dsw4x4
Adventurer
With a little inginuty you can hide all of that stuff just flip the actuators upside down and the motors will point down instead of up. You can flip through my photo bucket pages if you want to see some more detailed pictures of the build.
http://s127.photobucket.com/albums/p148/dsw4x4/van project/
The problem I ran into with building a low profile top was you will have to lay up the top yourself or use t-core or fiber board or something like that to make the actual roof. I was able to score a raised roof in a junkyard for 50 bucks and saved me a lot of work. The whole project was enough work in the first place. As far as the material and sewing goes it started out with using my girlfriends sewing machine (a viking) and getting her to help. Then her mom thought that sounded like a fun project so she drove out here for a long weekend which turned out to be two solid weeks of the three of us sewing. So decide how many and how big your windows are carefully. A lot of the time was spent figuring out how to sew zippers (tricky till you get the hang of it) and that I wanted the whole slide out bed section to be removable so it zips off and you can use the van sportsmobile style with the bed slid in and the back door zipped closed. So making that removable section and a door that zips closed when the removeable section is zipped off or just tucked in and the rear door zipped closed was the a very time consuming challenge, add to that it needs to stay tight to keep from flapping in the wind and shed water and all material seems and zippers must drain away from the inside. The end result Lizs sewing machine worked great. If I had to do it again actual sew time would be cut in half the learning curve was huge. Since then I have some other projects going on and I have talked to a couple commercial tent and awning companies and they all are happy to talk to me and work with me doing prototype work. And they have all dabbled in this type of work before.
Hope this helps, good luck with your build.
Derek
http://s127.photobucket.com/albums/p148/dsw4x4/van project/
The problem I ran into with building a low profile top was you will have to lay up the top yourself or use t-core or fiber board or something like that to make the actual roof. I was able to score a raised roof in a junkyard for 50 bucks and saved me a lot of work. The whole project was enough work in the first place. As far as the material and sewing goes it started out with using my girlfriends sewing machine (a viking) and getting her to help. Then her mom thought that sounded like a fun project so she drove out here for a long weekend which turned out to be two solid weeks of the three of us sewing. So decide how many and how big your windows are carefully. A lot of the time was spent figuring out how to sew zippers (tricky till you get the hang of it) and that I wanted the whole slide out bed section to be removable so it zips off and you can use the van sportsmobile style with the bed slid in and the back door zipped closed. So making that removable section and a door that zips closed when the removeable section is zipped off or just tucked in and the rear door zipped closed was the a very time consuming challenge, add to that it needs to stay tight to keep from flapping in the wind and shed water and all material seems and zippers must drain away from the inside. The end result Lizs sewing machine worked great. If I had to do it again actual sew time would be cut in half the learning curve was huge. Since then I have some other projects going on and I have talked to a couple commercial tent and awning companies and they all are happy to talk to me and work with me doing prototype work. And they have all dabbled in this type of work before.
Hope this helps, good luck with your build.
Derek