Rebuilding “Ms. Merry” the Amerigo– And the Story of the Flimsy bed–Part 3

 Alrighty!  While the date on this reads June 28th, its actually been about a month since I last updated this blog!   Lots of works been getting done, so let's get caught up! :)


When we left off, we were rebuilding Ms. Merry's Snap-N-Nap Wings, as the originals were a trash design that we've yet to figure out the logic of.


So, we've been recreating them using proper laminated wood truss-type construction with a 1x3/1x4 inner frame, a thin plywood exterior.


Now that we've got the body of these made, we've installed 3/4" Polyisocyancurate foam board in the center (Yes there is glue between the other side of the foam board and the outer plywood, and now we're laminating on the Finished RV wall board that will be the interior facing side of the wings :).

 Since we can't really hide the staples we use for anchoring the  wall board in place while the adhesive cures for the inside, the solution has been to apply the adhesive to all the gluing surfaces, then temporarily clamp the panel on the mirror side of the section we're working on so that we can flip the inner wall sides facing each other and make a compression clamp sandwich of the two, using the wing pieces to give us a nice tight bond.  

These will be left to cure for about 24 hours in this state so that the glue properly sets up before removing the clamp sandwich.


Because I'm working on a few different areas of Ms. Merry at the same time, the second sandwich got set up on the roof of Beasley the Bambi-Slayer's roof while the work bench got used for other tasks :p

For those that haven't met Beasley, Beasley is my donor Suburban for my next vehicle project, the restoration and 4x4 conversion of Charlie Blue, my childhood family car that I grew up with.

I bought Beasley off a neighbor who paid to have him brought back from Southern California sight unseen only to discover Beasley was going to be a bigger project than he was hoping for, so I bought Beasley off him to donate his 4x4 parts, and drive train components to finish getting Charlie Blue back to road worthy status.


Now, that the panels have had a couple days to finish curing, we can tape up the corners of the RV wall panel side so that over run from the base coat of fiberglass resin won't get on the nice wall paper sides of the wings.

We'll be removing the tape after the first coat has had enough time to setup to were it can be touched, but still soft enough that we can remove the excess by simply peeling the tape of.

We'll be applying multiple layers of fiberglass resin, along with the cloth after this base coat, as the base coat is simply meant to seal the pores of the wood.


The results of the first fiberglass coat, looking shiny!  We'll fix that with some nice sanding to prep it for the application of coat number two, and the fiberglass cloth around the edges.


And sanding is complete!

Rebuilding “Ms. Merry” the Amerigo– And the Story of the Flimsy bed–Part 2

Part 2 of  the ongoing rebuilding saga of Ms. Merry's Snap-N-Nap!   When we left off yesterday, we'd discovered that the flimsy plastic of the accordion wings was all that was holding the bed pan to the outer clamshell of the Snap-N-Nap bed, which wasn't exactly a very strong setup.

We'd hoped that after doing some more digging in the interior that we'd find another piece of wood fiberglassed into the wall of the outer clamshell that was supposed to have a piano hinge attached to it to bear the load of the bed, unfortunately, during today's investigations, what we thought was wood was actually just dirt inside in hollow cavity that was formed in the fiberglass to allow wiring to run for the tail lights, so sadly, we're going to need to rebuild the wings as they were.

Since we can't change the design, I decided to go with rebuilding the wings from scratch and building them so that they're a proper structural piece made of a laminated truss.

To start, I used the dismantled wings to trace out the pattern of the original design on some thinner door skin plywood I had on hand for this sort of thing, then cut out two new uppers and lowers.



The wings were made out of this sanded plywood because we'll be coming back once these are fully laminated together and finishing the exterior sides and frame edges with fiberglass resin and then painting it with a glossy polar white epoxy paint to match the sides of the Ms. Merry.

Compared to pre-made filon, these are thicker and much more structural stout.   The center of the Uppers and Lowers will be filled with foil-sided Polyisocyanurate insulation foam which will be glued and laminated in as part of the wing structure. 

For the main structure, I used 1x4 and 1x3 lumber to make the frame, with 1x4s used along the edges that would be getting clamped in place when the bed is deployed so that latched could be attached to the wings allowing me to remove the hinged clamp boards that were used originally in the camper. 


