Tyrtill's Collapsible Foamy

[John61CT]

Yes, what is good enough but cheap fairing compound, when trying to get a really nice smooth finish?

Maybe even for gelcoating?

[Tyrtill]

Just trying to hide the nastiest of my seams.

[GPW]

Try ironing the seams down ( before you paint ) … keep your iron clean ...

[ghcoe]

Might give my mix a try. I think it is less likely to crack than using a pure spackle. If you use spackle only, I suggest thin layer of spackle and then sand smooth and apply gripper. Layer up this way till you get the surface built up to where you want it. Takes a long time, but less likely to crack than a thick coat of spackle.

Coe's Foamie Smoothie Mix
I took a empty gallon paint can and marked inside from the bottom up every 2". I added Glidden Gripper to the first mark, Dap ALEX PLUS caulk to the second line (about 2 tubes) and Dap Fast'N Final Lightweight Spackling to the final mark. Made about 3/4 of a gallon all together. I mixed it with a paint mixer on a drill and it came out nice and creamy.

Before application I sanded the canvas after I applied the sizing coats to knock down high points.

I found application to work best with a 4" putty knife. It goes on basically like you are painting on the primer with a putty knife instead of with a brush.

In most cases the canvas has a higher weave going in one direction. Working with the higher weave or going 45 degrees to it hides the weave the best. Basically you want to keep the putty knife gliding over the higher weave to fill in the lower areas. I was able to hide some small wrinkles fairly easily as well as some dimples.

I did not think this mix would go vary far. I have done both sides of the body, doors (one side) and roof, and still have about half the mix left still.

For me it was easy to work with and had a long work time.

[Tyrtill]

I'll put that in my recipe book. I just happen to have all of the above.


This weekend has been somewhat productive. I finished the skin on the bottom and added some reinforcing strips to the corners. I cut the front bench section (hopefully my foam benches will work out).





Threshold cut and skinned. Will be covered in drip edge to funnel water out.




Yesterday I cut all the main pieces for the top section and glued the roof together with great stuff.


I had great plans for today but ended up helping my brother sandbag around his house (high levels on Lake Ontario) so all I got done was cutting the roof off from the boards I accidently stuck to the bottom of them and getting the back upper wall gluing.

FOR ANYONE BUILDING A SIMILAR CAMPER: DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND DOUBLE CHECK YOUR WALLS ARE STRAIGHT AND PLUMB
Mine aren't and I am suffering for it. Somehow they are bowed inwards toward the middle of the camper. I think when I glued the nose together the great stuff pushed the walls and forced them to bow. Now that the canvas is on it is now permanent. I will probably have to add some material on the inside space to get my weather stripping to seal (or maybe try to find longer weather stripping)


Notice the 1/2 plywood for spacers.


So now I have a rough idea of what it will look like behind the car (lower section+roof+3.5inches) We'll see when I get done but I probably should have cut 4 to 6 inches off the walls to make it lower profile while still being about 6'5" inside.

[Tyrtill]

In order to finish gluing the top section I had to lift the roof 3 1/2" to clear the wheel wells. This was planned on and I'm hoping to add some reinforcement on the inside in the top 3 1/2" of the shell.


I've been using 1/2" plywood (that measures just over 3/8") to set my gaps before gluing. I put the pieces behind the plastic (which works so well keeping the great stuff from sticking to things you don't want it to. I'm so glad I stumbled upon that tip)


I determined that the wall needed a lot of points of clamping to keep the gap even so luckily my dad has a ridiculous amount of scrap lumber laying around. Also if you look close you can see some weight on the roof and jacks on the ground lifting the main wall sections.




I found a slightly better way of clamping that involved ratchet straps around the whole trailer and it used slightly less lumber.



I'm excited about tomorrow because I'll get to pull the top section off and see how it turned out.

[Wolfgang92025]

I'm watching,,,,

[Tyrtill]

Having a little trouble with my upper door.



The sides due to the flexible construction of foam spread out as dancam warned me but its to the point where my latch will disengage spontaneously. The hasp is my fix for outside when I leave the camper and there will be an inside "lock" that holds it together while I'm sleeping but I would like a latch that operates fairly easily for when we're hanging around the site and going in and out.

I have tried running straps from the top to the trailer but the angle is to acute and it doesn't really hold the sides in. I even cut a small groove in the throw/bolt part of the latch that kind of grabs the strike plate but that sometimes fails too.

I've been looking at the hook sliding door latches but they don't seem to make them for thicker doors (1.6").


