Lookin' good

I am still behind schedule on my updates.  Over the last few weeks, the floor has gone in. This was an adventure.  I didn't buy much extra so I had to be careful with my cuts.  Luckily the only place I shorted the vinyl is hidden by the back gaucho bed. The trim cleaned up nicely with a little soap, water and steel wool.  I did not go for bright aluminum, just clean. You may also notice the walls are painted.  I know may will feel this ruins the camper, but we wanted to it feel open and light.  The ceiling will be stained, so we are mixing the old with the new.

Cabinets are painted to match the walls.  The drawer fronts will be an accent color but I am not sure what it is yet.  

Getting plywood that will bend easily has been a challenge for me.  I special ordered some at Home Depot.  The stuff bends very easily, but the surface quality is ok at best.  I am going to try and sand it smooth once it is all in but I believe I will have to get some veneer if I want a stain-able surface.  I am sure there is 1/4" plywood out there with a nice surface, but I couldn't find any locally and I did not want to deal with wetting and warming the wood to bend it.  The Gaucho Bench is now in.  There will be 2 drawers in the middle for storage. I have the sliding top planned but I will wait to put it in after I get my skins on and the new water filler installed.  I am pretty sure that I am going to need to put a bump on the right side wall for the filler.

Yesterday I got the upper cabinet built.  Here you can see it in temporary position.  I need to add a shelf in the right hand side door.  I will be filling all my staple holes and painting it this weekend. If you are wondering, I have been building the cabinetry with pocket screws, glue and staples.

I have also started on my electrical wiring.  My power center is at the floor left of the fridge.  The 12V wiring is run around but not hooked up yet.  I still need to install the 110V wiring.  Next up, I will be adding all of the cross member framing to the roof and deciding where the roof fan will go.

Cheers!

Been a long time

It has been a long time since I updated Lucy's progress. A lot of work has been done and she is beginning to look like herself.  This blog entry covers about 2 months work. 

After the floor was completed and fit to the frame, I removed it and put the wheel wells back on. Thankfully I didn't damage them when i removed them. Some primer and black paint and they were good as new.  Thanks to all the helpful people on the NSSO Facebook page, I decided to coat the floor with Herculiner.  This is a roll on bed liner product.  Many people recommended covering all of the wood with it but I decided to only cover the framing and edges.  My reasoning for this is that I think the plywood needs to breath.  The top will be completely covered with glue and vinyl flooring.  Leaving patches of un-coated plywood will allow it to dry out if it gets wet.  

I added a new wire harness and then bolted the floor down. I have also removed the wheels and re-packed the bearings.  This was necessary because one of the hubs did not spin easily. However, once the job was finished, the other hub does not spin well.  I have not repacked that bearing again yet.

We attached the outer walls on both sides, paying close attention to put them back where they go.  All of the openings were cut small so that I can adjust them to the aluminum skin when I put it back on.

To give Lucy some extra strength, I am laminating a second layer of plywood on the inside.  This will make her 1" smaller inside but I believe it is worth it.  I staggered the joints and used two different layers of 1/2" plywood.  I have used Heavy Duty Liquid Nails between the layers along with countersunk stainless steel screws on the outside.  These walls are sturdy now.

Once the glue dried, I used my router and a follow bit and trimmed the interior panels to size.  The exterior is a OSB grade and the interior is a Birch paint/stain-able grade.

Laminated Layers

Flush Trimming with Router

The cabinetry is coming along too. We found a refrigerator that replaces the old icebox perfectly.  We are not going to put a stove back in because I can't imagine cooking in a 70 sq ft camper.  This gave us some extra room for a bigger fridge.  On the opposite side the cabinet went floor to ceiling before.  We shortened it to make the camper feel bigger on the inside.

The flooring is in now and I have ordered flexible wood for the ceiling and I expect it in anytime.  I can't wait to get her under roof.

Cheers!

Starting to Rebuild

Things have slowed down a little bit with Lucy.  Swim practice and soccer started so we are running kids around a lot more. This being said, we have made some good progress.  I took the frame over to my uncle's house to get a hitch receiver welded on.  While I was there, he reinforced every weld on the frame.  Lucy is stronger than ever.

