The domed section is about a mm thick at the top of the curve, so that's pretty thin. Hopefully that's good enough to preserve your seal & not displace the gasket too much.
Installed the solar panel this morning. Will have to get a picture. It was early & cloudy, but it started putting out power immediately. Since I'm not really ready for the battery yet, I used the shipping box to make a cover for it & keep it safe for now while I'm still working on things. The canopy finally gave up the ghost yesterday afternoon. We had a pretty good wind storm & when I came home from work, it was shredded. Had to pull it down & toss it out this morning.
I finally installed Frank's (Sheddie's) kiwi door catches today. I used some 3M automotive adhesive to locate things on the door & the side panel. It's easier than measuring things & doing a layout, just stick it where it belongs & run the fasteners in. Used the stainless steel sheet metal screws on the body & some short stainless machine screws with acorn nuts in the door panel. I was surprised by the thickness of the aluminum door panel, had to make a trip out for longer screws to fit the catch on the door, but that's checked off the list now as well.
Ran some more screws into the front seam at the air conditioning box area, since the sheet I bought wasn't long enough to do the whole roof in one piece. It's just a lap joint, but it should be weatherproof now.
I tried the hatch struts & had a small problem to deal with. At first I thought my math was off a bit, as the hatch wouldn't close completely. I had done all of this last year, very early in the build, set the threaded inserts in epoxy, laid it all out & then forgot about it all until now. I climbed in and looked at it as it was closing slowly, with a flashlight. The problem was my "over engineering" of the fasteners. I decided the #10 screws were too small last year, so I went with some 1/4" machine bolts (hex head bolts). Here's what the plate looks like with the bolts in place.
Unfortunately, the bolt heads were too large & the fat end of the strut was hitting the bolts & causing a problem as the hatch moved through its arc. Chalk one up to a complete lack of experience on my part! Plan "B" was back to the hardware store again for some 1/4" flat head machine screws & a 1/2" 82 degree countersink to go with them. I took it all apart, brought the plates into the shop, used the drill press to open up the plates for the screw heads for a flush fit & put it all back together once more. I'll take a picture tomorrow to show the changes, but the struts work the way they should now. They do change the hatch closure slightly, but it should be OK. There's about 1/100th clearance between the screw heads & the fat end of the strut (plenty?), but at least it misses & nothing was boogered up too badly.
Watch out for this one if you're working on strut mounts on your build. The fasteners should be flush with the surface of the mounting plate if you use the type in the above picture and turning the plate like I did.
I'm using 100# struts, which should be just about right once the speakers are hung & the rest of the stuff is mounted inside the hatch. The ones & got are about 28 1/2" when open & about 17" in the closed position. Still need to do the lights, inner skin & a "few" other odds & ends. This hatch is really a time consuming item, probably the most complicated thing on the entire build the way I'm doing it. The good news is that it works, it stays open & stays closed.
Worked on the latch this afternoon for the hatch as well. I ended up using some masking tape on the jamb & red lipstick on the rod ends to spot the holes at the sides. It was a little bit "fiddly" to get things right, but I was able to locate the rods, bronze bushings & epoxy them in place, so it should be set up well enough over night. I use paste wax as a mold release agent, so the epoxy doesn't stick to the rods and glue the hatch shut. Again, will take more pictures tomorrow to add to the post. I was too pooped this afternoon after working to take any pictures.
Thanks to Brian for the door bushing idea (Vedette) & Dales133 for the idea of tapering the rod ends to make the fit easier when closing the latch. Both ideas worked very well, thanks guys.
by lfhoward » Thu Oct 08, 2015 6:31 pm 
Pretty ugly. 
