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Page 22 |
Pop Top. |
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The Pop Top needed I bit of
repair work. Along the side where the hinges are screwed there is a steel
tube this is used as reinforcement and curves around the sides. There
was a lot of rust and damage to the area where the hinges were placed and
there was more then one set of holes. I worked out that there was at one stage reinforcement plates welded to the tube to stiffen the hinges area, so I decided to clean up the area using a sanding disc in my grinder and then weld new stainless steel plates back into place. |
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And here is the new plate, I
have folded over the bottom edge about 5 mm so it sits nicely on the
steel tube. I then used my mig welder to do three tacks along the plate to hold it into place (don't worry about welding stainless, normal steel wire works fine, its just not a stainless weld!) |
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Once I had repaired and renewed all the plates I then fibre-glassed over the repairs, and at the same time used the spare resin to fill in the extra holes on the outside. |
| And here is the whole top!
It took a long time to clean of all the old and flaky paint. The yellow
paint you can see through the haze is etch primer, I was told to use it
because cellulose might not like going straight onto fibre-glass and the
etch primer gives a very good key for the paint. This is my utility room and maybe it shows a very important point, You need a lot of space to restore a camper! |
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| After I had sprayed the top cream, I them decided to attach the bellows to the roof, this is held in place by aluminum strips and lots of screws. Having talked to a firm that replace the bellows this seems to be the best way to fix the bellows. they take the roof of your camper remove the old bellows and refit the new one to the top first then fix the roof back on and then fit the bellow back to the roof. |
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| Here is the whole picture.
I had to get the new bellows made for me as at the time I couldn't find a firm that made them, it was like banging my head against a wall, I had the e-mail address for Dormobile and I knew that they still sold the material but they wouldn't return my e-mails, and another firm I couldn't get hold of and even though I left a message no one got back to me. However I have since made contact with the firm that make replacements and have added there name and address to the links page. (They were helpful in the end, when I finally got through to them just a bit to late for me!) |
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Please feel free to e-mail me with suggestions or questions and I will try and oblige. |
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