A quick side by side of the new lower and the original with its non-structural loose wooden interior pieces.   That wood is only attached loosely to the outside plastic, and what was bearing all the load of the deployed bed pan and carrying the load into the outer clamshell structure. 

The only thing carrying all that weight is that disintegrating plastic, it literally was crumbling under my fingers, I am truthfully amazed the bed didn't drop out, when the Snap-N-Nap was used for storing building materials in the past couple years.

Another side by side, and yes, the new wing is built the right direction.  Gardner Industries used the same wing piece for both sides, so on one side the seam of the overlapping plastic faced inwards, on the other it faced outward.   With the thin fiberglass insulation removed, you can see the original color of the Snap-N-Nap wings, and how much they've yellowed in the last forty-five years!



Ran out of time today to get the last upper assembled, but all the pieces were cut, and tomorrow I'll be able to finish the assembly and start cutting the new insulation and trace out the inner skins.



And here's one of the new sides test laid out on the workbench :).  I'll likely  trim the little corner on the upper so that it ends flush with the lower (This is an exact trace of the sides, and they're not the same size, and there's no real purpose to one being half an inch longer than the other). 

These should be a tad stronger than the flimsy plastic originals and I won't have to worry about them catastrophically failing while on a trip. 

Rebuilding “Ms. Merry”, the Amerigo–Completing the Cabover, Part 2

We’re on a roll, now!

Soon, as we finished getting Ms. Merry’s new plywood walls done, we couldn’t wait to get to the next  step, installing the first of the new finished wall board that would adorn all of the inside walls inside of Ms. Merry !

Since our plywood boards fit so well, we decided to trace them onto their finish wall boards before we had glued them into place. 

So, other than troweling on the flexible wall-board adhesive we’d selected and putting in the perimeter staples to keep everything nice and tight, it took very little time at all to really make Merry’s new walls look wonderful . 


The pattern on the finished wall board is called “Sea Mist”, though we’re not entirely sure where it comes from, as we’ve never seen a sea mist that looked anything like it.

For our friends that own Ms. Merry’s brothers and sisters, you may or may not have noticed, but as part of our redesign of Ms. Merry’s interior, we did away with the little wing shelf-thingies that were under the bottom edge of the wrap-around front window.  

Given one of our main goals was to fit a full queen size mattress in Ms. Merry’s cabover, we saw no use to the little wings since our front ledge is anchored in place using a custom cut 2x6 and is securely attached to the cabover frame which supports it instead of the ledge trying to support the floor, as it was when we first brought Ms. Merry home. 

The remaining void between the fiberglass body and the frame will be later filled with expanding foam, the low pressure variety so that it doesn’t accidentally deform the fiberglass body, this will insulate and remove any cold air voids near the front. 

Once the main cabover walls were finished, the next part was to close back in the top front corners and install the insulation. 

Yes, the gang and I decided to use pink bat insulation, we don’t have the tools to use expanding spray foam, which would have been ideal and the canned stuff wouldn’t have ensured an even insulation layer.  Plus, if we ever need to replace the clearance lights, not embedding the wiring in expanding foam was a good idea . 

First we temporarily installed the corner boards to help hold the ceiling up while we removed the front board that had been temporarily screwed in place, then installed the fiberglass .   

The temporary bracing is to straighten the upper plywood ledge back out, the staples that held the bottom ledge for the front plywood had pulled out over the winter and had caused a bow to form in the shelf.

We glued and screwed the ledge back in place this time, so we’re going to leave it wedged up for a while to get the bow out. 


Once that was glued and screwed into place, we next removed the driver’s side corner board, installed the insulation, then reinstalled the plywood.

You can see the extra piece we glued on the back to give us extra thickness to later attach the reading light fixture for Mrs. Dawn and the hole for the wires to come through.

Then we did the same (minus the wiring) on the other side.

Rebuilding “Ms. Merry”, the Amerigo–Completing the Cabover, Part 1

Poor Ms. merry, she’s sat waiting patiently for almost a year before the I got the gang back together again.  

She’s even had to suffer through the indignity of her Cabover Escape Hatch giving way under a snow load in January and it not being noticed for quite some time, leaving us alot of clean-up work to repair the damage to the brand new inside.

