rebuilding cab over bunk - plywood base construction
I've got a 1993 Fleetwood on a Ford E350 with the 7.5 V8 engine. We purchased it with known water damage in the cab over bunk area and have decided this spring is the time to redo it.
Once I had the skins removed from the plywood, the deck for the bed all but fell out of the RV. I think the only thing holding it in was the filon sheet and corner trim. The screws were almost all gone to rust. The sheet that was used seems to be 3/4" plywood that was joined on end to another sheet to bring it to 5 feet in length. To be clear it was 4 feet on the first sheet that has the U shaped cut out over the cab of the van, and they simply used wide staples to attach that last foot of plywood.
To me this seems like a poor design for strength as it simply relies on staples to hold that board. We don't travel on the road with kids up there, or luggage, but I can't imagine that would be very structurally sound.
What I was thinking to rebuild it was to take three 1/4 plywood sheets and come up with a layering to get that full 5 feet. Using the characters below you get the idea of what I'm proposing....
layer: -------- --
layer: -- --------
layer: -------- --
The gaps between the dashes represent where the 4 foot section is joined to the 1 foot section. The layer below alternates that, and the bottom layer repeats what the first one has.
I would glue them together using a roll on contact cement, or perhaps the spray on red adhesive they use for bonding the filon to the plywood. What do you think? Over engineering? Crazy idea? Different ideas to build a better above the cab?
Once I had the skins removed from the plywood, the deck for the bed all but fell out of the RV. I think the only thing holding it in was the filon sheet and corner trim. The screws were almost all gone to rust. The sheet that was used seems to be 3/4" plywood that was joined on end to another sheet to bring it to 5 feet in length. To be clear it was 4 feet on the first sheet that has the U shaped cut out over the cab of the van, and they simply used wide staples to attach that last foot of plywood.
To me this seems like a poor design for strength as it simply relies on staples to hold that board. We don't travel on the road with kids up there, or luggage, but I can't imagine that would be very structurally sound.
What I was thinking to rebuild it was to take three 1/4 plywood sheets and come up with a layering to get that full 5 feet. Using the characters below you get the idea of what I'm proposing....
layer: -------- --
layer: -- --------
layer: -------- --
The gaps between the dashes represent where the 4 foot section is joined to the 1 foot section. The layer below alternates that, and the bottom layer repeats what the first one has.
I would glue them together using a roll on contact cement, or perhaps the spray on red adhesive they use for bonding the filon to the plywood. What do you think? Over engineering? Crazy idea? Different ideas to build a better above the cab?
