saDgit's flat-faced pop-top

[saDgit]

That looks really good you should be proud of your achievements good luck just a shame you have no fuel !


sorry

Thanks Mike. Managed to get some fuel yesterday so I'm off looking for upholstery quotes this morning.

[zildjian]

Looks a bit of a drag on the news this morning getting fuel there

[saDgit]

Looks a bit of a drag on the news this morning getting fuel there

Yeah, and it sounds as though it may be electricity next. Both fuel stations near us were empty but got some from somewhere yesterday. Probably only temporary I suspect.

[saDgit]

As it turned out we didn't have to go far to get the upholstery sorted. We got a very reasonable quote from a lady in just the next town, 10 kilometres away, and so have asked her to do the job. We did make the mistake of telling her that it wasn't urgent though - that can be a fatal mistake in Provence! We're still waiting. In the meantime I dropped the camper onto the pickup again the other day in order to check some dimensions and discover some others.

The first thing I needed to check was that the roof box I bought some time ago would actually fit on the pickup roof in front of the camper. Fortunately it did - perhaps a little bit further forward than I would have liked ideally, but it fitted well enough to make it worth modifying it from opening forwards, as it did originally, to hingeing sideways which it now does.



I also had to find out how much the bed of the pickup dropped under the weight of the camper so that I could work out exactly the angles and dimensions for a ladder to get to the camper door when it's mounted. I'd already bought these rather excellent pinned hinges, with spring locks, ...



... so I knew how it was going to work in principle I just needed to make sure that I got its length and the frequency of the steps right. Having checked that out I set to with the saw, the glue and the sash clamps and put together this small flight of three steps ...



... which are now varnished, fitted with the hinges and securing clips, and fixed to the back of the camper in their folded-up, travelling position. They look fine and work well but I do wish that I'd thought to stain them before varnishing them so that they matched the colour of the camper more closely. They will yellow and darken in time, and will look better for it, but it was a silly oversight.

[zildjian]

/intake of breath

[derestrictor]

all but finished now i expect, been a good read over the months all the updates, maybe come along and see it sometime

[saDgit]

all but finished now i expect, been a good read over the months all the updates, maybe come along and see it sometime

Many thanks. Yeah it's done except for the upholstery. There's water In the tank and gas in the cylinder - all ready to go once we've got cushions. Really looking forward to giving it a run out.

[saDgit]

I'd read some stuff about fixing the PVC strip that covers the screws in the aluminium corner trim of the camper shell and had learned a couple of things from that reading. The first was that it was called a Herzim strip (Who knew? Presumably named after Mr. Herzim? ). And the second was that it's very easy to stretch it while fitting it and then find, some time later, that it has shrunk back to its pre-stretched length exposing some of the screws. So I was very careful, I thought, when I fitted the strip to ensure that I didn't stretch it at all. In fact, if anything, I tried to push it into itself so that there was scope for small movement without any problems. That was back in September last year and right through the winter the strip has remained absolutely solid with no shrinkage or movement at all - until now!

As the weather has warmed (we're now getting daily temperatures in the low 30s) the Herzim strip is shifting all over the shop and shrinking away from its ends, most notably and dramatically on the long lengths around the curve of the roofline. So I have pinched an idea from my previous demountable, built by S.Karosser. They had fitted a neat and unobtrusive, stainless rivet into the ends of each length of the strip. I don't really have the means to copy that exactly but instead have gone for a very small stainless screw in each end. Job sorted I hope.

[saDgit]

And finally we've been able to collect the upholstery from the lady who was doing it for us.

She's certainly made a neater job of it than we could have done but we're a bit disappointed nonetheless. We had thought that we'd agreed that the edge seams would have piping sewn into them, but she seems to have thought otherwise, and we had assumed (Always a mistake! ) that she would include a layer of kapok, or something similar, under the fabric to visually and actually soften the squareness of the sponge cushions. But no. That said, they are the final pieces of the camper that we have been waiting for and it is great to have them and to have the camper usable and finished (in so far as these projects are ever finished - there's always more that can be done! ).

[TrueDink]

Great build. Thanks for sharing it with us. I've really enjoyed reading your posts and looking at the pictures with envy.