We’ll have a picture soon of Ms. Merry’s better than new escape hatch and her nifty-new Winnegard Batwing antenna (Just as soon as we clear the two inches of fir needles off the rest of poor Merry’s roof). 

When we stopped last year on Ms. Merry, we’d just gotten the brand new ceiling in, and were insulating the cabover walls and trying to cut the plywood to close in the side walls. 

We’d gotten the insulation down pat, but we’d made a miserable mess of trying to make new cabover sidewalls, attempting to reuse the old wall paneling to trace out the new panels, but they would never line up properly. 

Finally, Mrs. Dawn said, “Why don’t you just staple some cardboard on the wall and make a template of what you need and then trace that out on the wood instead?” 

The Milwaukee brothers and I looked at each other and had to scratch our heads to ponder why that idea hadn’t come to us in the first place.  Good thing we’ve got Mrs. Dawn to keep us blunderheads from wasting anymore expensive wood!   

Sure enough, we made a perfectly fitting template on our first try and it worked so well that it even fit on both sides!

In case you’re wondering, the floor is just sitting in place, the wall panel goes all the way down to the cabover floor frame. 

A quick zip with Mr. Router, and we’ve got side windows again . 

We liked how it was looking so much, we decided we wanted to show you how the frames for the inside cabover wall looked sitting in place .

You can kind of guess where the opening to the caboverr will be .   Some cross pieces to support the cabinets in the kitchen and where the TV cabinet in the cabover still need to be added, but it’s coming together . 

Rebuilding “Ms. Merry”, the Amerigo–Dusting of the Tools

*Gets out the broom and dusts Mr. BadAxe’s keyboard off*

My goodness, its been almost a year to the day since I last wrote an update on poor Ms. Merry and all the gang!

Sadly, shortly after I wrote “Ms. Merry Lights up the Night”, I was informed that we would have to break down the workshop needed to do the day to day work on Ms. Merry for the annual investors walk through (Investors don’t like seeing work benches full of tools and stacks of wood, puts them right off!) for the park where I, Dawn, Ms. Merry and all the gang live.  

Given the amount of time it would take to get the workshop set back up and the lack of a definitive date for when the Investors were going to visit, and how badly I was hurting from trying to rebuild Ms. Merry in time for the Glacier National Natcoa Rally, we were forced to the conclusion that it was time to pack it away and take our time after the Investors were done with their visit.

Unfortunately, I never ended up picking the tools back up, as work got busy and I never really got my energy back.   By the time I finally got back to Ms. Merry, it was already going into October and the season for doing structural building was lost. 

So, why so late a start this year?

Same thing that killed me the rest of the year, last year.  

Work. 

The worst of all the evil four letter words known in the English Language.  Nothing destroys dreams of working on your loving restoration projects than working 50-60 hour weeks and watching the sun set and then rise again from the windows of your work place without having gone home in between . 

 

I’ve finally been able to resume, thanks to things falling into place at long last, and the time invested into improving things at work so that they don’t need me to spend all night caretaking them anymore (I’d call it Idiot-Proofing, but that would be an insult to my fellow lab denizens, they’re all very hard workers, but they’ve got the Devil’s luck at finding every weakeness in my designs and making them fail in catastrophic and time-consuming ways). 

So, I thank everyone whose patiently waited, Rebuilding Ms. Merry, is back !

Classic Campers: Del-Rey Tri-Level Sky Lounge and Kamp King demonstrating the strength of their camper’s construction

Once again, we’re taking a turn off the interstate of multi-tasking, no time to smell the roses madness, to the old two lane highway of yesteryear . 

This time visit is fairly short and sweet, namely another of the amazing pieces of Truck Camper engineering that came out during the 60s and 70s when Americans had gotten the RVing bug bad, the Del-Rey Tri-Level Sky Longue Truck Camper. 

 

Very little information exists on these mammoth and amazing forgotten truck campers, at current, I only have this one brochure page and this photo below. 

 

I did have a link to an ad for one, but I failed to store any of the pictures of the inside of this old girl before the Craigslist ad expired. 

So, I’m going to try and summarize this unit as best as I can.  The Sky Lounge was another of the truck camper models that had a set of seats in the front of the cab over for passengers to ride and view the road going by, this was counted as Level 2, the first level being the main kitchen and living area in the bed of the truck.

