Hi, All. This is my first post on the forum; I am very new to the truck-camper scene. I bought my 2005 10.2RR Norther Lite about 2 months ago is all.
Like most things, I have discovered, without good background research you don't know what you need to when making decisions. I found that out w/ the NL. Oh well; it was an opportunity to "learn some new stuff" and break out some of the tools. :S
When done, I started googleing around and found this post.
Old now, (2015), but surprisingly familiar.
covered wagon wrote:
My thought is to thru bolt and laminate a stainless plate over the bulge after jacking up the cabover to an even stance. Glueing the stainless plate with threaded studs welded to the back of the plate and going thru another backing plate inside. This would sandwich the bead board and fiberglass together. Outside plate would be large enough to run forward onto the cabover and stretching far enough on either side of the bulge (rearward) to add strength like a large gusset. I could have a 3/8ths radius bend going under the cab over for added effect to the gusset.
I plan on not only bolting the stainless plate but Sikka Flexing the entire mating surface because when you only perimeter caulk it encourages water to pocket or channel into the bolts.
Any thoughts on this are chiefly appreciated. Thank you
I had the two really large (~1foot diam) delaminations around the corners of the front of the camper, where the front wall common to the cab-window turn out to the wings and the camper-tie down pads. The bulges were about 1.5 to 2" proud, and the interior corners of the wings were pretty severely cracked up. Sitting down and thinking about it, I came up w/ the exact solution that the fella in the Quoted post did. I didn't use stainless, but mild 1/4" plate. I didn't use sika-flex, but plain old polyurethane from one of the big box stores.
I used 1" cedar (5/4 cedar stock) to back the bolts that were through the plate and foam. I used 36 bolts, including two that tied to each jack. I wanted to make sure that there is an actual loadpath across the front of that camper when on the truck to prevent this from reoccurring. Let's say that it was a PITA, but the product is now way better than original.
I will try to post a pic:....
***Link Removed***
Hmm. We'll see if that worked. Anyway.
We'll see how this repair holds up. I think it is going to be just fine, CTE considered. For one, the bolt holes aren't of tight enough tolerance to develop an in-plane load if the plate does grow enough to try. At that point, it is the polyurethane in-plane shear that is resisting the differential CTE rates between the materials...and that isn't going to be a problem. Furthermore, it was assembled at ~50F. So Delta in either direction isn't going to be that large of a temp difference, FWIW. Anyway. Not going to worry about it further.
Long and short is that I don't know why my camper lamination failed, but failed it did. I guarentee is isn't going to happen again....in this spot. :)