It needs to be able to operate on the inside so I can get out but it also needs to stick out less than about 3/8" from the door.

If I don't find a commercial solution soon I will venture into fabricating something similar to a gate latch for it. Or maybe a long throw spring loaded pin.

[Nodrog]

Hi- could you add a u shaped piece of plywood to the back around the door to make the doorway more rigid? I have used those screw in drywall anchors for some things...they make a shorter one that won't go thru the foam, they are metal, I think they look like zinc. You would predrill small holes in the ply, say 1/8, then drill thru those into the foam . Then drill out carefully @ 1/4 or a bit larger, maybe @ 5/8 deep. squirt or poke some gorilla glue into hole, pretty full and screw the anchors in... they will line up real well with the holes, trust me! Wipe excess glue with 91% alchohol. And applied thru the covering, they are really strong, you would be amazed. Then you would screw your ply on (cut off the screws that come with anchors or get some stainless screws, put some poly caulk behind to seal and stick it on more, prime, paint. You could use maybe 3/8 ply, screws around perimeter maybe 6" centers, maybe a few in the middle.. Just an idea...Trailer is looking good!! Nodrog

[Tyrtill]

Thanks for the suggestion. I did think about sandwiching the rear wall with 1/8 plywood to stiffen it but I just didn't like the idea and I ideally I would have had to pull back the canvas and glue the plywood underneath so it would be weatherproof. I have the latch working adequately now by changing where I put the supports for the upper section.


Now for some updating:

The great stuff job on the top went pretty well with the plastic. It did find a couple spots where it overexpanded and made it hard to remove the top but eventually I got it up on top.


One of the first major "uh oh" moments happened when I cut the door for the upper section. It was definitely rectangular when I drew it but once I broke through with the knife the sides spread and it became a trapeziod


I did a rough trim job on the great stuff and the extra foam on top and I got to work sanding. I may have been a bit overzealous with the utility knife/hot knife in areas which lead to some unevenous when I rounded the corners. At this point the camper earned the name "Lumpy".




My second "uh oh" moment happened when we dropped the top half lowering it onto the bottom and blew out a rear corner. This ended up happening twice both times a little great stuff and I was back in business.


Since the top was already a two person job and I needed to do the next step before canvasing I attached my lift point boards to the top by hotwiring out foam on both sides and sandwiching the foam with 1/2 plywood. I used guerrilla glue construction adhesive for the step and then some foam and caulk to try to get a more even transition.




Next came the upper door frame


And then trimming the lower door frame and threshold with metal. (Glued in place with GG CA)


With the help of my father we took the top of the camper off and flipped it upside down. One of my design plans was to glue a 3 1/2" tall x 3"wide strip of foam around the perimeter of the top.
It had three purposes:
1.) To space the top so it didn't hit the tire wells when it was down.
2.) To hopefully stiffen the walls and give more surface area to glue between the walls and the roof
3.) You'll find out if you keep scrolling.


The wife and I then spent two long days canvasing the top and putting three coats of PPG Gripper on the bottom. At this point I have run out of glidden gripper.






The 3rd reason was attaching my cupboards. The front weird shaped one was the hard one to cut but the easy looking cupboard was the one I messed up.


I cut back the fabric anywhere I was going to use great stuff and then sprayed and weighted the cabinets.


Trimming the foam in some areas of the cabinet was terrible

I made two mistakes with the cabinets. One was I put too much weight on the "regular" looking one and it shifted and ended up staying that way do to laziness and time. The second was I should have canvased them at this point while gravity would hold the canvas on. If you haven't canvased things upside down you don't want to start.
I even had to trim the lazy cabinet because it interfered with the top coming down.



It was at this point I started to feel that the camper was coming together.....

little did I know I still had 3 more months before it would be campable.

[Tyrtill]

The wife and I canvased the roof and then primered the whole top on the outside (and most of the inside)


Glued the metal "trim" on the bottom (GG CA)

The trim came out a bit wobbly

With a little more glue and clamping it was better but not perfect

Rinse and repeat for the top (hopefully slightly better)


Then door construction began


I ended up having to trim it (measure 3 times and still cut twice)



Next I made one of the biggest mistakes of the project.
I used the lightweight spackle to try to make my seams look better and they did look somewhat better but the finish ended up looking weird.
The main problem I faced is after painting everywhere with the spackle under the paint bubbled. I plan on sanding and repainting next year but I may have to sand all the spackle off to fix the problem. Please do some testing before you try this with your camper. Or play it safe and just put some effort into making your seams look presentable.
I'm not saying the product is bad I'm just saying that between the product and it application by me for the purpose of smoothing went terribly wrong somewhere.

