But before that I decided to finish the rough opening cut for the front cabover windows. Now - what to do with that?
I made some very tight measurements and was able to justify shifting the window to starboard by a very small fraction of an inch, even though it was already about 1/2" further inbound than was the other side. From there I made my straight lines in pencil. Those lines compare to the pink lines of the holes in the metal.
It looks like I didn't get pics after the cut, but you'll see the results in other subsequent pictures.
Then it was on to marking the location of the side marker light positions. I started in the front. Climbing the ladder to the big sheet metal piece in the sky, I measured from a front cabover side window corner, out to several spots on the metal marker light holes. I transferred that data (with the permission of NSA) to the camper wood. Then I eyeballed the piece in its lofty place in the sky from my lowly place on earth and determined where the mounting screw holes were in relation to the big wire access hole (based on a twelve hour clock face) and their approximate distance from said wire access hole, and transferred THOSE to the camper wood. And finally, I located the desired placement of the aluminum bezel (currently a humble plywood template) in association with it's balance on the opposite side.
I ended up with this...
How do you work with THAT! Notice the 4-6 holes in the piece of wood just above and left of the new light placement. Those are staple holes. The original design had stapled along one edge, a block of wood about 3" square that sat there in the cavity kind of floppy-like. The original marker light used one mounting screw to it, and the other to the front vertical member. If you look close you can see where the original two screw holes are/were.
I didn't want to use the original method. It seemed too flimsy to me. I studied the area. I could glue and clamp a horizontal piece. I could glue and clamp a vertical piece. I didn't have clamps with the proper reach. I didn't necessarily want to glue TOO many places on the paneling (there's some theory behind that desire). I concluded to following method. And I did the driver's side first. Let's get that little board out of the way.
Then I played around with some scrap wood from the original bathroom closet shelf system and made this replacement.
Here it is going in with a front view. (You get a sneak peak of the marker lights beta version 1.3 in this photo). I used great care to get the screw holes to line up.
And its unglued back side. Note how the paneling bulge forces out the bottom of the board's lower surface.
And that gave me a template placement of this.
I took the beta of version 1.3 into official issuance and routed out the hole to match the others already done.
And routed/drilled the remaining wire channels.
Then belt sanded the surface flush.
I moved to the passenger side.
With extra ribs (roof stringers) some spots were harder to drill than others. Here I brought the hole out to the surface.
The theory behind the routed holes (the diameter matches my chosen size of bezel hole, which matches the back of the new clearance lights) is to provide a cavity for tucking the wires without adversely affecting the solid surface mounting of the lights. With planned 3/16" bezel material, and 3/16" routed depth (25% of the 3/4" plywood thickness) I'd gain a 3/8" deep cavity for each light, plus whatever depth is added by insulation wrap.
Same thing here on the back wall. Note the additional porch light hole. Its wire comes through a hole drilled straight down through the plywood, an original design that I am reusing.
I didn't do the rear side markers because by now I was starting to fear my earlier educated guesses that the holes were all going to line up with the actual holes of the metal. That metal was still on the ceiling. Would those front marker lights match up? Would the sheet metal even fit the shape of the new roof line caused by the flattening? I started getting uneasy feelings and decided to take DW's offer for help to get that metal down. Okay - here we go.
