Re: Wandering First Build - Finally Going Again

[Prototear]

Once again, my log entries lag behind the actual progress....About 2 weeks ago I dry-fit the other half of the hatch hinge and start of the hatch frame and discovered that the large screw heads were bigger than the space allowed inside the hinge so it didn't lay down as flat as it should.
These were 1/4" x 2" pan head stainless screws so I had to find something else (I was using stainless in case to avoid corrosion years later and I wouldn't want to dig into the finished hatch to replace them. Elevator bolts or similar could have worked but I didn't find any stainless ones in the area or online that would take over a week to get so I figured I'd see if carriage bolts could work without too much deformation around the holes.

Since I have only one hurricane hinge on hand, I first tried it on some scraps of aluminum the same thickness as the hinge and I figured the deformation would be acceptable.


I also checked to see how much of the bolt head clearance I had saved - here is a scrap with one carriage bolt and one pan head screw set inside a scrap of aluminum angle showing a big difference so I had apparently solved my problem.


In dry-fitting the hinge with the top frame wood again it was much better but still didn't quite lay right. With careful inspection with a flashlight underneath I could see that the upper side of the bolt head was still hitting because it was too close to the hinge and didn't completely fall into the pocket apparently made to accommodate fasteners so I pulled the bolts back out yet again and ground down one side of the head.


This let met finally get to building up the hatch frame. My original rib plan was to use 7 - a double rib at each end plus 3 single ribs evenly spaced between them. Since I made 8 ribs I decided to use all 8 rather than the 7 I planned to use with 4 double ribs and make the ribs line up with the seams and fastener heads I already have in the roof above. Even though I made them from the same template, there were more small differences between them than I expected. I built the frame in place in the trailer get a good fit. Ribs are attached to top of the frame with pocket joints and Sika adhesive. This shows them with spacers, clamps and a sturdy scrap of 3/4" plywood to take the place of the eventual bottom frame member thickness.


The next day I sanded the ribs and attached the 1x2 poplar on the bottom and sanded some more to get the ribs as even as possible to one another.


I also re-discovered that the trailer frame and floor have a slight crown with the center about 3/16" higher in the center than on the right and left sides. This meant that the frame hits first in the center then the outside corners when pressing down. I had noticed this when installing the floor but that was about 2 years ago! I used a belt sander to take a little meat out from the center to reduce the difference and I may have to a little more later (one of my options may be to change the fasteners holding the rear threshold trim from rivets with big heads to either oval head or even flat head screws. I then installed blocking in the frame along the top and bottom with pocket joints and more Skia adhesive. I also put one block center to hold a light fixture to be installed later with pocket joints but no glue in case I have to move it . I ended up moving it because the chosen location would interfere with the eventual countertop edge.


I added a 1/8" luan skin to add lateral stiffness to the frame using staples and gorilla glue,


Here it is a few days later.

[KCStudly]

Good progress!

[Prototear]

I've been looking for some good looking interesting tail lights that can accommodate the curve of the hatch, have their face go straight toward the rear and preferably be LED and surface-mount to avoid making holes in the hatch (especially if I have to replace them some day). I've looked at some of the aftermarket retro lights and motorcycle lights. The curve of the mounted side of the light may dictate how high it needs to be above the ground to find the right angle, and I may need to either shim, shape or somehow seal the light against the skin. I also need something that isn't canted to the left and right to accommodate the curves of the rear of the car.

Some ideas are a 1960 Lincoln Coupe or a 1982 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham but it seems that they may be too difficult to make or shape the bezels if I could find the lights.

For now these seem to be more practical:
Harley-Davidson which is commonly available even with different trim and colors (my next door neighbor who has a Harley even had this upgrade he's been thinking of installing so I got to see how it looks here)


or a 1968 Beetle which appears to have little or no cant for this era of Beetle. It even has a separate backup light that I could use to illuminate the area behind the trailer sometimes.

