[pete_79]

With all of the body, suspension and interior sorted, it was time to move on to making the roof.
The original roof was completely rotten, I had to take all of my measurements for the new roof off the alloy sheeting.
Fortunately there was a couple of ceiling battens in reasonably good condition that I could use for templates to get the curve in the roof right.

After seeing how poorly the original roof was slapped together and consequently fell apart, I wasn't going to make that same mistake.
Everything is now screwed and glued and sealed and painted and sealed again....






The top is done with 5mm structural bracing ply.
It’s only a C/D finish, which doesn’t matter at all, but it’s an A bond, which matters a lot.





Looks like everyone has had a go at sealing the hatch in this roof over the years. There’s more screw holes then tin around the cutout.
So to help get a decent surface to seal on I knocked some a 40x40 trimming around the timber opening.
Hopefully this will help.



The roof is now fully glued and screwed, with all of the top trimmings done.
Ironically the new timber flooring for the hallway that hasn’t been installed because of the trailer build did a great job holding the roof down while the glue set...



I picked up all new rubbers for going between the roof and the body when it's closed up for travelling.



Fitted the roof hatch and sealed it all up properly.
Also found a pretty neat spot for the solar connection. The panel will come later, but now it’s just plug and play.



It’s alive.....



I picked up a couple of sheets of 15mm thick foil insulation to go in the roof cavity.
The insulation didn’t need any mounting brackets, I just cut it a couple of mm bigger then each spacing between the rafters and squeezed it into place. It’s not going anywhere.



Then glued the ceiling sheets.



Pretty happy with the finish.



Then it was just the last few finishing touches before getting the rego done.

The coupling and wiring done.



And having 100mm of travel in the suspension has a little bit of an effect on the handbrake cable length, but got it sorted so it’s not too loose when lowered, but also doesn’t pull on the brakes when fully raised.



The original rear tank guard is 3mm plate, which is massive overkill. Because I had it here I fitted it back on without any changes.

Then knocked up a new guard for the front tank.
I had a piece of 1mm zinc plate that I intended to use for this guard, but it was a bit flimsy for my liking.
Fortunately the left over piece of 1.6mm alloy checker plate from doing the sides was just the right size for the guard.





And it fitted up nicely.
Just had to give a little trim around the upper control arm.





The last bits were the spare tyre mounts.
Can now fit any stud pattern rims and have easy adjustment up and down for different tyre sizes.



Also finished off the number plate light.



Then finally got it out for the first test drive.
I set the airbags at full pressure, expecting it to bounce around a bit being basically empty.
But it towed beautifully. ;D

And to my surprise my tare weight of 960kg is only just over the tare of a new standard Outback Finch.

Registration is done.
Tare= 960kg
ATM= 1800kg
And officially registered as a "Complicated Camper".....

It's now over getting the new canvas fitted and should be ready to collect on Tuesday.
The guys sent me a couple of progress photos the other day and it's looking pretty good. Can't wait to get it back home and sit it all up.

I also picked up a couple of good sized solar panels the other day.
We just signed a contract to get a new 10kw 3 phase solar system on the house, I got them to throw 2 used panels in for free to close the deal....



Should fill my camper batteries just nicely. ;D




Can't wait to get this this out bush now. ;D

[Marko_SJ]

Well done Peter. Hope you enjoy it.

[sideways]

Looks great pete, I'm not a camper trailer sorta person but I like following this build. I'm pretty sure you could do a build thread on a shelf and it would still be interesting and informative.

[pete_79]

Haha, thanks mate. Glad you enjoy them.

Well it’s pretty much ready to go now.
Canvas is done and the misses picked up a couple of new mattresses for it yesterday.



Got some fancy custom windows and storm cover put in it.

[Joe]

Looks great Pete

[kubes222]

That's a work of art! really nice build. great work.

[Eddy]

Damn fine little gadget! Congrats!

What does it weigh in at now?

[pete_79]

Eddy wrote:

Damn fine little gadget! Congrats!

What does it weigh in at now?

Thanks mate.

The Tare weight is 960kg.
That's with 2x spare tyres, 2x 100ah batteries, the kitchen bench extension piece and cooker, the full canvas awning (including all of the side walls) and the original canvas tent section all in/on the camper.

So the tare weight is an actual tare weight.
The only fixed extra weight that will be added is about 20kg for the upright fridge when we eventually get one.

