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Restoring a camper top
matberry - March 20th, 2011 at 07:22 PM

Since there's plenty of campers out there I thought doing a thread of this current job would be interesting for some.

Basically the repair/resto (oh such an overused word) was forced into being as Trish, the owner of the bus and Marcus's wife got wet on thier last camping trip. So before you know it, I got a phone call asking what to do.....within a few hours another call from Marcus advised me of his arrival with a camper roof in the back of his ute.

The biggest trouble was all the fittings, handles, hinges struts etc etc were bolted through the roof, thus totally relying on sealant to keep everyone inside dry. Not good enough mate, so I had a plan, while repairing the damaged areas, we could embed aluminium threaded sections, glass up all the holes, paint and hey presto...no more leaks.

Here is a repair where the inner fillers were waterlogged MDF board, this was dug out and replaced with lightweight foam and filler, then glassed over to be stronger than ever

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/16032011347.jpg

The angle iron along the hinged edge was rust converted and treated, then sealed with a much stronger layup of glass that incases the strengthened reinforcements

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/10032011328.jpg

Here's some threaded plates during instalation

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/16032011343.jpg

and a repair section around a hatch

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/10032011330.jpg

This is a Doormobile camper, so things vary from a the usual Sopru version. Here you can see the perimeter ally strips for the curtains to fasten to.

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/10032011326.jpg

The details around the curtain rails were pretty ugly, so we reshaped the area to support the curtain rail better and between the windows a glassed in section replaced the missing trim panel, the second pic you see some form work pre glassing

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/16032011345.jpg

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/16032011342.jpg

during glassing

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/17032011348.jpg

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/17032011349.jpg

and some 2 pack inside and we ready to play on the outside

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo199/mattberry-photo/Camper%20roof%20resto/18032011350.jpg


vassy66T1 - March 20th, 2011 at 07:43 PM

Nice work Matt

The girl is happy ;) (and so are the boys)