Project Rhocaravan

[richyb66]

Back on the caravan itself the rear roof panel was fixed in place. The join above the rear window is overlapped and eventually we will fit a full width drip molding above the window.

 

 

Inside the roof vent hole you can just see a red and black wire. These will be connected to the roof solar panel and one wire will come out of the holes that are drilled either side of the roof vent hole.

 

 

In the lower rear panel we drilled holes and fitted M4 rivnuts for the grab handles. Below these are the hole for mounting and wiring the rear lamps.

 

 

Here’s a few general shots of the caravan, the front box is in position and we will make the lid completely removeable basically because there isn’t room to hinge it open against the windows and if we’re lifting stuff in and out of it, it’ll be easier with the lid off.

 

 

 

 

At this stage we’d also done a lot more filling and prep work on the panelling including the roof area. The front of the roof in particular needed a bit of fettling to get it ready for the next phase – the vinyl wrapping.

Edited August 31, 2019 by richyb66

[Kerry]

Cant wait to sit in it drinking a cuppa

[richyb66]

We’d always intended to vinyl wrap the caravan because although I’ve painted a few cars in the past, we don’t really have the space to paint the caravan and I knew painting would be messy unless it’s done in a booth. We also wanted to as much of the work ourselves as possible, not so much to keep costs down but more for the experience of doing it. This meant paying for a spray job or vinyl wrapping wasn’t an option.

 

I have some experience of wrapping and the results have been mixed to say the least. I’d attempted to wrap the fibreglass on my 2B and although I’m managed to do the front wheelarches to a decent standard, the nosecone and rear mudguards weren’t quite so successful. I wasted a huge among of vinyl basically practicing but In the end I pay someone to do the job which meant I got a decent job done in top quality 3M 1020 vinyl for about twice what I’d spent on wasted vinyl.

The 2 main issues seem to have been the curvature of the fibreglass panels (curved in 2 directions) meaning the vinyl needs to stretch and shrink to fit and the material I was using was cheaper quality and so not to easy to stretch and shrink.

 

The caravan is panelled using flat sheets that are only curved in a single direction, so I figured that covering them in vinyl would be less challenging. The panels are large but we’d decided to go for a two tone colour scheme split horizontally which would make the sheet sizes more manageable. After some careful measuring were worked out that we could buy material in 750mm roll widths which would be perfect for what we needed. We bought the vinyl off Ebay and whilst it isn’t going to be 3M quality, it should be good enough. Cost wise, a 750mm wide roll is about £10 a metre.

 

The weekend we did the wrapping was very hot, so we kept the caravan inside the garage to try and stop the sun from heating the panels too much and the sun reflecting off the aluminium made it hard to see. Prior to applying the vinyl, we used panel wipe to degrease the surface. We started with the lower front panels because they are small and mostly hidden behind the front box, so a few imperfections would mostly be hidden. It’s a 2-person job because we removed the backing sheet from the vinyl and held it clear if the panel using the 4 corners. The vinyl was then carefully smoothed on to the panel using an old credit card with some felt glued over the long edge. The vinyl sticks as soon as it touches the panel but it’s still possible to carefully push any air bubbles towards the unstuck edge as you go. We got a few small creases here and there and when we did, the vinyl was carefully peeled back of the panel to avoid stretching it too much and by applying some heat from a hot air gun on a low heat, the vinyl contracts and the creases disappear. You really need practice to see how the vinyl can be worked but it seems fairly forgiving as long as you don’t use too much heat which will just cause it to burn through. Here’s the front covered in 2 pieces with an overlap join down the centre. This will be covered with an aluminium trim so won’t be see. Similarly, on the corners of the caravan, the vinyl was wrapped around on to the side panel by 10mm which again will be covered by angle corner finishers.

 

 

Buoyed by our success, our attention turned to the right hand side panel which at just over 2.5m long was going to be much more of a challenge. To avoid starting at one end and risking the vinyl running off horizontally, we decided to try and get the top stuck in roughly the right place and then work from there.

