Project Extended Pop-Top Aerodynamic Camper Shell ('99 Tacoma)

[bschloop]

just found this thread, and this is awesome. I would love to do something similar for my Colorado. I love the popup idea. Will be following closely.

[a8ksh4]

Yay, Updates!

I Joined a couple pieces of the pink foam, lengthwise, the other day, to make a single piece that would span the top of this shell. If I were keeping the shell the length of a standard bed, a single 4'x8' piece would probably work fine as a top.



I trimmed the top pretty close to the profile of the sides, and then took it all apart and glued the sides to front-most and rear-most x-sections of the shell:




It's a little hard to see, but I laid down a ton of glue along the top of each side piece as well as teh front and rear x-sections of the shell and then put ten thousand small screws in to hold the top down while it dried:



It was really hard to get a close matting between teh top and the sides:



If I were to do this again, I would probably do the top a piece at a time, rather than making one big sheet of foam and trying to glue the whole thing to the sides at once.

Anyway, once the glue is dry (2 or more days from now, probably), I'm going to use a piece of this 6" pvc tube to sand the corner between the top and the sides. I'll cut about 8" length and about 60 degrees around, and use it as a curved block to sand the contours from top to side.



I'm a little worried that, after I fiberglass this thing, that, since the top and sides are under some tension (flexing them around the x-sections), that they'll spring and warp the entire piece. I guess that, if this happens, I'll have to weld up a base plate or something to help it keep it's form. We'll see...

I went by a local auto-body place today. They didn't have any epoxy resins, but I got a baseline price for the polyester resin... It's going run ~$85 a gallon and I'll need a bit more than that to do two layers of glass on top and one inside. It'll be a little spendy to cover this thing. I need to go by "TAP Plastics", I guess, to find the epoxy resin.

[ron]

look on line or use the redneck fiberglass others have used cheese cloth and latex paint, if its smooth to start with it will look ok and save $ until your sure it gains you what you want and if you have to modify it its easy .

[slowmover]

use the redneck fiberglass others have used cheese cloth and latex paint,

Too funny . . and worth consideration

[freebeard]

use the redneck fiberglass others have used cheese cloth and latex paint,

Oops, I've done that -- patching holes in the firewall of a car I wanted to sell.

[a8ksh4]

More Progress!

I found some 6" pvc pipe at home depot and used the heat gun and a few layers to open it up to 7" to make a sanding block for the top/side corner of the shell.



Sanding we/ 36 grit:



Once I had the curves cut, I went back with a regular flat sanding block and 80 grit and used it to smooth out and blend the corner into the side.



And here it is on the truck! I'm still working on cleaning up the edge along the cab. The shell is a hare larger than the cab in some places. I'm wondering if I should sand it down all the way around the leading edge so that it is 1/4" inside the cab profile. Any ideas?



ABA testing will defiantly come next week! What would be the best testing to do? We have good hills around here for coast down testing in neutral or I could record fuel used along a few miles of freeway where it's flatter.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by a8ksh4

Once I had the curves cut, I went back with a regular flat sanding block and 80 grit and used it to smooth out and blend the corner into the side.

This is turning out really nicely.

The shell is a hare larger than the cab in some places. I'm wondering if I should sand it down all the way around the leading edge so that it is 1/4" inside the cab profile. Any ideas?

That's the ticket - put a radius on it.

ABA testing will defiantly come next week! What would be the best testing to do? We have good hills around here for coast down testing in neutral or I could record fuel used along a few miles of freeway where it's flatter.

I'd say either is fine, provided you try to control as many variables as possible and warm up the engine/drivetrain/tires before you try running the tests. (Though of course people prefer to see MPG numbers rather than seconds of coast-down time.)

Do you have cruise control? Taking your foot out of the equation would be preferable if you're going to do MPG testing.

You've probably seen this already: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ery-11445.html

[Telco]

Are you making this form the exact size you want with the intent of making a mold, or are you thinking that this foam piece will be the mold? If the foam piece will be the mold, have you taken into account material thickness in making the mold? Looking nice so far, but being as you are about to start applying hundreds of dollars worth of fiberglass materials to this project I'd hate for you to find that the final product is too large to fit.

[a8ksh4]

No cruse control, unfortunately. I'll at least do the coast-down and will see if I can find a good smooth spot to check the mpg keeping the foot-impact minimal... We'll see.

@Telco - I haven't quite gotten to where I'll be doing fiberglass yet... I'm going to do some testing and see how much thickness it adds to some spare foam before I do the whole thing. I can sand to take in the sides, along the bed, and to lower the top by +-1/8" if I need to, to account for the thickness of the fiberglass.

Aside from the preliminary coast-down testing, I also need to (A)build the bed-extension that will mate up with the last 18" of the shell, (B)figure out where I want to glue in lexan windows on the shell for visibility, and (C)think about how this will incorporate into under-body enhancements for best mpg... I can't really boattail this thing, but I can install an airdam and do something to clean out the flow bellow the (lowered) tailgate. Hmm... Lots of thinking and planning to do!

I just got back into town after 4 days and ~40mi backpacking in the Trinity Alps (to Grizzly Lake, via Hobo gulch). So far,I've averaged about 34mpg this trip, including 40mi of dirt road. Elevation gain is wonderful for MPG, it seems.

[Varn]

I am a bit late to the party but saw it on Ebay a few years ago.

Here was the article describing the camper:

It has a mad max appearance might fit into the military thread too.