Ecomotorhome/Tour Bus

[benfroggg]

Freebeard,
The camper isn't going to be camped in. It's basically a rolling dry/warm sleeping area with seatbelts. No need for camping supplies. The idea is to be able to travel to a gig in the afternoon. Setup, play the gig. Load out. Sleep in the parking lot of the gig location or a walmart or similar. Wake up late, see the local sites, drive home. Maybe one meal in it per gig.... fast food or something prepared at least. Consider a coleman stove and a 5 gallon jug for longer trips than 2-3hours from home.

Can you be specific about what body mods you have in mind? Are you suggesting to radius the edge of the area above/just behind the front doors?

What do you mean "plan taper abaft the rear axle centerline"?
Abaft means above, right?

375 pounds of steel is the new frame- walls, ceiling, interior divider, etc. The walls support the bed above the cab. They've got to be strong. Normal motorhomes get their strength from the interior walls/cabinets as well as the outline shape of the body. The roof isn't a long straight line for a reason. Nor is the back wall a straight wall for same... it adds rigidity to the structure.

Safety to Luan... Well, the original camper was made from 18 gauge aluminum 1" square tubing, welded on only one side of joints. In between the frame was 1" of styrofoam. Then a layer of luan on each side. A layer of aluminum sheeting on the outside, and that was it. That was all that previously stood between passengers and the road in a wreck.

Now there's a 1" 14gauge steel tube frame. Centers are 24", but with the window frames the spacing is far narrower in the passenger area. I plan to apply rigid foam insulation and two layers of luan, as before. Then a layer of aluminum.

I can say with certainty that it's not as safe as a modern car.
I can also say with certainly it's considerably safer than it ever was from the factory.


Xist,
No external AC. A simple cabin exhaust fan only. This is Maine. No real need for AC but a few nights a year.

The roof will have no protrusions. The walls will only have the windows/lights.


Part 5 coming soon. Framing is mostly done.

[ennored]

Round front end:



A small radius will work, you'll find elsewhere here at Ecomodder that 4% of the width is all you need. (About a 3.5" radius for you.)

The rounded edges ensure you're getting smooth flow along the sides. You need that to make the boattail work best.

I've summarized making a brick aerodynamic as rounding the front edges until it doesn't help anymore (should be a 4% radius) then taper the back as much as you can. You'll end up with something like:

[benfroggg]

Interesting.

The way the frame of the original camper was designed up front makes this very difficult/impractical. The doors of the truck are very close to the box... so no way to extend that area and leave a radius.
I could cut up the original frame/walls up front and make it happen.... but I'm already considerably further fabricated than that....
What I can do, with relative ease, is make a softer edge on the top where it meets the front. Does it have to be a radius? Can it be a shallow angle instead?

I could use something like a pool noodle cut lengthwise and installed on the corners around the cab. Not pretty nor as good as what you're describing. But they are 3" or so in diameter.... and they'd serve the dual purpose of preventing me from hitting my head. I could make them temporary and do some testing too.

[freebeard]

I suspect the line between 'camping' and 'road tripping' is blurry. Maybe downsize the water requirement. Rather than go into a lot of detail, I'll point to another poster's threads:

• http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...elp-23091.html
• http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...act-23122.html

Here is a proposal I made then:



Inspired by 1930s beer trucks, the lower part in frame and skin, but the upper part is a two-walled compound curve shell with no internal framing.

Originally Posted by Google

a·baft
əˈbaft/
Nautical
adverb: abaft

1.
in or behind the stern of a ship.

preposition: abaft

1.
nearer the stern than; behind. "the yacht has a shower just abaft the galley"

Not having seen the actual frame, with 1" tubing on 24" centers I'd gusset the h*ll out of the corners and use high tech adhesives to make the luan a stressed skin. Also if you have square corners at the top front replace the whole corner with a triangular gusset.

U-Haul trailers are an example of the round-edged quarter-sphere-capped corners you want. Is it not too late to revise the framing?

