Spear
24th March 2005, 11:33 PM
Greetings all. I'm a relatively new member of this great site, having found it by accident - and how fortuituous. Anyway, just wanted to share with y'all a 10 weeks project I just finished for my son and his girlfriend. They bought an old Bedford motorhome that had a timber frame. The frame extends below the tray (floor) level of the rear end and consequently due to poor sealing and years of being on the road, the bottom part of the timber frame had all but disappeared. The timbers of the cab-over sleeper were the same - non-existent. How the hell the damned thing held together I'll never know. Anyway to cut a long story short the aluminium skins were removed, the plywood liners were ripped out and what was left of the frames also removed. Those sections that were wont to fall apart prior to removal were stapled together and each section laid out on the floor of my workshop. New 1"x3/4" timberss were cut from 4"x2" seasoned radiata pine, and using the old frames as templates the new frames were manufactured. The old frames were nailed together and most of the nails were either rusted through or threatening to do so. The entire motorhome frame was put back together by gluing the joints with PVA glue as well as being screwed together with 2.5" zinc coated screws. The window and vent apertures were all faithfully reproduced, and the frames re-lined with random grooved, timber grained ply-wood. Walls were re-attached after the lower sections were heavily coated with 'Durabit'. Skins went back on and the original 3/4" aluminium external angles replaced with 1.5" zinc coated 1.5mm thick steel angle. All this sealed with industry grade Bostick SeamSealer. I even re-built the kitchen for them. Lot of late nights and long days as the kids had to be on the road by this time last week to follow the harvest trail. Anyway, that's my latest project. Hopefully there is room here to post a photo so you can see the re-built frame. No - doesn't look like it. I copied a pic from my gallery but there is no way to paste it here. I suppose you'll just have to rely on my description. :) Whoops, just found it further donw the page. Here goes... Nah, give it up as a bad joke - my image is around 3MB and it's taking too long to upload. Cheers.