I also need to make sure the chosen lights are DOT approved because the trailer will need to pass inspection by the WA State Patrol so I can get a title and plates for it.

[Prototear]

When placing the hatch slam latch to check the fit and clearance I am not sure if I can make the fit precise enough to have it close securely. I've seen it in many other builds in this forum and will continue to ponder it.

I had first thought of having it catch along the side walls (they do have a stiff metal frame after all) but there is the ~1/4" gap along side the hatch and the throw of the catch is not huge so I thought about a longer throw bolt latch. I discovered that the T handles I have with their square shaft will also fit a garage door latch and they are pretty cheap. I found them for $8 at the big orange box store and removed the extra latch in it so it won't lock on its own, and filpped the bolt around so one would fit on each side of the hatch.




I saw a nice tall metal catch in the build journal of the Alaskan Benroy that I may still consider once I get to the point of checking my hatch's fit as I get it all installed and trimmed.

Before I worry about the hatch latches, however, I have some more hatch issues to resolve.

With the slight crown to the shape of the floor, I need to shape the bottom edge of the hatch and used a block plane to shape the poplar frame.


With some elbow grease I got it really close and the rest can be pulled in by pressing a knee against the outside edge when latching it if needed.


Note there is NO clearance between the hatch and the floor so either I need to remove a small length of the hatch arc or allow the hatch to sit slightly high, which may then affect the ability to seal along the side wall or need a taller rubber seal. Unfortunately, an "opportunity" to remove a fraction of an inch from the length of the arc of the hatch has come along to fix another issue.......

I have realized that I cut my hurricane hinge too short on the moving hatch side of the hinge as I didn't leave an overhang to lay down on the side wall seal.

This was after installed the upper portion of the hinge permanently with rivets and sealant (I had been holding it in place with clecos til the day before I realized this).


And after installing the aluminum skin and carefully shaping and sanding a shim to close the gap I described a couple entries ago....


I looked into arranging the side trim to compensate but I could see a potential for binding it in the hinge and certainly for water to sneak by. I even mocked up a few configurations with scrap pieces I had but I figured the water droplets just won't care how hard I work or how much time I spend, they will still get through. I looked through the forum and found that other have made this same mistake and ended up getting a new hinge. I called Frank Bear and discussed my ideas and decided to get another hinge that should be here soon.


I removed the hinge from the hatch and ended up having to cut holes in the blocking to get to the back side of the carriage bolts I used to attach it so thoughtfully (so much for that idea!). With the top ledger board of the hatch frame exposed again I'll plan to carefully slice off a small fraction of an inch to shorten the arc of the overall frame to recover some of the gap I was missing at the bottom.


Finally, I ran into one more issue but it is more manageable. I had glued the aluminum hatch skin on the luan surface with contact cement as done by some others before me - I figured that since some folks float the skin that the cement would help for while but if it eventually fails all the trim and hardware installed eventually will hold it in place. I had left it clamped for about 4 days but when setting it up to remove the hinge bolts I saw it slowly coming loose. For now I have just re-clamped it and will get the trim all in place once the new hinge arrives. I'll have the hinge on the top, T molding on the sides and a wide band of tread plate across the bottom, plus tail lights, license plate light and hatch handles.

[Prototear]

My new hinge came from Frank Bear in June and I put the hatch half on the hatch as I finished the trim on the sides and bottom. My hatch skin was still peeling slightly with the contact cement letting go but it didn't matter once I got the trim all the around attached. I attached the side trim using the method shown in this excellent Oregon Trail'R video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IRm3xXvwII.


The bottom 5 inches of the hatch has tread plate with fender welting for an accent consistent with side trim planned.

The new hinge fit nicely along the top of the hatch and it settled in better than the first one.


I tried to create some tabs to tie the side trim to the bottom trim as shown in the video above like they used on the corners.

but unfortunately the epoxy didn't hold when I tried to bend them over.

