Project Z61 Pop Out/Up Off-Road Camper

[Ottsville]

Can I ask how much the ACM panels were? Are using 4 by 8 or a different size?

Thanks

[bajallama]

Can I ask how much the ACM panels were? Are using 4 by 8 or a different size?

I think I paid $45 for 4x10 and $38 for 4x8. These are all white 3mm panels and can be cut with a circular saw pretty easily.

[aggie79]

I'm really interested in your use of ACM and hope you don't mind a few more questions about your installation. You said that the ACM is attached to the framing by adhesive. Did you sand the paint away or do any surface prep to the ACM before applying the adhesive? Did you use any type of spacer to maintain a certain adhesive thickness or did you just apply the bead and "squish" the adhesive to whatever thickness resulted?

By the way, I love your design and you have mad fabrication skills!

[bajallama]

I'm really interested in your use of ACM and hope you don't mind a few more questions about your installation. You said that the ACM is attached to the framing by adhesive. Did you sand the paint away or do any surface prep to the ACM before applying the adhesive? Did you use any type of spacer to maintain a certain adhesive thickness or did you just apply the bead and "squish" the adhesive to whatever thickness resulted?

By the way, I love your design and you have mad fabrication skills!

Thanks! The design is changing again, thus the slow progress but hopefully this is the last revision to the structure.

So the adhesive I am using is called Lord Signlok 406. A 225ml container is enough to glue one whole side or probably half of a small teardrop. They're $35 a tube and you need to buy the applicator gun which is $40. You have about 5 minutes before it starts to set so you need to work quick, and make sure you have enough clamps! I made this mistake and I had some spots with uneven gap on the top because I ran out of clamps. It's not bad and some of it can be fixed. It's said to be used on unprepared metals so I sanded the mating surfaces with a sander on my angle grinder and glued it one. It seems to have stuck really well so I'm pretty happy with it so far. Even at 3mm, the side I did feels very sturdy and almost zero deflection when pressed on.

[aggie79]

Thank you for the information. I'm going to file it away in my ACM experiment file.

[aggie79]

Any updates on this build?

[bajallama]

I had to sit on the trailer a while because other projects needed finishing but back on it again. I had problems with the previous design because when the top would pop up, it would become very unstable and actually fell off a couple times. There is really no good way to make the top like that limit from over traveling without adding a complicated cable system. So I went back to a previous design of a hinged top with the front that slides up. Since the rearward portion of the trailer is the be area, head room is not that necessary. Here is some current pictures:



Here is the previous design: (Sorry for the crappy dark pictures, only get to work on it in the dark in my driveway)




The latter design definitely is not ideal for headroom and aero but it was just too difficult with my current resources to get the first idea working correctly.