Forum Discussion

covered_wagon's avatar
Oct 24, 2015

Invitation for repairing delamination Bulge on NL Camper

My NL camper is 12 years old and now and on one side where the cab over connects to the main camper body I have this Bulge just above the water fill and the cab over has a bit of sag or is lower than the other side. You can tell by 'gunsighting' from a ladder the height of the cabover to the bottom of the camper wings, it is lower on that side.

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

48 Replies

  • If the NL is built like a Bigfoot, the shell is fairly thin, then has foam (non-structural foam, really) "bonded" to the inside using a spray contact adhesive. This is replaced with wood stiffeners where they need them and then the 3mm luan glued over that with contact adhesive. Because of this, I have never believed you could drill holes and inject anything that would fix a delamination. You can do that on a proper foam sandwich construction (as used on boats) under some circumstances. But I cannot see how epoxy or anything else would stick at all well to old contact adhesive. I suppose one could argue that it might be as good as the original bond (the one that failed).

    You are then left with stiffening the outside shell to be structurally complete by itself, or demolishing enough of the interior to be able to clean it and rebond it properly. It is really too bad that BF and NL, having taken the time to mold a nice shell, don't use proper fiberglass sandwich construction materials and methods in the rest of the build. It would cost more, and they are already fighting cheaper brands I guess.
  • Subscribed.

    I have an '05 10-2RR that I purchased used in 2012. It is really starting to show it's design limitations. The camper has sagged towards the rear passenger corner, and on my flatbed it really became evident through buckling of fiberglass on the genset cabinet. The rear driver's side underhang around the rear tie-down also delaminated (both tie-downs on the driver's side have always been stressed, regardless of using the NL-recommended fast guns or happijac tie-downs). The camper has never been off road to my knowledge.

    I also have the same bulge by the water fill, ostensibly from the PO installing a heavy custom memory foam mattress and also two 100W PV panels glued to the front roof (shouldn't make a difference in a well built camper IMO).

    I was planning on selling the camper until I discovered all of these defects but now have decided to keep it so as to not stick someone else with it (I got what seemed to be a great deal, no wonder why). So I need to come up with what I'm hopeful is a permanent solution so I can use this camper in baja on rough roads without coming back with a slumped mess of fiberglass shards.

    What I have been thinking of is drilling through the glass in the offending areas and then vacuum infusing epoxy, with many layers of fiberglass over the area to stiffen it. I fear that epoxy (or anything) bonding to the foam substrate will be suspect, I hope that if I make the outer shell stiff enough with layers of fiberglass that it might be able to better distribute the load. Reinforcing the basement area to solve the sag might be a bit more straight forward but I haven't given that much thought yet.

    Any thoughts?
  • Bigfootford, thank you all for the advice. I'm familiar with the NL forum but want something a bit different.

    HMS Beagle, That is a cool idea with the G10 plate and see reasoning all thru that suggestion. Thank you much.

    Going to do both left and right sides of the camper but want something that with add interest to the camper and look good. Essentially laminating a beam to the sides.
  • I would use something other than SS plate for that repair, if you were going to proceed. How about G10 plate? That is a dense and very strong fiberglass laminate, available in almost any thickness. You could sand the original shell and epoxy it right to the original glass, then paint to match. The advantage over SS plate is that it has the same stiffness and thermal expansion characteristics as the original structure, will bond very effectively (much better than SS), and very likely look better when done. Can be bolted and/or screwed too.
  • Northern lite forum members that had this problem are only glueing and clamping the original bead board back together. I feel something a little more substantial would be better. I was also thinking just glue and screw the plate and then I would not have to deal with the bolts inside and how to keep the interior nice.
  • Photos would be nice, we could better understand what is to be repaired.

    Wayne