[Proxy]

This is awesome inspiring work, hoping to make a camper out of my trailer one day, once I've built up as many skills as you have, keep up the good work, very entertaining

[pete_79]

The front water tank mounts are sorted.
Going to have 2x 60L tanks in front of the axle (plumbed as a pair) and 1x 60L tank behind the axle.
All of the mounting hardware for the rear tank was there originally and just needs to be cleaned up and painted.
I’ve been using the crusty old tank just for making the front mounts, it will be getting chucked once I’ve sorted the front hangers.







The trusses on the drawbar are all welded out and the guides for the handbrake cable are on.

[Eddy]

lookin' right purty !!

[Gwagensteve]

This is ace.

[pete_79]

Thanks guys.

Had another big productive weekend in the shed.
The rear bar is almost complete, just need to add the vertical stays once I flip the frame over the right way up.











I’ve also tacked up all of the last bits of the front water tank mounts, just waiting for the new tanks to arrive before I finish welding it all out.





And finally got the shocks setup as well.
I’m running truck shocks that are built for airbags and designed to be installed on an angle.

They’re not as stiff as I expected for truck shocks. The compression is softer then I thought it would be just moving it by hand, but rebound is reasonably stiff.
Apparently these ones have some fancy hydraulic lockout system designed for taking the full weight of truck trailers on airbags at full extension. Sounds like sales talk, but I’m sure it means my little axle won’t phase them at full drop.

[pete_79]

180L of water should do it.

[Gwagensteve]

For truck shocks they’re super short. What was the application?

[pete_79]

A whole bunch of random truck trailers (Hendrickson, Kenworth, etc), coaches and motorhomes riding on Neway Air Suspension systems and late 90s-2000s GMC/Isuzu FSR (Basically a canter sized cab chassis used for skip bins, tippers, etc).

This is the controls on these specfic Monroe ones, if it means anything to you;
Rebound = 1045
Compression = 407

I noticed a yank Freightliner delivery van (basically a Sprinter size) on airbags used numbers around 400 Rebound and 200 Compression (but those specific shocks are way too long for me).
Just out of interest I looked at a whole bunch of other Monroe shocks and their applications to see if these Rebound/Compression numbers would start to mean anything to me.
I found that one Peterbuilt truck is specified for shocks with numbers in a huge range; Rebound from 546 up to 1380 and Compression from 117 up to 470.
So with that, I'm still just guessing how mine will go.....

[sideways]

No one has ever put this much effort or high quality work into one of these pop up campers!

[pete_79]

sideways wrote:

No one has ever put this much effort or high quality work into one of these pop up campers!

So it would be the true definition of a “sleeper” then...?

Just another crappy old pop up camper on the outside, but check out what’s happening under here....

[pete_79]

More progress.

Rear bar is mounted.


I welded in a couple of 15mm sockets on the front of the drawbar so I can pump in some Tectyl and sump oil to protect the chassis from the inside.



I fitted a tow hitch and tied it in to the main frame.
I’ll use this hitch for a bike rack to carry 3 bikes (for the misses and kids) so wanted make sure it could handle have a bit of weight bouncing around on it.







Bumpstops are sorted.
I’m running front bumps off a 79 series cruiser.
The mounts are 6mm think angle welded on, then drilled and tapped.




I actually tried to prep the frame properly, I’m usually really rough with my painting. But after doing all of this fabrication work, I figured it was worth the effort to wire brush the old frame properly and take my time wiping it all down with wax and grease remover before priming with a decent enamel primer, thinned with Penetrol.





And got the first top coat down this evening.
Will probably do 2 coats of black and finish it with some sound deadener.





Hopefully it will be ready to flip over on the weekend and I can start assembling everything and move on to the body soon.

[barbender]

Absolutely Awesome !!!!!!

[pete_79]

Well it’s back on it’s wheels and staring to come together.









