New Old Perfect Expedition Camper (NOPEC) - Transitioning a 1995 Kodiak Truck Camper Into A Newer Version

[NOPEC]

As winter starts to gently settle in around these parts, I have plans to do a bunch of renos to my camper which I "built" just before COVID. While thumbing through some photos to remind myself of what I had done, it occurred to me that others might be interested in the successes and failures which I had with his project. I have owned a variety of campers, trailers, etc., over the years and have always fiddled with them, always working towards improving the original factory build. The more I have done it, the more I learn and the braver I become. So, I thought I would try my hand at a "build Thread" on this project.

So here it is...

With NOPEC I decided that I would go all in with this project, at least as far as my skills allow. I wanted to turn the exterior fiberglass pieces into a one piece absolutely bomber shell in terms of absolute strength and weatherproofness. Part of the exterior work was also to vastly improve the thermal capability of this camper by reducing both the number of "holes" and the glass surface area. Any remaining windows would all be double layer acrylic. At the end of it, I was able to reduce the windows/holes surface area by 55%, with almost all of the remaining 45% being taken up with the new acrylic windows. Due to the age of the camper, I wanted to upgrade every system in the camper, mostly replacing all of the componentry and improving the various systems. These included replacing the absorption fridge with a compressor type, the old water heater, water tank, pump, almost all of the plumbing, electrical, solar, batteries, furnace, lights both interior and exterior and on and on. Anything sketchy at all was replaced, not the least of which was anything exterior that was of original RV "quality" which with age, just turns to UVed dust.

We are serious paddlers so part of the exterior was to build onto the pre-existing factory roof rack to end up with a super robust system of both loading and securing the kayaks.

We have used the camper a lot in the last two years, 12K kilometers this year alone. It has performed extremely well.

Over the next while, I'll post a few "segments" outlining what I did during the re-build. Probably, I'll concentrate mostly on the redoing of the exterior as I suspect that might be of the most interest. I have lots of pictures to hopefully demonstrate everything.

 

[billiebob]

Very clean rig, looks fabulous, look forward to seeing more. I'll have to keep my eyes open for it.

 

[trackhead]

You should be proud of that work and just made that classic ready for another 30yrs. I did similar, as you know, but your work turned out way better.

 

[NOPEC]

You should be proud of that work and just made that classic ready for another 30yrs. I did similar, as you know, but your work turned out way better.

Trackhead - I followed your build way before you moved up north and was always impressed with your "jump into it with both feet" attitude. You were away ahead of me and you have been an inspiration, not to mention the cause of my interest in Monstaliner (next time..) Your latest "Gut, Foam board and Monstaliner, Interior Version" is really cool. BTW, we'll see how impressive things are on this end when I get into the "screwups" section later on.....

Very clean rig, looks fabulous, look forward to seeing more. I'll have to keep my eyes open for it.

High praise Billiebob, thanks. Next time I see you on the Galena Bay Ferry, maybe my camper won't be hidden behind a load of Fir logs. I also often think that that ferry ride is generally about one beer in length........

 

[NOPEC]

Warning - Kinda lengthy and photo heavy....

Further to my last post. So the plan with this camper was as follows,

Stage 1 - Interior mostly

a. Gut the interior down to a point where I could prep to fiberglass over all of the unwanted openings.

b. Fiberglass over these body openings which included all of the windows (6 in total), two windows in the door, holes (Side and roof) from the old fridge, hot water heater and one back hatch.

c. Re-do all of the interior walls that were affected by the fiberglassing and

d. Fix previous water damage/Re-build/refinish the inside.

(stage 1 was done during the fall and winter with the camper outside. I don't have a big enough shop to get it inside. Heating and doing almost all of the fiberglassing from the inside was not a problem as the camper was tarped and fine to work in with an AC heater. Stage 2 was mostly all outside, starting as soon as I could get the tarp off in the spring. Plus, with so much exterior fiberglass sanding, I am glad I wasn't tempted to expose any indoor space to that mess!!)

