Westholt Redneck Rebuild: Floor questions

Good day everyone. Hope this is the right place to post this. If you want to skip to my question, just ignore the quoted text.

While the purists will probably look at what I have and cry, others will admire a camper that is still around and kicking in one form or another with some history behind it.

I have what was originally a Westholt tent camper. What info I can find says that they were made in the early 1960s. Mine has a California registration tag next to the manufacturer nameplate.

The person I bought it from said that the camper was originally used for years as a camper in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was bought in the early 2000s, with the canvas falling apart, by an alcoholic electrician. He used whatever materials he could get, plywood, some 2x2 and 2x4, and a pickup topper, (He also used about 5 different heads of screws.) to built it into the form that I bought it in. He lived in it for many years in the Duluth MN/Superior WI area.

The guy I bought it from, a general contractor, had gotten from the electrician and had been using it as a storage shed. He was hard up for money and so was selling it. We had to connect my pickup to his in tandem to pull it out.

I did some minimal fixing and used it as a camper for a year, but found many issues which can be summed up by the fact the electrician used fiberglass insulation and the seams were now leaking. Just about all the wood was in some state of rotting away. The only real option was to gut it and rebuild it. Spring cleanup is this week where I live, so I got my dad and brother to help me get the pickup topper off and then towed it around to the front to demolish the wood and toss it onto the berm.

I got just about everything stripped out except for the bottom flooring. That too has gotten wet over the years and is of questionable structural integrity and will need to be replaced.

Once I have the floor out, my plan is to pressure wash the remaining fiberglass insulation and other stuff off of the inside shell. I'll then make a frame of 4x4s to make the top rigid and add some extra height. I'll then re-use the pickup topper that I got with it for the roof. Going by my math, I should have about ~50" of interior headroom. Plenty of space for a little sleeper camper for one or two people. The door is big enough to crawl into and out of.

I don't plan on insulating the floor, since vertical space is at a bit of premium. I may add half an inch to an inch on the metal sides and cover it with automotive carpet. Not completely sold on if it is worth even trying to insulate it vs just carrying some extra blankets. The roof will be the fiberglass pickup topper.

It will look like ****, but will be a nice basic box that you can sleep in. That's all I'm really looking for.

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Here is my question; I want to remove the base plywood flooring intact so I can use it as a template to cut new 3/4 pressure treated plywood to replace it, but I don't see how it is fastened down from the top. I see lots of bolts underneath coming down through the frame that are held in by nuts. Is the floor somehow held in place by these bolts/nuts?

12 Replies

profdant139
Explorer II
May 09, 2017
"Once the floor is out I'll roll it out to the street and pressure wash all the **** out of the inside."

Excellent! Then all those nasty asterisks will just float down the gutter and go Away -- problem solved!

I wish I lived in North Dakota, too. Where I live, we don't have an Away. Everything that washes down the gutter ends up in the ocean (a few miles away), and then the dolphins get all annoyed and start picketing. ;)
TenOC
Nomad
May 09, 2017
Have you considered the weight of the completed unit? . . . :h .. . . I think it will weigh more than one axle can carry.
B_O__Plenty
Explorer II
May 09, 2017
As a friend once told me "You could jack up the radiator cap and put a new car under it" At some point one of your neighbors is probably going to call someone from the City and your building this on the street might come to an end.

B.O.
NoDak84
Explorer
May 04, 2017
Well good news. I found the screws that are holding the floor in. The way they are rusted blends in almost perfectly with the floor.

Got the grinder, after the wrenches failed, and ground off the heads of as many as I could. I'll need to grab another disk after work tomorrow, but I can now get the one section to move about, only a couple screws still holding it in.

I'll be able to get the floor out without actually removing the body. Once the floor is out I'll roll it out to the street and pressure wash all the **** out of the inside. Then I can use the old floor sections as templates to cut new ones. The existing stuff is half inch, so I'll just replace it with the same.
westend
Explorer
May 03, 2017
Another alternative may be to look for a pop-up in usable condition and convert what you have there into a utility trailer. I have one that's been converted that is about that size. It has carried a lot of stuff. It met it's match at a full pallet of landscape blocks. The floor carried the load but the tires were against the underneath, they just skidded when I tried to move. Moved a few block to the truck and all was well.

If you choose to rebuild that trailer, you may wish to think about a heavy tarp as a roof, ala Conestoga wagons. That would be less weight than the topper shell, probably, allow for more headroom, and look better in the result.
I have an old army olive-duck tarp that would be perfect for this but I could see a new white canvas winning the appearance award.
NoDak84
Explorer
May 03, 2017
TNGW1500SE wrote:
50 views and no comments? Ok,,, I'll do it.

Sorry but,,,,,, After looking at your pictures, I am wondering what you're thinking but more than that, I'm wondering what your neighbors are thinking.

Hard as it is to believe, I'm not the weirdest one on this street.

DrewE wrote:
The floor may well be held in by the bolts and nuts, maybe underneath a thin top layer of subfloor. It could also be glued down to the frame, though that's a lot less likely if it's original 1960's construction. You might be able to get some clues on the construction by examining the bit exposed where the door opens (maybe with some exploratory demolition from that point).

