers and wheel wells

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