I knocked up a couple of new wheel arches to maximize my internal storage space, but still have enough room to fix 32x11.5” tyres in the future if I want to.







Then gave everything a few coats of paint and got my new flooring sealed and ready to fit into the chassis.







And the rear water tank is fitted up ready for plumbing.

[kubes222]

Such an awesome build!

[pete_79]

Flooring is done.

[pete_79]

Walls are on and started fitting the lifting mech.

Every joint on each frame has been done with liquid nails, then nailed and/or screwed, then I glued all of the internal lining with liquid nails.
Once all of the frames had dried then every corner got some nice big screws and all of the bottom cords on the wall frames have self tappers going through the wall frame, the timber floor and the main steel frame.











Just need to grab a new pulley so I can finish installing the lifting cables.



Next is the internal fit out.

[Marko_SJ]

Been a while since I've been on AZ.

Very inspirational work Peter, looking forwards to seeing your next update.

[pete_79]

Cheers mate, everyone seems to be having long breaks between logging in around here these days.

I got the new pulley and winder mech all sorted with a new main winch cable.







And the seats are roughed in.





And that’s how it’ll sit for the next couple of weeks at least.
Heading off south on a 3,000+km road trip for the next couple of weeks or so.
Hopefully I can get back in time to unload the ute and pack to take Jeff out to the NBS Suzuki Social on the 9th and 10th of Nov.....

[kubes222]

Really enjoying watching this build.

[Perram]

Pete this is the tits!! Love you fab work!!! Makes me want to try make one!! Keep posting!

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[pete_79]

Cheers guys.

There has been a little bit of progress happening.
The clothes drawers are sorted;





The baskets are just running in simple slots and the ply will get painted once we decide on the internal colour scheme.



And the slide out kitchen was almost sorted, but we've now decided to go in a different direction with this.

The first concept was to use some of those blue boat slides.
I ran the router down the middle of the slides to make a square edge, then cut it in half.
This was the test piece and it looked like it would work OK.



These pieces go either side of the SHS frame to support the top and bottom edges, with a thin surface on the sides just to help stop jams if pushed unevenly.



I went full scale and it still worked OK, it even handled having a 25kg tyre chucked on the end of it.









But i needed pretty tight clearances between the slides and the frame to hold the weight nicely.
That meant it was pretty difficult for the misses to slide it out, and it would have been basically impossible for the kids to help setup or pack away.
So we've scrapped this idea and now going to go back to using some normal lock open/lock closed drawer slides.

Today I picked up some cheap stainless steel shelves that will be perfect for the kitchen, so I'll grab a length of stainless SHS on the weekend and knock up the new and improved kitchen in the coming days.
Then hopefully my 2 external alloy hatches should be all folded and welded ready for me to pick up before I start my holidays next week and get some serious shed time.

[kubes222]

Really enjoying watching this build, keep the updates coming!

[Proxy]

Still very impressive Pete keep us posted!

[vet 180]

Will be watching this one. Looks great


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[pete_79]

The new kitchen idea is done and much better then the original idea.
I went with a stainless steel bench on locking slides with an extra extension piece that slides into the main bench.

Firstly I had to trim down one of the stainless shelves that I’d bought and fill the ends with some stainless SHS tubes.



Then I needed to fill on the corners of the other shelf to make the extension piece.



And welded a couple of bits of tube for the extension piece to slip into the main bench.



And it all goes together like this.

Main bench.





With extension.



And all together with cooker and drop in sink.



The extension piece is stored under the main bench, so not to interfere with using the main bench for quick stops.

[pete_79]

Also been making progress with the interior.

The I’ve finished all of the internal lining, but still need to add the alloy trimmings on all edges and corners.









And made an access hatch in the side panel of the storage drawers, so I can easily get in to fix any issues with the pulley or cables in this front corner.





It’s all coming together now.

[pete_79]

Both water tanks are now fitted and the plumbing is mostly finished now.



