GCecchetto
Adventurer
Howdy Folks;
I'm pretty new to the Expedition Portal, but not new to the lifestyle. Roughly four months ago I decided to upgrade from my roof tent and bought a 1988 FWC Hawk I found in this forum. The initial plan was to gut the interior and refit it with a much nicer interior with the full compliment of modern conveniences, but it has turned in to building a completely new camper on steroids. There are a lot of build threads here already so I thought I would start with a short post to gauge the interest rather than bog down the forum with a huge thread.
I haven't been spending a lot of time taking photos since it seems to really slow the project down. I built a new floor pack for the camper some time ago but winter slowed me down on the walls. I'm now at the point that the new walls are all built and I'm taking Thursday and Friday off to get the new walls and cabover assembled on the floor pack. I've started taking photos to document the build and have included some below and will continue to update the thread if there is interest from the group.
The new Camper.
Here's a couple of model views from the process of figuring this all out. I need to update the model to the current build.
Here's the new floor pack. It's all marine grade plywood and a 5' sheet was used for the bottom so there are no joints in the floor like a factory FWC floor pack. All joints are biscuit jointed, glued with Gorilla glue, and fastened with square drive stainless steel screws. It was then coated with a marine penetrating epoxy and then a marine 1 part poly primer and topcoat. It's not installed on the floor pack in this photo but the outside is now laminated with FRP.
Here are the side walls jigged up on a sheet of plywood for my welder. Notice the angle on the front of the walls to fit the angle on the cab of my truck. The walls are all done but are in the shop so i don't have photos of them at the present. The material is all 1/8" wall aluminum tubing. A combination of 1x1, 1x2, and 1x3 was used.
These are the radius pieces to build the corners on the front of the cabover. The cabover will be built up from two 1x3 tubes stacked on top of each other for a 1x6 profile.
There is a lot of other trick stuff going on, like the super high budget siding I'm using, but I will save all of that for future posts if there is interest.
GCecchetto
I'm pretty new to the Expedition Portal, but not new to the lifestyle. Roughly four months ago I decided to upgrade from my roof tent and bought a 1988 FWC Hawk I found in this forum. The initial plan was to gut the interior and refit it with a much nicer interior with the full compliment of modern conveniences, but it has turned in to building a completely new camper on steroids. There are a lot of build threads here already so I thought I would start with a short post to gauge the interest rather than bog down the forum with a huge thread.
I haven't been spending a lot of time taking photos since it seems to really slow the project down. I built a new floor pack for the camper some time ago but winter slowed me down on the walls. I'm now at the point that the new walls are all built and I'm taking Thursday and Friday off to get the new walls and cabover assembled on the floor pack. I've started taking photos to document the build and have included some below and will continue to update the thread if there is interest from the group.
The new Camper.
Here's a couple of model views from the process of figuring this all out. I need to update the model to the current build.
Here's the new floor pack. It's all marine grade plywood and a 5' sheet was used for the bottom so there are no joints in the floor like a factory FWC floor pack. All joints are biscuit jointed, glued with Gorilla glue, and fastened with square drive stainless steel screws. It was then coated with a marine penetrating epoxy and then a marine 1 part poly primer and topcoat. It's not installed on the floor pack in this photo but the outside is now laminated with FRP.
Here are the side walls jigged up on a sheet of plywood for my welder. Notice the angle on the front of the walls to fit the angle on the cab of my truck. The walls are all done but are in the shop so i don't have photos of them at the present. The material is all 1/8" wall aluminum tubing. A combination of 1x1, 1x2, and 1x3 was used.
These are the radius pieces to build the corners on the front of the cabover. The cabover will be built up from two 1x3 tubes stacked on top of each other for a 1x6 profile.
There is a lot of other trick stuff going on, like the super high budget siding I'm using, but I will save all of that for future posts if there is interest.
GCecchetto
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