I spent almost a whole week of mornings and after works spackling sanding and spackling again. I waited 3 days after spackling before painting but that may not have been long enough for things to completely dry. It went on pretty thick in some spots.

Finished spackling and trying to mock up the window that I decided was too big.


First coat of paint. Made me think of calling it "The turtle"


Then began work on the lift system since the top was now so heavy that my father and I had some difficulties.

The general idea of the lift system is a main crank axle that drives four cables that go through the floor of the camper through pulleys in the lower walls and down to attachment lift points in the upper section.



The pulleys I found at grainger and they are pretty specific. They have a 2" diameter at the cable interface and are 2 1/2" in diameter all together. Since my plan was to only have a 1/2" gap between layers that left me with 1/4" wiggle room. and with the pulley being 2" it kept the cable as close as possible to the wall faces without touching it.

I used some 2" steal flatbar to mount the four pulleys too and trimmed the screws off the back. This made it so I could hang the pulley in the wall. The reason I didn't want to put the pulley the other way is I was afraid of the cable jumping the pulley and then cutting through the foam.

I carefully cut holes for the pulleys in the wall directly over where I planned on putting my cable "axles"

The pulleys are just friction fit in the slots because there is very little horizontal force on them at any time.

To pass the cable through the floor of the camper I made bushings out of pipe nipples and caps with holes drilled through to feed the cable.


I used large washers to take up any extra length of the nipples and spread the load in case the cable tried to move the nipple in the foam.


Crank axles were installed under the trailer using eyebolts as bushings and 3/4 EMT conduit (replaced later with 1/2" galvanized plumbing pipe)

The wire ropes were spliced into a flemish eye before being attached.

For the lift points on the camper installed earlier. Holes were drilled above where the lift axles were going and Large bolts and washers were installed with the cables attached.

The other end of the cable was attached through holes drilled in the crank axles using knots but eventually I replaced the knots with wire rope clips which made them easier to adjust.


My first iteration of the lift system cranks did not go to plan. My idea of a drive cable pre wrapped around the rear axle led to problems with syncing the lift front to back. I learned that due to the small circumference of my cranks the 1/8" cable overlapping on itself could make a difference of up to 8" during the lift which would make things jam.

Unfortunately one of the bad lifts led to damage to the front from pulley points. The combination of the front lifting the whole weight, the upper section jamming, and a 200lb guerrilla running the crank led to this:

If I were to do it again I would probably embed long wood members in the wall possibly supported to the frame before canvasing. Everything still works fine but it has made things ugly.

My solution to the problem was to simplify a little and eliminate the "drive cables" that were supposed to spin the rear axle. I instead lengthened the cables to the rear lifts and use the rear axle as a really wide pulley instead. When I redesigned it I also made sure that the attachment points on the crank axle were offset from where to cable came down to it making it so the cable was slightly angled during the lift and spooled nicely onto the crank axle instead of overlapping onto themselves causing out of sync lifting.

This video shows how the rear cables now redirect and spool nicely onto the front crank axle.


And here is one of the very first "good" lifts of the camper. I was quite excited.

[Tyrtill]

Work on the camper started heading towards getting it weatherproofed and road worthy because my father needed to start getting things out of the garage so he could prepare to pour his slab.

So the doors got finished up
I went with a ball latch for the lower door since it doesn't need to lock. This worked for a while but something changed (not sure what) and it would no longer latch (the gap was too large). It ended up getting replaced with a magnetic latch on the inside face of the door.


The top door came together pretty well




One thing to keep in mind is that the cheap amazon latches say they work in doors up to 1 1/2" thick and they mean it. The latch worked fine.... until I skinned it. Then I had to get longer screws, add a piece of metal to the handle so it would activate the latch, and the deadbolt switch inside no longer works.


Now that the camper is weatherproof I started working on my internal bench system to stiffen things up for the road test. At this point I still didn't believe the camper was going to survive it.



After it dried I strapped the top down (which is most likely unnecessary but it makes me feel better) and away I went.




The camper survived and towed quite well. It becomes a bit of a parachute over 50 mph (I wish I made it at least 6" shorter) However some data from my car revealed some problems particularly high transmission temperatures. A normal person would just use the Subaru I own to tow it but instead I ordered a transmission cooler.

[GPW]

T’, All Very COOL Dude … Great Job !!!

[Tyrtill]

So after my successful drive test I finished cutting and gluing the main inside benches and table. The light colored piece will become the table. The other middle piece is removable if needed to help me work in the front compartment. Most of the wood was notched in and glued with great stuff (foam to wood) and sometimes GG CA for wood wood connections. A couple of screws were added for good measure. If you look closely on the right hand side that bench is hinged so I can put a 12v fridge under it. (I chose and Alpicool CX30)

With the middle Removed



Next I spent almost a week modifying my windows to half the size. I resized them because I was worried about structural integrity with removing that much fabric and foam. I wanted awning windows and they could not stick into the cabin more than 1/2".
I removed all of the window panes and carefully measured for cutting.

I moved the crank mechanism back to give more clearance

Once it was cut down and put back together I made some new connecting pieces for the crank mechanism and secured them with some bolts with elastic stop nuts.

Once the windows were both done and working I marked out their locations and used a jigsaw to cut out the window. + 1 1/2 for a wooden window frame.

Glued in place with great stuff.


The next day I trimmed the foam and dry fit the windows.


I decided that I would just spackle around the window frame *THIS WAS A MISTAKE* (I will be removing the windows and canvasing around them next year)

Then they got painted.

Once everything had dried I installed with windows with butyl tape and roofing screws


Meanwhile the lovely wife had done some canvasing on the supports for the kitchen counter and the "closet"

[Tyrtill]

My next struggle was "weatherproofing".

I discovered that it is very difficult to seal a camper that is so flexible.
My original plan for the gap between the upper and lower half was 20mm pile weather stripping. I figured that my gap would be 1/2" or less so 3/4" weather stripping would be plenty. However when I cut the door the back spread and that made my gaps very uneven up to 2" when the top was up in the back.

My solution to this problem was 2 5/8" garage door seal


I glued it on with alex plus *didn't cure and the ends where it did cure it did not hold well* which I replaced with GG CA after a large cleanup of Alex Plus. Once again test your adhesives BEFORE you put it on.



This seal has worked well so far. Occasional in the front corners it will fold in and cause some jamming when lowering the camper but this is very minor. The seal actually works a little to well when raising and lowering. If you leave the doors closed it makes it much harder to crank up and you can hear the air sucking past the seals in the few gaps there are. They do a pretty decent job at keeping the bugs out. I have to rework the door area but everywhere else I don't have bugs come in.
I had some left over so I tried gluing a drip flap over the door....

... and it didn't work. I felt silly afterwards but of course when you close the door it gets stuck IN the door and actually diverts water inside. You live you learn.


While I was gluing those seals I was also working on the door seals.

Originally I was using 3/8" foam self adhesive weather stripping for the doors. I put it on the metal trim pieces around the door and bent the metal pieces. This kind of worked and there still is a some of the weather stripping in places. On the upper door this wasn't going to be enough so I bought 1" expand and seal. This stuff is not something I recommend. It leaves a black residue on everything it touches and it does expand. Some places I had to trim it so the doors would shut even though there was 3/8 of a gap for it to compress to. However it is one of the few things that was thick enough to fill some of my gaps. Once I had my weather stripping fairly good I also glued on my pile weather stripping around the perimeter of the door for added bug and draft resistance (hoping to keep rain out while driving).

The pile weather stripping has given me some problems because in some positions the door is tight and tries to rip it off. I've done some things to help this but it still isn't perfect.

You'll also notice my new drip edge over the door. This works to keep water away from the door while parked but I wish I made it V shaped to direct it to the sides of the door like GPW's foam stream. Maybe next year.

The goal at this point was to get the camper out of my dads garage and back to my home. That's why I had been working only on waterproofing and structural integrity. I had one more thing that needed to be dealt with... the high transmission temperatures on the car while towing. My research led me to a Hayden Automotive 677 Rapid-Cool Plate and Fin Transmission Cooler. For its size it was supposed to be a good bang for the buck ($40) and I was pleased with the results.
Just some zip ties, hose clamps, and a little extra hose and it was installed in front of my radiator on my little Honda Fit.



As you can see it made a huge difference and even with my car working significantly harder it kept the temps down to basically coolant temperatures. In everyday driving it dropped the temperature about 30F and while towing its about a 45 degree difference.

I'd been working on it at my dads garage almost every day for 2 1/2 months. With the tow vehicle ready to tow, the lift system functioning, and the camper ready to live outside it was time for an emotional day. On July 29th I was ready to take the camper home.