Each tank is plumbed separately, with individual fillers, outlet filters and valves at the pump.





The pump is just a compact little Shurflo 3.8L/m unit that I squeezed into the back panel.



I’m only fitting one water outlet at this stage. I might end up putting another tap somewhere in the future.
But for now we’ll just have this hose in the other rear panel.
This should work as a kitchen tap and let us have a quick rinse before we jump in the car after packing up camp.







The airbags are also plumbed up ready to connect up to the compressor.





And finally the wiring has been roughed in.
Just waiting for my switches and breakers to get delivered before I can finish of the electrical stuff.

[kubes222]

This is one mint little rig! Great work.

[pete_79]

I was planning on fitting the new alternator, engine mounts and shackle bushes on the Sierra today, but it's a cold, grey, drizzly, miserable Melbourne-esk kinda day and I'm struggling to get motivated to do much really.
So why not give this thread a long overdue update instead....

There has been considerable progress from this last post, but I'll try and wrap it all up.

Firstly the kitchen hatch was finished off by getting some 1.6mm stainless cut into 50mm stips and folded in 25x25 angles, that I welded into a surround for the alloy door.


While fitting the kitchen door I also fitted an off the shelf door for the front pantry, then started re-cladding the body.




And the kitchen door with the latches and dust seals fitted.


I wasn't too happy with the cladding on the nose section on the photos above.
It's hard to see in those photos but the area around the pole tube is actually made up of 5 or 6 smaller pieces and I didn't really like it.
The other problem I have is that I believe treat plate is for walking on, not for cladding things..... So this next decision was not taken lightly...
I ripped out the lots of little sections of cladding and replaced it with 1 piece of 1.6mm checker plate.




The other side needed slightly more new plate to replace the original old vented door that was on that side for the gas fridge.


I debated about using tread plate or flat plate for this cladding, but at that time I hadn't intended to paint these sections and I thought the tread plate would weather better.
But it's done now and we just move one.

The original cladding on the nose cone had been drilled and screwed and peppered with rocks over the last 40 odd years, but I wanted to reuse it.
Seeing as it wasn't going to be water tight anymore I grabbed a sheet of 0.8mm alloy plate and wrapped it around the nose to seal it up before refitting the original cladding.




With all of that done I bit the bullet and splashed out on some raptor liner for the chassis and new alloy tread plate and some fast dry colour matched auto paint for the new flat alloy plates on the kitchen door and rear panel.


Preped.


Primed


Then all of the colour match sections




And lastly the Raptor.
I bought the tint-able kit with enough grey to do the 4 litres and enough black to do 2L.
I figured if I needed the whole kit to do the body I would just get a seperate kit of black to do the chassis, but if I could do the body with 2L, that would leave me enough to do the chassis.

Fortunately it worked out that I didn't need to buy another kit.

[pete_79]

With the main body work done, I moved back to finishing off the airbag system and fitting out the rest of the interior.

I picked up a well priced secondhand Victron solar controller with bluetooth monitoring and mounted it with an anderson plug to the panels so I can choose to run it off the panels on the roof of the camper or my 2 solar blankets if we're setup in a shady spot for a while.


And I finally sorted out the whole airbag setup.
There was a few cheap push in air fittings that needed to be replaced with proper SMC ones.
The compressor was letting the system drain back out through the valve on the piston, so I needed to fit a non-return valve on there.
And my original mounting brackets for the solenoids needed to be tweaked to get the lines between the receiver and the bags fit in neatly.

But we got there in the end.


The main switch bank for the compressor, water pump, lights, etc. is all finished off.
I fitted a small level above the manual airbag toggle switches and a pair of pressure gauges all together, so everything can be done from the main door.


I made up my own brackets for the gauges out of the off cuts from the kitchen benches.





With all of that sorted, I finished off the remainder of the trimmings on the body.
Then fitted the vinyl floor and tidied up most of the interior.