Other then the fridge, my 840kg payload is actual payload, not like most campers/caravans these days that do their tare on the absolute basic unit and everything else comes off your payload.
If I take off about 150kg for the big domestic solar panel that will be fitted on the roof, 2 gas bottles and both water tanks full, I still have heaps of carrying capacity.

[pete_79]

We just got back from another great weekend away with the camper, so figured I'd do a quick 6 year update in here.

I have no idea of the total kms travelled since I built it, but it's A LOT.... We've been from Cairns to Western Australia and many, many places in between.
We've covered pretty much all of QLD, including one trip that went from Brisbane to Cairns via Winton. As well as Fraser and Straddy a whole bunch of times. We've chased as many waterfalls as we could find zig zagging all over northern and central NSW. Done a little bit of the VC high country and the Grampians.
This camper has also explored almost all of South Australia and even snuck over to check out the southern end of Western Australia. Coming home from Esperance to the Eyre Hwy via the Old Telegraph track through Israelite Bay and Bilbunya Dunes was one of my all-time favorite trips.

I've done a few small improvements over the years, like changing all of the plumbing over to proper John Guest style connections (instead of my dodgy garden hose fittings), replaced the solenoids for the airbags (went to a proper valve bank made for dual airbags instead of my dodgy setup with individual valves) and swapped over to lithium batteries.

We've had a few goes a using different awnings as well.
The old original canvas one was great, be needed so many poles and ropes to set it up.
So to replace one impractical awning I bought a monstrosity of a "free standing" 180 degree awning. This was the biggest mistake I have made on this whole build. That awning was huge and heavy and only lasted a handful of trips before a gust of wind caught it and folded in over the top of the camper. Lucky the mounting brackets bent and saved the main stricture of the camper from more serious damage.
That big thing got chucked on top of the shelves in the shed and we now run a normal roll out style car awning, nice and light and it works great.

Considering how many km it's done (and a lot of those have been gravel roads or getting dragged through tracks definatly not intended for trailers) there hasn't really been any mechanical issues, but the camper has needed a couple of sets of tyres though.
Well.... It only needed one set of new tyres, but being the tight ass that I am, I used a spare set of muddies that I had stashed up beside the shed. They were old and apparently didn't like doing 100s of km on western NSW country roads in 45 degree temps (that was the ambient temp, I can only imagine what the surface temp on the bitumen was) and 2 tyres delaminated at almost the same time, lucky I was carrying 2 spares and made it to Parkes to get new ones before the spares could blow out as well.

I had another moment losing a wheel right at the very start of one trip to Victoria. Totally my fault, I checked the wheel bearings before leaving home and obviously didn't tighten the wheel nuts properly. I had intended to do a once over on everything after our first night's camp on the road, but it was raining in the morning, so we just got up early and hit the road. Barely made it 100km that morning before disaster struck and was very lucky that I saw the wheel starting to wobble and could cut across to the shoulder on the highway before it fell off completely right as I came to a stop.

The worst thing I ever did on this camper was this massive awning.


Always check your wheel nuts, M'kay....


And here is some random pics from some random trips.
I'm sure there will be heaps more to come.....

From the tropical North.


To the far south west corner.


And everywhere inbetween.












Flooded in the Flinders Ranges (apparently a year's worth of rain fell in about 3 hours), we were lucky some campers downstream from us lost everything that night.

[sideways]

Thanks for the update, such a cool build and you've put it to good use

With our camping setup we would be monumentally buggered in that last photo.

[pete_79]

sideways wrote:

Thanks for the update, such a cool build and you've put it to good use

With our camping setup we would be monumentally buggered in that last photo.

We were up in a large flat camping area about 100m away from a dry creek bed. There was a family in a tent about 50m away from us and by pure fluke they pitched their tent on the only bit of high ground for 100s of meters around us and the water didn’t quite get into their tent, but they lost some gear that was on the ground outside their tent.
There was another group that set up a bit further down on a second level actually in the creek and they had just enough time to grab their kids out of the tent and move their cars up onto the main bank before everything else got washed away.

I was walking the dog in the dry creek bed earlier that afternoon. It was easily 4m deep and 6 or 7m wide. After just 2hrs of rain it was absolutely raging and lapping at the top of the banks.
Total freak event. Storms formed on either side of us just on sunset and merged right on top of us soon after. Was crazy to watch, going from sitting around the fire enjoying the lightning show up on the mountains one minute, then scrambling to save whatever we could from being washed away a moment later.

[sideways]

Far out Brussell sprout!