 

 

The backing sheet is still in place on the lower area because we didn’t want the vinyl to stick to the panel everywhere at once. There’re also a few creases but by working steadily, we got rid of all of them. We did have a couple of small air bubbles that we had to prick with a pin and then warm gently with the heat gun to remove. At the lower edge the vinyl wraps underneath where the aluminium panel had a 25mm return flange under the chassis. The left hand side (with the door) was done in the same way but we put a join in the vinyl underneath the door as it made the vinyl easier to handle without the door cut-out in it.

 

Edited August 31, 2019 by richyb66

[richyb66]

The upper half of the caravan was covered in white vinyl. We’d have preferred to have had a slightly off white rather than the brilliant white we got but vinyl in this colour wasn’t available. The application technique is the same, but the window openings caused a few problems because we tended to end up with a crease in one side of the window no matter how we applied the vinyl. We ended up leaving the crease, cutting the scraps vinyl out of the window leaving about 50mm all round so there was material to grab hold of and then working the crease out with the hot air gun.

 

 

Not sure what’s going on with the blue vinyl on the left hand side of the picture above, the finished side looks like this.

 

 

With the larger areas covered, we carried on with some of the smaller panels on the roof. The corner edges all have around 10mm wrapped over, so the vinyl will have an overlap to the adjacent panel and by doing the vertical areas first, we wouldn’t have any vertical joins where water can creep down in to the joint. The caravan will be stored inside 99% of the time so it shouldn’t be a major issue.

 

[richyb66]

Applying the vinyl was challenging but the finished result was well worth the effort as it gave us a massive improvement in the visual appearance for a weekends work and just over £200 in material.

 

 

We did run out of whit vinyl (which was expected) so while some more was on order we fitted some of the other hardware like the lights.

 

 

We also started to fit the window rubbers, and this is where we hit a snag. We got a load of reclaimed caravan window rubbers at the start of the project that we’d cleaned up ready to use but on closer inspection we noticed a problem. We had 2 different types or rubber one had a bubble seat that was far too hard to compress, and we were worried it wouldn’t allow the windows to seal. The other rubber had a much softer bubble which was perfect, but we only had enough for one window. As we just wanted to get on with the work, we ended buying enough brand-new seal with the softer bubble. The seal needed to have mitred joints on the top corners, so we made this small jig to cut it.

 

 

The picture above shows the old seal, evident from the staple holes in it where it was attached to the original caravan body. The new seal is supplied with a bead of mastic sealer already applied to it so we couldn’t put it directly on to the jig. Instead we cut some strips of the discarded vinyl wrap backing paper and put it over the mastic before putting it on the jig so we wouldn’t ruin the sealer.

 

The seal was cut using one of those knives with the snap off blades where we could extend the blade to its full length and have a cutting edge about 90mm long. We also sprayed some silicone spray on the seal as it stopped the knife from dragging as we cut.

 

 

The seals were then fitted to the body and fixed in place using staples through the seal and in to the wood that lines all the window surrounds.

 

[alanh65]

Bloody amazing !!!!!

 

A fabulous job.

[Kerry]

Great work guys, surprised your still together after all that wrapping, it is challenging.

[richyb66]

Next job was to finish off making the windows. We’d previously bent some aluminium channel to a U shape that would form the sides and bottom of the window frame. The channel has a 2mm groove in it, so we are using 2mm Polycarbonate sheet for the windows. This goes by various trade names like Lexan, Marlon and Makrolon but it’s all the same stuff, tough, shatterproof and easy to cut.

The sides and bottom of the frame need to be square, so we knocked up this jig from MDF and some lath would allow us to check that the frame is both square and the correct width. In all we have 4 sides of window:

 

A – Rear 1175 x 400

B - Rear window on the right hand side 800 x 455

C - Front windows on left and right hand sides 600 x 455

D - The two front windows. 600 x 365

 

The jig would allow us to make all 4 versions.

 

 

When we tried the 3 pieces that we’d already bent on the jig (B and C), we spotted a problem. Due to a miscalculation we’d not left enough material on the length at the sides, so the windows wouldn’t be tall enough. After a bit of a re-think, we realised that we could use the C frames for D and it we could re-bend B and reduce the width, it would make one C frame. This re-bending wasn’t that easy but with patience we managed to make the frame the correct size and save buying another length of the aluminium channel (comes in 4m lengths). After the frames were all bent, we used a piece of 2mm steel as a gauge to check that the groove in the extrusion was big enough to accept the sheet. Bending the extrusion caused it to close up slightly meaning the sheet wouldn’t slide in so we used a sanding disc of a drill to open the groove where required. Making the frames the wrong size was probably cause by doing jobs in the wrong order in an attempt to save time. Jumping from job to job has been a bit of a running theme on this project and eventually it was bound to catch us out.

 

With the frames the correct size we could mark out and cut the polycarb which was done with a tenon saw for the straight cuts and a jigsaw for the corners. The protective sheet was peeled back around the edges and the sheet was slid in to the lower frame.

 

 

With 3 sides of the windows enclosed, we needed to close off the top edge and this was done using extrusion that we’d reclaimed from caravan windows. The top extrusion hooks in to another extrusion that is fitted to caravan side and forms a hinge to allow the window to open. The window extrusion has a channel in it and is crimped along its length to fix it to the window. In our case, because the polycarb sheet is thinner than the original window, we wrapped rubber strip around the edge of the glass before pushing the extrusion on the edge and retained it with rivets.

 

 

The rubber strip is made from bike inner tube which can be bought at Poundland for unsurprisingly, a pound. Here’s the finished top corner.

 

[richyb66]

Although the main panels have been wrapped, we still needed to all various finishers to the caravan, particularly the corner finishers and the horizontal finishers at the colour join. On the corners we fitted proper caravan corner extrusions. These are an angle that has a dovetail recess in one leg in which we drilled holes to rivet the extrusion through the skin panels and in to the main framework. The dovetail recess than has a rubber finisher strip fitted in in to hide the rivets.

 

The extrusion is supplied in 2.5m lengths so 2 lengths were just enough to go around each side of the caravan - this was actually planned! The extrusion is very soft and is just formed by hand around the curves of the side panel. This was a 2-person job because we had to take extreme care not to damage the vinyl and in this case my old mate Mark came and gave me a hand and having done all sorts of jobs together for nearly 40 years, we work well together. We started at the front of the caravan forming the reverse bend at the very bottom and then worked upwards from that.

 

 

The rivets go in the front / top edge of the extrusion and we found that as it was formed around the corners of the roof, the leg of the angle tended to pull away from the side panel. However, once it was rivetted in place, we were able to use a hammer and a cork block to dress the extrusion flush with the side panel without damaging it.

 

The formed extrusion looked like this (half a caravan side)

 

 

Prior to riveting the extrusions, we applied a bead of mastic caravan sealer to keep the water out. The drilling and riveting were again a long winded job due to the care needed but these finishing details are important and it’s time well spent. The division between the blue and white areas was covered with a 25mm wide extrusion with a slightly curved profile with a feathered edge top and bottom. Again this was sealed with mastic and held on with small countersunk screws.

 

 

 

In the picture above you can see that we’ve also fitted the drip rail extrusion above the rear window. Not visible is the join in the side corner extrusion which is in the horizontal area between the 2 side windows.

[richyb66]

With the 6 windows completed, we need to start fitting them starting with the rear window. It’s the biggest one but we started with it because we are going to make it fixed. I was concerned that size of the window might make it a bit too wobbly to have it opening and as we plan on having all the other windows hinged, a fixed rear window shouldn’t be an issue for ventilation.

 

In practice the window is actually quite rigid, but we still made it fixed by making some angled aluminium brackets that are fixed to the inside of the window seal and then have the window screwed to them. The picture below is a bit fuzzy but you can see the white plastic infill strip that fits in the window seal, covering the staples that hold the seal to the wooden window surround. The aluminium angle brackets are just screwed through the plastic strip and the rubber in to the wood.

 

 

In all we used 8 brackets, 3 across the top and bottom and one on either side. You can also see that there’s a curtain fitted. Jackie made these herself and when we can get the caravan outside in the decent light, we’ll take some better pictures.

 

 

Inside the caravan, most of the ceiling panels have been made but they need to be finished off with trim strips etc. In the rear roof area, we had to cut a square hole for the caravan roof vent. The vent comes is 2 halves that screw together with the roof sandwiched between. The upper part has groove molded in it, so we could apply a bead of mastic sealer before the parts were screwed together. In one corner of the inner molding we made a small cut-out and filled a fuse holder (the black part below). The solar panel on the roof is wired in to a control unit mounted under the rear bench. I was a bit concerned that the solar panel is in effect a battery and there was no fuse between it and the control unit. The panel is rated at 100w so we’ll probably stick a 10 amp fuse in for now and see how it goes.

 

 

Below you can see there are some trim strips running across the ceiling which cover the joins in the panels. These are made from aluminium extrusion that we’ve covered with the same white vinyl wrap we used on the outside of the caravan.

 

[nicko]

Excellent work.

Nick

[richyb66]

This weekend I decided to a necessary but very boring job. The new door fame that we’d made was a bronze anodised finish which we weren’t particularly keen on, especially the parts that will be visible on the outside. We’d already removed the anodised finish from the visible areas of the upper half of the door, but we still had the lower door and the frame to do.

 

Basically, we used 60 grit aluminium oxide paper, followed by 120 grit and then finishing off with fine steel wool. The anodised finish is visible in the area around the screw holes. There’s a rubber filler strip that covers this over. Either side of this is the polished area together with the hinges. In time the finish will oxidise to a dull natural aluminium colour.

 

 

The lower part of the door was done next, it meant we had to dismantle the door again but it’s only held together with 4 screws.

 

Before

 

 

After

 

 

While the door was dismantled we also covered the inside trim panel with beech effect sticky back plastic to match the upper door. We still need to fit the louvred vent panels to the inside and outside of the door when we’ve sourced them. The vent holes in the inner panel aren’t level on the original panel but will be hidden with the vent fitted.

 

Edited August 31, 2019 by richyb66

[richyb66]

Back in the garage it was finally time to get the windows fixed to the caravan. The top of the window frame is and extrusion that slides in to another extrusion fitted to the body and the 2 form a hinge. Normal caravan windows are a shallow tray shape which means that the edge of the window is closer to the caravan side panel than the surface the seal sits on. This means the fixed hinge extrusion mounts directly to the side panel. Our windows are flat, so we need to space the fixed extrusion away from the side panel for the seal to sit on the window correctly.

 

After a bit of experimenting with wooden strips, we decided that we needed an 8 mm thick spacer and so we bought some lengths of 8 x 30mm aluminium bar. This was screwed through the skin panel and in to the wooden frame that surrounds the window aperture.

 

 

The fixed hinge extrusion was then rivetted on to the aluminium bar with 4mm rivets. In common with the other caravan extrusions, the hinge strip has a dovetail recess in it which has a rubber filler strip fitted in to it to hide the rivets.

 

 

In the picture above the window is being held open by the top part of the seal. The spacing of the hinge from the side panel gives us a few millimetres compression on the seal when the window is pushed shut at the bottom which will hopefully keep any water out.

The 3 side windows were straightforward to mount but the front 2 were a bit more difficult. We’d previously fitted a drip rail above the front windows but then found that it was taking up the space where the hinge needed to be so had to be removed. With that done, we were able to mark out the position for the front window hinge spacer. The pointed shape of the panel above the windows meant that we’d need 2 separate spacers butted together at the centre.

 

 

The hinge extrusion was also fitted in 2 pieces. It would have been nice to do it in a single piece, but the extrusion would bend to a vee at the centre without distortion which would have prevented the hinge from working.

 

 

Another problem we had with the left-hand front window was that I wasn’t entirely happy with how the lower corners of the window frame sat relative to the seal. The solution was to remove the lower part of the frame from the window, re-bend it slightly and then make a new window. This was extra work we could do without, but I wanted to happy with how the 2 front windows looked (they need to look symmetrically opposite).

 

Inside the caravan Jackie had made the curtains and some tie-backs. The curtains run on a plastic rail screwed to the inside trim panel and then curtain itself has a strip sewed to it that has plastic pips on it that slide in to the rail. This is the 2 parts:

 

 

And this is how they fit together.

 

 

 

The finished curtains look like this, we won’t be having this hanging style of curtain on the two front windows because we don’t want bunched up fabric close to the cooker of sink where it might catch fire or get wet and the slope of the front panel means the curtain won’t sit tight against the window.