The third level comes in as you can see in the brochure where there’s a raised platform behind the seats for the extra bed, which is actually located at level with the roof over the main living area, so you’re actually sleeping above the kitchen, giving you the extra space for a third bed in a time before slide outs.

So, if you ever see one of these rigs up for grabs, get it and preserve it, there’s just so few of these amazing marvels left anymore. 

Now, before we close this topic, I promised to add a little more in on my ever growing collection of memorabilia pertaining to the Kamp King truck camper line from McNamee Coach Corp. 

Like a lot of truck camper manufacturers over the years, many of the greats (a lot of whom are only memories, now) have demonstrated the true ruggedness of their units using some amazing feat of excessive load or strain. 

Six-Pac did it by placing a dually one ton pickup truck with an 8’ six-pac camper in it’s bed on the roof of one of their big truck campers (which they don’t make anymore).

McNamee did something similar with their Kamp King, they placed everyone from the shop on the roof of one of their campers .

Classic Campers: The CJ5 Jeep Truck Camper

Well, time for another stroll down memory lane, this time we’re visiting a rather rarely seen, but always interesting find, the Tag Axle Jeep Truck Camper. 

The Jeep CJ5 Camper came as a factory option for CJ5's built by the then Kaiser-Jeep.   The camper itself was produced by the Eldorado Coach Company, another of the many long gone Truck Camper Manufacturers of yesteryear. 

These campers are so rare that there’s a website dedicated to their continued existence as one of the many innovations in RVing that came in the 60s and 70s.

From CJ5Camper.com

In 1969 Kaiser-Jeep made the bold move to branch out into recreational vehicles. The popularity of RVs was growing throughout the 60's and Jeeps were already popular among outdoorsman.

That year Kaiser-Jeep introduced three new RVs as part of their "Great Jeep Escape" campaign.

First were Jeep Gladiators equipped with slide-in units. Numerous slide-ins could fit the the Jeep Gladiator from bed caps to luxury stand up units. The slide-ins were not factory options but Kaiser-Jeep promoted the Gladiator as the perfect vehicle to accommodate a slide-in.

Second was simply a Wagoneer capable of towing luxury campers. Obviously the towed campers were not a factory option either but the Wagoneer was certainly capable of towing almost anything thrown at them.

The third was the CJ5 Camper that came as a factory option. The camper was an El Dorado unit that was manufactured by the Honorbuilt Division of Ward Manufacturing. This camper was mounted in the "bed" of the CJ5, extended beyond the back of the CJ5 and had its own axle, with brakes, that carried most of the weight. It also extended above the front seats of a CJ5 which is where the main bed was located.

It could easily detach from the Jeep through a small opening on the floor of the camper. A large pin would be inserted into that opening and connect the Jeep drawbar to the camper frame. The camper was an option that could be added to any factory CJ5 but it was recommended for Jeeps with the Buick V6 Dauntless engine and 4.88 gearing.

Kaiser-Jeep also sold the campers separately as they would fit any CJ5 made since 1955.

The camper had room to sleep 4, 2 in the "loft" above the CJ5 cab (about 4'x6'8") and 2 others by converting the dining table into a second bed (about 3' x 5').

It also came standard with a propane stove/oven and hood package, 100 pound capacity icebox, stainless steel sink, 20 gallon water tank and pressure system, marine type toilet and holding tank, dining area, wardrobe area, a vent over the main bed and a dual lighting system (110v and 12v).

Options included a propane light above the dining area, gas/electric refrigerator, second vent, and a 9,000 BTU heater. There were 336 units built in 1969 before AMC bought out Kaiser-Jeep in February of 1970 and stopped production of the camper option. The camper was designed and patented by Chuck Prater and could be purchased for $5,000.

Options

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Second Roof Vent

The second vent matched the vent over the bed and was placed next to the dining area.

Gas/Electric Refrigerator

9,000 BTU Heater

Propane Light

The propane light was a Sun-Lite S-300 Made by Sunbeam Trailer Products out of Inglewood, California. It was rated at 1550 BTU/Hour.

 

Kaiser-Jeep’s Brochure on the new CJ5 Camper:

The old Great Jeep Escape ad from an RV dealer:

Here’s one of these fairly rare campers currently undergoing restoration (Full restoration photo set can be see at CJ5Camper.com: