Thread: Camper construction materials

Hi Paul,

There are composite products available for caravans and the like. They have a hard skin, and a layer of insulation, along with I think a layer of thin plywood.

This is layered together and makes a fairly rigid and light material. It is available in a number of different thicknesses.

I cant remember the names off the top of my head, but will have a bit of a scan about on the net.

I had a few dealings with this stuff as I designed a camper body for the rear of a unimog a couple of years ago.

Rgds
Pete.

Here's one such company but the website is a bit rubbish

Kemlite Ltd Products by Crane Composites

actually this one looks more like teh stuff we were using.

http://www.panelsystemsgroup.co.uk/d...e%20Panels.pdf

its a pdf document.

Rgds
Pete

Paul, try doing a search for "Nida-Core" or "Core-Cell".

These are honeycomb composite materials that are very strong but very light. Used a lot in boat building.

If you take a look at this site, a bloke has made his own camper from this material:
The Super Camper

Scroll down to the bottom of the page (it's pretty long - you'll need broadband to load all the pictures) and you can see how he built it from scratch.

wilbur
here is our camper build... http://www.aulro.com/afvb/projects-t...per-build.html .........the name of the composite material is on the sheets or you can pm us for details it is 6mm thick

Mrs ho har

Wow, Ho Hars, what a ripper job! Thanks very much for pointing me to the link - very inspiring. I will now hop on the net and look for alumiclad. It looks the part, too, at least it does in your camper.

Did you feel a need to do anything to the suspension? Mine still steers beautifully, but it feels a bit top-heavy and I live in constant fear of tipping it over......

I made mine with a steel frame clad with marine ply. For the next one, I hope to learn to weld aluminium and save a lot of weight that way. This cladding should help too.

Cheers and thanks again,

Paul

we put a heavier sway bar or anti roll bar ....25mm for memory the biggest recommend....and new bilstein shocks in the rear.... it has sagged a bit from our 6 week trip we may put air bags in the rear yet.. otherwise it does not roll too badly and we did a bit of 4wding while away....Plenty h/way..Tanami track...Gibb River rd...Nathan River rd...Savannah way etc fully loaded with 140lts deisel, 100 lts water, gas bottles x 2, food etc and yes 3ton but that is why we have a 130........to carry that weight...


Mrs ho har

Thanks for the info. I will need to look at something similar.

You have done so well for weight. Mine, a single cab 130, with similar water and fuel weighs in at 3.2 tons - and I don't have a cab-over, just a 3 metre by 2 metre pop-top box. I really will need to learn how to deal with aluminium!

Cheers,

Paul