 

[richyb66]

We still had 4 small roof windows to make – 2 on each side of the roof. Originally these were going to be oval in shape. We’d bought Claytonrite rubber seal which allows a 2mm window to be fitted to a 1mm panel and is a 2-part seal. The main seal is fitted between the window and panel and then a second infill seal is fitted to the main seal to force the seal down tight to keep it waterproof. Unfortunately, the minimum bend radius of the seal was too large for what we needed so instead we would make rectangular windows and mitre the seal at the corners. The meant we had 4 potential leak paths at the corners, so we would need to be careful fitting the seals.

 

The windows were cut from 2mm Polycarbonate sheet and are 300mm x 46mm.

 

 

The mitred seal corners meant we had to knock up another jig to cut the seal, nothing fancy, just a few bits of wood nailed together but it worked well.

 

 

Here’s the seals loosely fitted to the windows, on the centre windows you can see the groove in the seal that the filler strip goes in to.

 

Making the roof windows and cutting the seal took much less time that we’d expected and as we were in Wales away from the caravan, we needed another job to do. Luckily we’d taken a stand alone project to do so we started to make an extractor hood for the cooker. The caravan is small and we were concerned that the heat, moisture and smell from cooking might affect the inside of the caravan so it seemed a good idea to have a small extractor above the cooker. We’d used card templates to decide on the shape and once the pattern was transferred on to s piece of 1mm aluminium and cut out, we were able to fold it up in to a box that would fit against the curved ceiling above the cooker.

 

 

The 2 large holes will have a pair of 12v computer fans drawing air through them, between these a smaller hole will house an led cooker downlight. On the front vertical face there will be 3 switches, one for the fans, and one each for lights above the sink and cooker.

 

 

 

 

Back at home the extractor was vinyl wrapped in white before being assembled and wired up. When the fans were screwed on, we fitted a piece of plastic mesh between the fan and the main housing to stop anything contacting the fan blades.

 

 

 

The extractor has 2 connectors on it. The large white one connects to the main power supply on the caravan and close to it and just visible is a smaller connector that goes to the light above the sink. The extractor was ready to fit but as we had more pressing jobs to finish, it was put to one side for now.

[richyb66]

The main windows were all in, but we hadn’t fitted catches to them yet. We used reclaimed caravan window stays which are telescopic and have a catch at the lower end. The catch allows the window to be locked in a closed position or with the window slightly open at the bottom and the telescopic parts have a knob on them that allows the window to be held open in any position.

 

The upper end of the stay was screwed in to the plastic filler strip in the seal fitted to the window surround. At the lower end we had to drill 2 holes through the window and fit a plastic block to the outside of the window that has bosses on it that pass through the holes and take self tapping screws.

 

 

 

 

There was no shortage of small jobs that we needed to finish off and we needed to start closing a these off so the caravan would be ready to use.

 

Underneath, there were a few areas that needed to be stonechippped, like the underside of the wheelarch boxes. The caravan was jacked up and stands placed under the axle so we could remove the wheels. The hub and trailing arms were covered over with a bin bag before we got the stonechip gun out and applied a few coats of grey stonechip to the areas that needed it.

 

 

The roof windows and seal we’d made previously needed to be fitted. Normally the Claytonrite seal is fitted with the filler strip on the outside so it’s visible. However, because we’d be having mitred corners on the seal and it would be difficult to guarantee that when the filler strip was fitted, it would also meet exactly at the corners, we decided to fit the seal with the strip on the inside. The would leave just the mitred corners visible which would look a lot neater.

 

Fitting the seal was a 2-person job. On the outside the seals need to be fitted to the window and then carefully tucked over the body panel using a small screwdriver, all the while taking car not to damage the vinyl wrap. On the inside, the window needs to be supported to prevent it from being pushed right inside the caravan. Once the seal was in place, the person on the inside pushed the filler strip in place while on the outside the window and seal again need to be supported to prevent them being pushed out.

 

Once the filler strips were in place, we masked the corners and applied a generous bead of black PU sealer to the mitred joint. Once the sealer had set, we trimmed off the excess with a sharp knife.