I got this much done then left on a vacation to Michigan so it sat for a couple weeks. Upon returning I had help placing the hatch in the rear of the trailer to check if the alignment was better than I had before (since I trimmed the frame for more leeway) and it seemed better, although there was a small gap between the trailer frame and the hatch.


In thinking of all the ways to close this gap, I found the simplest method worked pretty well - bending it down with a dead-blow hammer closed most of the gap and I may bang some more later or use some extra rubber seal if needed.

I then a couple weeks of distractions then got back to work. I removed the upper part of the old hinge by drilling out the rivets, deburring the holes and cleaning off the sealant to get it ready for the new one. With so many holes in the steel tube crossbar I had to select a new hole pattern on the new hinge to miss all the old holes and make it look clean so I pre-drilled the hatch and the 1/4" bar underneath it together. To attach the new hinge mated the halves together and placed the hatch in the rear of the trailer and carefully aligned it with shims to center it and maintain the ~1/4" clearance to both side walls. I found that the slightly overhanging roof aluminum skin interfered with the screw heads on the top of the hatch holding the hinge so I trimmed back the skin using a carbide tip round-over router trim bit. Of course, I had to remove the hatch again to do this, but it was worthwhile as I got the clearance I needed. Each time I had to secure the hatch firmly I used a strap through a cross-member and secured it inside the trailer.

I drilled out 6 of the 15 holes through the hinge into the steel crossbar and held it with 6 long clecos and tested the hatch. It moved smoothly up and down so I had to complete the attachment.


I drilled the other 11 holes, tipped the hinge back away to clean the trailer roof and place butyl tape, lay down the hinge again, reinsert the clecos, check alignment then rivet it all down with closed-end watertight rivets.


At one point I tried to slide the hatch off the hinge to one side of the trailer so I could set down the hatch to continue working it but found the hinge is much tighter than the first and I was unable to slide it out. I was able to move it a few inches with a helper and a dead-blow hammer but it was looking like it would be too much work so I'll probably finish the hatch interior, lighting, wiring, etc in place.


I'll get the seals set up in the hatch then move back to the side doors to hang them.

[Prototear]

The hatch clearance at the bottom is still almost zero despite the shaving I did on the frame while changing the hinge (a month or so ago), so I figured I needed to open it a little somehow. The first part of my plan is to insert the D-shaped rubber in the slot of the wall edging to see how much the lifting of the hatch along the side curves will open the bottom. It worked about as much as one might expect, opening the gap about as much as the D-shaped side seal when compressed. I would like to get another 1/8 to 1/4" to have room for aluminum edge trim and a rubber seal along the bottom. I am also considering removing the floor threshold (riveted down a couple years ago!) and trimming the floorboards back slightly then installing some lower profile floor trim. I'll cogitate on it for a while and move on to other areas of the trailer for now.

While contemplating the hatch, I am getting tired of using kickstands to hold up the hatch while I work and will need my gas struts soon. To know what size to get I have been looking at the thread describing how to size these with a spreadsheet to crunch the measurements. I weighed my hatch as instructed (approximately) near the distance from the hinge where I think I'll be attaching them. The hatch will weigh a bit more once I add the eventual speakers, interior skin, lights, and some blocking to hold some stuff inside the frame. Since I have the speakers now I placed them at about the same distance I plan to install them and measured 85 lbs in this position. A couple weeks ago I weighed the hatch directly on the scale before installing it and measured 55 pounds alone.

After welding them, I cleaned up the welds and the welding flux mess, masked the area around the tabs then touched up the paint. I hope to hang the doors this coming weekend.


When installing the doors, I'll need some meat in the frame to anchor the screws to hold the 3 hinges. I cut, painted, and welded 3 pieces of 3/4" x 1.5" steel channel inside the frame where the hinges will need to fasten. Since I had installed the foam insulation long ago, I needed to cut it back to mount these (and not set it on fire when welding). I used the 3/4" channel so that welding the edge along the 1" square tubing of the trailer frame would allow me to keep the weld within the wall and not leave a lump, and an even bigger reason - it had some sticks of it laying around already and it would probably be difficult to find angle with such a significant difference in the depth of each leg. Here is the inside view of the 3 new tabs on the front frame member of the right doorway. These are intentionally oversized to have margin for the eventual holes coming through from the outside.


Lastly, the tail lights I selected arrived so I'll need to figure out the details of the installation on this curved hatch surface. They are LED lights made for a 1968 VW Beetle. Since the back has no curve to fit the hatch I'll need to create at least a rubber or metal wedge to fill the 1/2" or so gap.

[Prototear]

After the perpetual hatch work I moved back to the main side doors. I built the doors months ago but now it is finally time to mount them. I had to use the 3/8" spacers behind the hinges just like I did on the smaller read doors. With several tedious steps of trying the fit, adjusting, drilling, tapping and cleaning and after several hours I finished hanging the left one and took this picture last Sunday night. The next steps for this door will be to finish the trim around the door jamb and decide how to mount the latch.


I used the red roller seat as an adjustable jack under the door to hold pressure under the bottom edge to keep it flush with the bottom of the trailer frame.

I had hoped to hang both doors in the same weekend but there were many other distractions so the task this weekend was to hang the right door. I first had to make 3 more hinge spacers out of a 1-1/4" bar of aluminum. I had used an older 1/4" spacer (that ended up being too thin) as a template. Here is a block of the aluminum bar sandwiched between the template spacer and a block of hardwood on the router table that served as my makeshift mill.



This router bit took quite a beating with some fouling of the aluminum on the bit edges but I realized that it didn't matter much since I had to do more refinement on a grinding wheel and buffing with a wire brush on the drill press.

The right door needed more work than expected since the door opening needed more trimming and shaping to get the door to fit well within it. About 8:00 at night when tapping the holes for the screws (in the trailer frame), the tap had finally had enough tapping and would no longer cut threads so I made a quick run to the orange box store to get a new tap, recheck the alignment and finally finish the mounting after 9 hours of work that day!


There is a post in the center of my garage wrapped with carpet to prevent car doors from banging into it (way back when cars could fit into my busy garage), and I've had to plan the placement of the trailer so that the post doesn't interfere with my work.

I like how the doors look on the trailer, but if I could do it all over again I would rather order manufactured doors and would even have paid more to have them built to my specs to fit the way I wanted. Sure, I saved some money on materials but accounting for my time, it was way more expensive and took way longer making my own (even if I assume minimum wage, although I'm worth more than that).

[Prototear]

This is my first entry in about 3 years. I had to put this project on hold then had some spurts of build activity and I finally have some momentum! My last build journal entry was in August 2016 about when we bought a neighbor's house and completely renovated it - since there was so much more at stake with that project my teardrop. I got to do some work in 2017 and 2018 but have finally been making steady progress this summer. I focused more on making progress when I could rather than catching up my out-of-date build journal.

I now have enough pictures and notes for a dozen good entries to show what I have done and what challenges have come along the way, so there will be more to come......

[Prototear]

This is for work done in a brief period in July 2017.

After installing my doors the summer before, my teardrop sat in the garage with the hatch up and the inside floor got filled up with lots of materials, boxes and tools from a house project so I had to first clean it out. It is amazing how much stuff can gather on a horizontal surface in a garage.

I had been planning how to install the Fantastic Fan vent on the roof and the problem was that the fan body was flat but trailer roof was curved with no horizontal surface at all - just one big curve! I had left a square hole in the roof deliberatly between the roof structural members with the idea to make an aluminum box to fit the curve so the front of the box was nearly at the level of the roof and the rear sat higher above the roof leaving the top level. The vertical face on the rear would hold a third brake light.