If you can't get a 90° radius because of the doors even a 45° inward canted fin would help, or a 'Gurney flap' on the door itself. '56 Chevy hardtops had a spring-loaded weatherstrip that flipped down over the door windows (if they were up) but flipped up when the door opened.

Edit: Also here's a design for a VW van I no longer own. This one's based on an old locomotive. Nothing but a paint dividing line down the side with a lower front add-on and a boat tail rear.



Well. it works with the VW's hinge-line.

[benfroggg]

Good links!

It's not too late to revise... but I've excluded some details in this thread that are in the videos.
The camper cannot stand more than 83" tall to fit into the garage and be able to be jacked up for service. This is a major limitation... but with lots of tools and not much money, I must be able to fix this thing when it breaks. I have a garage with two stories. The floor above is the limiting factor. That's not going to change for a host of reasons... most notably is the need to us the space upstairs.

So any tapering of the roof is impractical. If I taper it at all, it reduces the interior dimensions in a way that's not acceptable for the equipment. The two large speaker boxes I need to move are 24"x24"x48". They have to be stood up inside to create enough room for all the gear. So the interior needs to be as tall as it can possibly be... As it is right now, the interior headroom is 57.5".

The problem with tapering/rounding is that there's a storage compartment right at the corner. To radius it, I'd have to eliminate the storage compartment and rebuild the floor. Not to mention the only thing holding the existing structure together is the corner post in place now. To remove it/modify it is to remove the entire upper bed. I'm not going to do that.

Thus, a folding lightweight boat tail is the best option I have.
I'll definitely try to smooth the leading edge corners. Probably do so with pool noodles at first then something more rigid after testing.

As to the frame-
I'm filming now. I lost a ton of video on it because my computer/hard drive died just after I dumped a bunch of video on it. I'll post a new video here before the end of the week if all goes well.

The frame is gusseted in many locations. The corners where the rear door are, the corners were the roof meets, etc. I'm out of steel, hoping to pick up more in the morning. Then I'll add more up front too.
Even at it's incomplete stage, it's super rigid. It doesn't flex. I have some photos, but the size limit is a problem for getting them uploaded.

The bed area walls are built like a truss. They too are super strong. I can hang my body weight from the far end of the frame above the cab and it flexes downward less than 1/2". This with the frame incomplete and only tacked together.


Lastly, as far as touring.... we don't. We might someday, but that's a ways off. We're gigging 3-5 times a month, most within 1 hour of home. One gig is 2 hours away, but they put us up in a room...
As things grow, we'll expand somewhat. But right now, I'd much rather make a living having to only drive 2 hours commute rather than 6 or more. So as far as toting water... we'l be doing that in a water bottle each.

[freebeard]

With the height and interior volume restrictions you are limited to techniques used on box van trucks — side skirts and Moon disks. The front and underbody hold your opportunities.

[benfroggg]

Here's the video on the frame. Again, shortened because my hard drive with most of the video died.

https://youtu.be/pD2iwG7GftA

I'd love to load photos on here but the size limit is making that impossible even on the lowest setting on my camera/phone.
B

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by benfroggg

Here's the video on the frame. Again, shortened because my hard drive with most of the video died.

https://youtu.be/pD2iwG7GftA

I'd love to load photos on here but the size limit is making that impossible even on the lowest setting on my camera/phone.
B

Yeah, the only way to make pictures small enough for EM is to edit them in a separate app. Gotta be under 140k. Good video link.

[freebeard]

You've pretty much put yourself beyond my ability to help. Maybe one of the other posters will chime in.

[benfroggg]

I think I may round over the front of the frame or at least put a 45 on it. The rounded corners on the sides can be done afterward with noodles/coroplast. I realized that where the corner meets the cab is already angled at about 15 degrees in the right direction. So putting the noodle cut in half on the corner will be about even with the existing corner where the door meets. Complicated to type out.... easy to see in photos. So I got one small enough that it can be posted here.
Lemme know what you think.