I am having some difficulty getting the plywood/insulation/plywood sandwich out from around the door. I've removed all the screws I can see, yet something is still holding it in. It was at that point I decided to quit for the day last weekend. I'll take another crack at it this weekend.

I didn't think about a top layer of subfloor over the base plywood. I will for sure have to look into that. Good insight.

DrewE wrote:
I would suggest you rethink your structural member sizes. 3/4" plywood and 4x4 posts are going to be heavy for what I assume is a pretty light-duty trailer suspension. The posts, in particular, would be far, far stronger than is necessary for supporting the truck cap. 2x2 should be plenty, particularly with some diagonal bracing or skin to keep them from deforming under load. I personally would also forego using pressure treated wood for this, since it's not in ground contact and the pressure treatment chemicals can do unsavory things to people and a fair few metals. Much of the pressure treated wood, at least around here, is none to straight or clear or well-seasoned. (If you do use it, make certain you don't have any aluminum parts in contact with the pressure treated wood.)

It does sound like it could be a fun project.

Yea, I'm starting to reconsider the materials. I like overbuilding things, but I started researching how much things weighed and I realized that I needed to scale things back a bit.

More reading showed pressure treatment unnecessary if I just cover it with a tarp when not in use, paint it properly, and perhaps use some aluminum flashing material to keep rain from seeping into the wood.

The metal sides are plenty strong, as long as I keep them from warping/bending under load. I had been thinking about using 2x4, but was waiting to see if someone thought 2x2 would be enough. The fiberglas topper itself would do a good job of preventing things from warping.

2x4 gives me a little more material to work with as far as securing things to inside. I may do a combination of 2x4 and 2x2 once I start seriously fleshing out an interior layout. I was wanting to mount the bed to the wood frame I put between the topper and sides so I have more open space underneath for storage. Have to get everything torn down first before I make concrete plans though.

drsteve wrote:
I'd tear it down to the frame and turn it in to a teardrop, as others have suggested. But whatever you do, lose that nasty old truck topper. It will ruin the looks of your hard work.

Oh I am the type of person who relishes in building for function with zero consideration for form. My summer car is a primer grey 1990 Geo Prizm and my wintertime car is a 1998 Ford Contour that has been totaled twice by the insurance companies. (Neither time was my fault.)

Thanks everyone for the input. Your thoughts on the flooring construction gives me some places to look this weekend. I Really want to use the original bodywork, but thinking about what I know is there and such I may have to reconsider, depending on what I find.

Talk to you all later.
drsteve
Explorer
May 02, 2017
I'd tear it down to the frame and turn it in to a teardrop, as others have suggested. But whatever you do, lose that nasty old truck topper. It will ruin the looks of your hard work.
LifeInsideJack
Explorer
May 01, 2017
As an artist I certainly appreciate your ambition.

If I was standing next to you with a cold soda in my hand I'd say something along the lines of "this is a great place to start something else" ... and then I'd help you strip this straight to the frame. From there you can do so much. As mentioned above you can go the direction of a teardrop trailer, or in keeping with that "part and parcel" look create a new box to attach the camper top. Either way you have some design freedoms that you are liberated to explore.

I love these type of projects. I'm not a fan of pressure treated woods if you plan to breathe inside of the box. I'd consider metal studs, translucent siding and led light strips within the walls ... but I'm weird that way.

Lay your sub-floor on the trailer. Frame your walls. Bolt the trailer, floor and framing together to hold it all firm. There is one thing I did on a previous project that I really enjoyed later. I built a custom kitchen box. The top of that box was the sink, cook-top and food prep area. All of that was on drawer slides. I put a door on the side of the trailer that would open and drop down. Then, I could slide that kitchen top outside.

Lighten up your material choices, smaller studs and siding is probably strong enough.

Have fun.
DrewE
Explorer II
May 01, 2017
The floor may well be held in by the bolts and nuts, maybe underneath a thin top layer of subfloor. It could also be glued down to the frame, though that's a lot less likely if it's original 1960's construction. You might be able to get some clues on the construction by examining the bit exposed where the door opens (maybe with some exploratory demolition from that point).

I would suggest you rethink your structural member sizes. 3/4" plywood and 4x4 posts are going to be heavy for what I assume is a pretty light-duty trailer suspension. The posts, in particular, would be far, far stronger than is necessary for supporting the truck cap. 2x2 should be plenty, particularly with some diagonal bracing or skin to keep them from deforming under load. I personally would also forego using pressure treated wood for this, since it's not in ground contact and the pressure treatment chemicals can do unsavory things to people and a fair few metals. Much of the pressure treated wood, at least around here, is none to straight or clear or well-seasoned. (If you do use it, make certain you don't have any aluminum parts in contact with the pressure treated wood.)

It does sound like it could be a fun project.
THutch
Explorer
May 01, 2017
If it was me, I would tear it down to just the frame, and see if there is enough there to build a teardrop trailer:

http://makezine.com/2015/09/23/teardrop-trailer-builds/

or

https://www.pinterest.com/explore/teardrop-trailer/

It would be a project, but you would end up with more than just sleeping space.