Once I got the frame back home I prepped the frame for painting.  I used the Por15 system.  It took most of the day to complete.  The degreasing went quickly but the metal etching took a while and was difficult to wash all the way off.  I had to use a rag to wipe off residue before I could paint. Por15 is awesome stuff.  It paints on super easy and leaves a smooth finish.  One downside is that if it is not removed right away, it sticks to skin for a while.  It took me over a week to wash off everything I got on myself.

You may have noticed the red rims in the picture above.  I ended up getting my neighbors son to clean them up and paint them.  He did an awesome job and he only had them for 26 hours.  The tires were removed, they were stripped, primed, painted and top coated.  After I got them back I had new tires put on them.  They look awesome now.

 

Once I got her back in the garage, it was time to start on the floor.  I took a lot of measurements off of Lucy before I took her apart.  This is a very important step if you are doing a rebuild. If you have the space, you should keep all of the parts you remove.  Unfortunately I don't have the space.  Anyway, I am putting her back about the same as before.  I am adding a slightly different framing structure below the plywood.  I am using pine 2x4's for support that I rip to the correct thickness.  The floor is simple 1/2" sanded plywood.  I will add some kind of coating to the underside next.  I was all set to use bed liner material, but now I am not so sure.  More research to be done.

Cheers!

What makes Lucy tick

I started the day out with more interior demo.  I got the upper kitchen cabinet out fairly easily.  The old paneling came apart pretty easily with a little coaxing from my hammer.  I also took out the street side dinette seat framing. Once that was done, I peeled up some of the old vinyl flooring.  This stuff is peeled at the edges but stuck down pretty good in the middle.  I planned on taking up all of the floor but using a putty knife is pretty hard work so I only took up a little.  I am thinking about getting a multi tool to take up the rest.  Anyway after a little flooring was out I decided to see why the ceiling was sagging over the dinette.  It was very soft and I knew there was bad wood above it. I used a putty knife and simply cut into the white vinyl ceiling at the front cabinets.  Once I completed the cut the ceiling fell in.

Pretty messy huh?  This took a while to clean up. After lunch I started removing the exterior aluminum edge trim. I've seen videos online showing how easy it is to do this and every time the trim is screwed in.  Of course this little lady was put together with nails.  These were a pain to remove.  I had to use a small flat head and a hammer to get under the nail heads to pry them loose.  Then I used a small nail remover pry bar to pull them out. This process was pretty time consuming.  Once all the nails were out I used my putty knife under the trim to pry it loose.  The aluminum is soft and you have to make sure to remove it gently because it will bend out of shape pretty easily.  Here is a picture with the trim removed. I had expected to see that the roof skins would be bent over the wall skins to help prevent water leaks.  This was not the case.  The skins simply butted up against each other.  The edge trim and putty is the only thing that keeps the water out.  I plan on improving that when I put her back together.

Once that was done, I had to remove all of the trim on the bottom edge of the camper.  Here is a PRO TIP for anyone removing the skins. Drill a small hole at every joint to make it easier to match the aluminum panels back up.  I have to credit Jennies Garage with this idea.

The skin is held in place with many staples however, most were loose because the wood underneath was rotten.  The ones that were not loose were rusted and I had to use a screwdriver to pry them loose. I built a wood frame so that I could mount the aluminum pieces and store them vertically in my small garage space.

With the skins off you can really see the water damage.  Keep in mind that this is the good side of the camper.  I know the other side is much worse.

It was a very good day and I made a lot of progress taking Lucy apart.  One thing I wanted to note here is how she was originally constructed.  All of the videos I have seen on youtube about camper framing has showed some form of stick framing with a thin plywood interior wall.  The Scotty is not built that way.  Her side walls are simply 1/2" plywood. There was a super thin layer of fiberglass insulation between the skin and the wood too.  

Replacement should be straight forward. I plan to use a sawzall to cut all the staples between the roof framing and the wall so I can pull it out in one piece. This way I can trace the old wall onto new plywood.  When I rebuild the wall, I am going to make it stronger.  I plan to laminate 2 layers of 1/2" plywood to make a 1" thick wall. This will provide a lot more strength and not too much extra weight.  At the bottom where it connects to the base it will still be 1/2" so that the camper does not get any wider.

Cheers!