gkirtley wrote:
Jfet,
I have been following your project and would like to ask you a few questions please.
My understanding is that you skinned the camper with "0.062 aluminum sikaflex 252 glued to the steel frame with 1/16" nylon spacers". I don't know the properties of sikaflex but I wondered if an aluminum panel(s) is damaged how do you remove it and/or replace it?
With adajacent panels touching on a 1" sq. tube each panel has 1/2" of contact surface on the vertical tube--correct?
What did you use for the nylon spacers and what kind of Al panels did you source?
I have long been interested in something similar but on a much smaller scale and the skin issue has always been problematic. Thanks
George K.
Removing a damaged panel is going to be a pain...the Sikaflex 252 is flexible but bonds with a pretty high strength (I would guess well over 100psi but don't know exact figures). If I had to remove a panel I would probably try to slice under it with a long thin razor blade, then scrape off the old Sikaflex. I don't see any of these panels flying off during our travels though! :-)
The panels are layered in a fish scale fashion so each panel bonds fully to a 1 inch steel stud on one side and on the other side overlaps the previous panel 1 inch (aluminum to aluminum bond). The spacers we used between the aluminum and steel were 1/16" thick nylon tie wraps, cut into little 3/4 inch long sections and stuck into the Sika after it was applied. We did not use spacers between the aluminum to aluminum bond, but rather just ran a uniform bead and let it squeeze out to about 1/32". I could not easily rip apart two aluminum panels joined this way over just a 1 square inch area!
The alloy we used was 5052-H32, mostly in 5'x12' sheets. We had local sheet metal shop source the aluminum and shear cut it to size (big time saving and not very expensive).