I cut 3 pieces of aluminum angle for the left, rear and right edges and planned just a piece of flat stock for the front edge and had a friend, Brian, with a TIG welder weld it for me. While drilling holes for the fasteners and a bigger one for the wiring of the rear brake light I broke a weld (then another failed with it not staying square) - this was partly due to grinding the rough welds a little too much. I cleaned it up and made some gussets to reinforce the corners then Brian was kind enough to weld it again for me. It was really sturdy this time and I installed it first with some brackets on the roof into the roof frame so that I could rivet the frame to them.

Here is the frame sitting on the roof with some clecos to hold it still, looking toward the left front of the trailer.


Then the installation of the frame complete:


I had either forgotten to take a picture with the fan and third brake light installed or simply misplaced it. It is pretty much the same today as it was when installed so I'll have to take another or you'll just see it in another entry soon...

[Prototear]

Not much happened for the rest of 2017 and into 2018 then I got started on some wiring in the hatch. I also added some cross-members between the hatch ribs for mounting lighting and speakers. I left the wire bundle lengths long (probably too long) as I didn't want to end up short when I finally install interior and especially exterior lights, knowing that will be a while before I get to it.

This is the underside of the left side of the hatch. The wires hanging in a knot will eventually have some kind of connector to attach into a junction box inside the trailer along the upper left side.

[Mr. Lahey]

Glad you're back and able to work on the camper some. I too have had a very long build time since I've started. Mine sat for two years as well. I'm now this year closing in on getting it ready for final assembly. I should be ready to camp in it for summer 2020.

Keep pluggin away at it when you can. You have a real nice looking camper there!

[Prototear]

In March of last year I started to install low profile roof rack tracks so that I could install a Yakima rack on top of it. I settled on this pair of Rhino-Rack tracks from etrailer. https://www.etrailer.com/Roof-Rack/Rhino-Rack/RTC16.html. These track seem to be extruded aluminum.

My main challenges were to have a strong support underneath and mostly to fit the contour of the roof with these very straight rails. I first tried bending them in the wood forms I used to make my plywood for the roof structure (from about 2014).


I was unable to get much curve to them, even heating them with a torch!


My next step was to try the wood frame with much more curve but that offered only some improvement. I couldn't easily get the curve to fit the trailer roof (which has no flat area on top).


My neighbor suggested I get more aggressive and heat it and bend it manually in the trailer hitch insert at the back of the trailer (with a block of wood to hold it in place).


I had previously welded some small pieces of steel angle to the top frame tube long ago but with this difficult fit I figured I needed more tabs to be able to more firmly pull it in tight. Looking upward from inside on the left, this shows a painted black angle from long ago plus 2 angled building brackets from Home Depot riveted into the top frame tube (there are more of these on each side).


After lots of fine tuning I got the contour to fit pretty well then riveted them through the roof to the tabs underneath that were attached to the top steel tube of the trailer frame. I used some adjustable clecos to pull them in tight before fastening the rivets down over some butyl tape.


After a few sessions over a couple months I had it finished.

[Prototear]

At the end of summer we moved my in-laws into the house so much of the stuff in the house went to the garage and the stuff in the garage (particularly the trailer) went to the driveway. Here are some pictures from the end of August. This was the first time the trailer had been out of the garage in a couple years. Maneuvering the trailer down the driveway to different parking positions a couple times about doubled the mileage on the tires! It was covered under a truck cover for about 5 months then opened back up on March 2019 to finally start working again.

Over the winter I got some mildew starting on the wood surfaces inside so I cleaned it out then used mildew/mold killer on it to finish it off. Fortunately the interior was not installed yet so it just got on some of the visible wood ribs and the inside of the hatch and doors.

Here are pictures from March 2019. The thing on the tongue is a wide fender that will later be cut in half to install on each side (stay tuned).

[retep]

Looks great. Love the roof rack idea. Sounds like it was a pain to install but well worth the effort. Nicely done.

Peter

[Az Pete]

staying tuned!