Anyone interested in 83 Pace Arrow Tear down and Rebuild?

[fulltimin]

Started to look into some water damage in the kitchen of our 83 Pace Arrow. The more I looked, the more I found. I have some pics of the damage so far. Anyone interested in following a rebuild thread?

[STBRetired]

fulltimin wrote:
I decided to use my bandsaw to cut the half lap joints.

If you use your bandsaw a lot, I recommend getting the Carter band saw guides. They are a bit pricey, but they do a much better job of keeping the blade under control than the slide blocks that you currently have. I replaced mine with these when I was having trouble with the blade wandering when re-sawing wood with heavy grain. The blade would try to twist to follow the grain and I had to leave too much clearance with the slide blocks to avoid heating up the blade from excessive drag.

[joerg68]

I actually do have one small datapoint for solar: We have one 100 W panel, glued to the roof - so no angleing. And one AGM battery, I believe 70 Ah. In an 8ft hardwall truck camper. We are three-season campers - never in winter. Whatever works on propane is left on propane - fridge, hot water, furnace, cooking. LED lights throughout, no TV, no Microwave, no electric coffee maker - you get the idea.
We never had to plug into shore power all year. Often the battery was topped off by the time we had our breakfast.
But that is just our rig and the way we use it.

[fulltimin]

By the way, since I did the rear wall with extra insulation, it really made a difference in temperature inside.

Then again, it may have just been that fact that the temperature today was close to 50 degrees. Lol.

Yea, don't take that rear wall thing too seriously.

That's it for tonight. Bedtime.

[fulltimin]

This next pic falls under the category of "do as I say, not as I do". When gluing and applying adhesive - make sure you apply said adhesive to the correct side of the plywood that you are getting ready to apply. Lol.

Yup, the red rectangle shows, I did it wrong. Duh!

Anyhow, that was the first short piece that I glued together, and applied it on the wrong side.

The rest of this pic shows that the lower half of the passenger side wall is now covered with the second layer of insulation.

So, next up will be to finish the top half of this section of wall with extra insulation.

[fulltimin]

In order to make sure my fence is straight, I moved the square to the rear of the table, and found it was not the same distance as the front section.

So, I just moved the wood over a little and double checked the front side. Then I was ready to cut.







In all honesty, if I did much of this, I would just make a jig that fits the groove, and is easily slid to the left with a stop screw for easily checking the front and rear distance.

Another option would be to build a fence, just like is on the table saws, and no measuring would be necessary. Just move the fence, and lock it in place.

[fulltimin]

I decided to use my bandsaw to cut the half lap joints. This is certainly not the only way, nor maybe not even the best way, but it is one way.

I could have just as easily used a router, but didn't.

First step is to set up a fence next to the bandsaw blade. The red arrow is pointing to a piece of 3.5" square lumber to act as my fence. Remember a while back, I had a piece of Paulownia wood? Yea, that's what I am using. I am not done with that wood, so you will hear more about that stuff in the coming months.

Anyhow, I used that to act as my fence. On the front side, I used a square to set the distance of the wood from the groove in the bandsaw table, like this.

[fulltimin]

Using some shop brushes for spreading wood glue, are a wonderful thing. I bought these at Harbor Freight (adult drug den), a while back. I did not buy them specifically for this project, so they are not included in the spreadsheet for this build.

This works well for smaller projects, but if you have a large area to glue, then something else would be better than these.

[fulltimin]

Working on the passenger side wall, behind the entrance door. Since the distance from the door to the rear wall is just a tad over 11 feet, obviously, 8 foot plywood just isn't going to do it all in one piece.

I needed a board stretcher! Lol. What I did, was to do a half lap joint at the end of the 8' mark, and glue the 2 pieces together.

This is a time when Titebond 3 is your friend. I wanted to splice the joint over a steel joist, so gluing and screwing would make a secure joint.

[fulltimin]

PastorCharlie wrote:
I have 260 watt solar panels and 450 AH Battery storage with Magnum 2,000 Watt Inverter. Has worked great for us for many years. We have gas and propane also. Depends upon weather if we have to occasionally use generator. Most of our camping is boondocking and we use propane as needed to heat water, operate refrigerator or occasionally run furnace.

I do not raise solar panels although they are designed to do so. I usually fill propane 2 times yearly, once in April and again in October for $0.99 per gallon.

Thanks for the info. I was looking for someone with experience, to see how they are doing it. I appreciate the post. Thanks.

[fulltimin]

joerg68 wrote:
You will not be able to heat your camper using solar generated electricity alone. Typically there is little light out there when it is cold.

Hot water preparation and even cooking are also energy intensive and will be a challenge on battery power.

You can go all electric, but you will need to plug into shore power in winter and on cold/rainy days. Unless you want to invest in a costly fuel cell solution.

At this time, there really is not yet a good alternative to propane or diesel for energy intensive, independent power requirements.

Heating with electric was not really anything that I was looking to do. As you said, way to energy intensive.

Cooking may be do-able depending on how much solar is on the roof, and how large of a battery bank is available. At 500 - 600 watts on the roof, ah, not going to happen. If the roof is full of panels, and we are looking at 2000 watts - that's a different story.

5 hours of sun @ 2kw will generate 8kw - 10kw of usable electric, and more than that in the summer. Granted, the entire roof would need to be covered in order to accomplish that.

Using a small oven, pulling 1800 watts would be doable for an hour, without a problem, especially during times of full sun.

With some of the newer induction cook tops, pulling 1800 watts are also doable, because they can boil water in a short period of time.

I agree that propane is generally a better option, because it is not dependent on sunshine.

My question, was just to see if anyone was using solar and how it was working for them.

Thanks for the post.

[PastorCharlie]

I have 260 watt solar panels and 450 AH Battery storage with Magnum 2,000 Watt Inverter. Has worked great for us for many years. We have gas and propane also. Depends upon weather if we have to occasionally use generator. Most of our camping is boondocking and we use propane as needed to heat water, operate refrigerator or occasionally run furnace.

I do not raise solar panels although they are designed to do so. I usually fill propane 2 times yearly, once in April and again in October for $0.99 per gallon.

[joerg68]

You will not be able to heat your camper using solar generated electricity alone. Typically there is little light out there when it is cold.

Hot water preparation and even cooking are also energy intensive and will be a challenge on battery power.

You can go all electric, but you will need to plug into shore power in winter and on cold/rainy days. Unless you want to invest in a costly fuel cell solution.

At this time, there really is not yet a good alternative to propane or diesel for energy intensive, independent power requirements.

[fulltimin]

Rained, niece, no work!

Done for tonight.

Not buying that? Lol. It didn't rain, Ok? Even though I did a little work for my niece, I did work.

Just to put things into perspective for this year, we have had over 75" of rain this year, which is a record for this area, since they have started keeping records.

Guess what? More on the way tomorrow. What a year!

Seattle Washington gets an average of 37.49 inches of precipitation, which is mostly rain. How's that for a wet year? Double what Seattle gets. Ugh.

Before I post the next set of pictures of the passenger side wall in the rear, I have a few questions.

Do any of you have solar panels on your roof, and if so, how much wattage with what size battery bank?

Do you find it necessary to tilt the panels?

Is your rig all electric, or combo of electric and propane?

Thanks.

[fulltimin]

Good evening everyone! I only have one picture to share tonight.

I got some work done on the back wall, and the pic is of that.

At the top you will see a couple of green arrows, and they are pointing to the top piece of plywood that is now glued and screwed to the rear steel framing. That will be used to fasten the top of any cabinets that are installed on the back wall.

Just below that is a couple of red arrows pointing at another piece of plywood, which will also be used to help fasten overhead cabinets back there.

The blue rectangle is area reserved for the rear window. The AC will not be there, and was only put in there temporarily. That will be coming out shortly.

As was posted earlier, the 2nd piece of plywood from the bottom will be used, if I put any seating area back there.

So, what that means is that the back wall is insulated, waiting for a window and for an interior covering. Yee Haw!

Time to move on to working on a side wall!

[fulltimin]

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, with family/friends, or even if you were alone. As you may know, sometimes things can get stressful with family. Lol.

Hopefully, that didn't happen.

We had a great time at my brothers place, along with my niece and her husband and 2 kiddo's. (Can I say niece)? Lol. Our son and daughter in law were there, my brother and his wife, and the neighbor across the street with his wife.

As with Thanksgiving, we all ate just a touch too much. Ugh. A little like going out to a buffet that is all you can eat. You know, you want to get your money's worth. Then we suffer for the next 8 hours waiting for our digestive system to catch up.

Now, I know, none of you would do that, but we have on occasion. You would think by now, we would know better. Duh!

By the way. This if sort of off topic, but there is a website the we use sometimes to keep an eye on specific items that go on sale, and you may, or may not have heard of it. You can set reminders, so that if a certain item comes up on sale, the website will send you a notification.

No, I have no affiliation with them, just a satisfied user. They currently have listed a great deal on some Ryobi tools including batteries, just in case you want some. The deals are listed by users who find the deals, and then post them for everyone. Yay!

SlickDeals.net

Anyhow, again, hope your Christmas was a good one, and looking forward to a wonderful New Year!