Stage 2 - Exterior mostly

a. Remove all of the trim bits that coverup the areas where the various body panels are joined (The absolute Achilles heel of these campers, IMO).

b. Fillet and feather all of the exterior joints after all of the panels were cleaned, degreased, de-caulked(including the F#@$^$$ bathtub silicone that always seems to show up after quickie previous attempts at "maintenance" ). Then refasten hundreds of new stainless #8 screws (#10s where the old holes had stripped) and finally, scarify these joints really well to ensure good adhesion of the pending fiberglass.

c. Filling a ton of small holes (mostly hundreds of screw holes that resulted from holding the backboard in place during fiberglassing of the large voids from the inside).

d. Sanding, sanding and more sanding.....

Stage 3 - Exterior mostly

a. Exterior finish.

SO;

Stage 1 (I have to apologize for the quality of the photos, most were taken quickly with my phone during rubberglove/respirator removal in crappy light but hopefully, you get the idea!)

Well, one last trip in our first Kodiak "URSLA" down to the Ft. Peck Reservoir region in NE Montana before the work starts....



First, gutting. You have to remove everything from near the opening to be filled in, in order to be able to cut away a couples inches of the wall, right down to the fiberglass shell. You need to have a space for an overlap over the inner surface of shell material as you lay the fiberglass matt down.



Here is the old absorption fridge bottom opening from the inside as I cut back the interior wall for the overlap. The old furnace intake/exhaust opening is below it, it will be going as well.



After exposing the inside wall, I created a backer for the fiberglass using old plywood covered in packing tape or Tuck Tape. After taping the plywood, I waxed it heavily using paste wax to ensure good release. Arborite works just as well but you still have to wax the heck out of it. You have to ensure that you screw the plywood down really well or you will get bleeding past the edges of the opening which just makes for more sanding and a wavy joint. This is the exterior of the window located on the lower part of the camper at the front.



The front window and fridge opening from inside after the placement of the waxed backer plywood.


I used three layers of fiberglass matting, precut, numbered and identified with an up arrow (three layers of fairly heavy matting approximated the original thickness of the outer shell, maybe a tad thicker). What I did was fiberglass a block of three openings at once, allowing each of the layers of matting to cure for at least 24 hours. Leaving a 1500 watt heater on continually really sped things up. This is the same window as above from the inside after completion of the fiberglassing.



Same window as the above, from the outside after removal of the backer plywood. The packing tape/paste wax release worked like a dream. You can see a little bit of bleeding into the edges. There is always going to be some surface anomalies on the exterior of the new fiberglass, to be dealt with all in good time with the rest of the exterior filling and sanding.



And finally when the wraps come off, you now have much of the fiberglassing of the exterior behind you, even though it looks like a patchwork quilt. The next time, I will carry on with what was going on in the interior after all of the holes had been filed.



I'll be making occasional reference to the products I used in this project. Being from the school of crying only once, I bought the best I could find. IMO, right up there are the products made by West System and Total Boat. I know that you can certainly buy cheaper epoxy and filleting material but I bit the bullet and went with these guys.

I could not be happier with how their products consistently worked. Plus, being a prairie born land lover, I know zippo about boat building but I found the West System online products/techniques manual was gold for beginners like me. Who would have known that filleting wasn't just about fish.....

Another thing I did that might be helpful to others, is that I sourced almost all of my material from my local Marina. I pitched them basically that I was going to buy a lot of stuff and they may as well have my business (Alicia in charge of their parts department, bless her heart). They agreed to do their best to price match or beat anything I could get from the big Marine suppliers, Amazon, etc. Only on one or two occasions could they not beat the big guys and generally, they whumped them. So my fiberglassing material, most of the electrical (Blue Sea), sikaflex, Perkins lights, hatch covers, my DC fridge, all sorts of odds and ends and even some high teck made in NZ Kayak portage trollies for a pending summer paddling trip, all came from them. It was pretty funny when the folks at the Marina started following the build, always inquisitive about what I was up to. Ya Gotta love small towns.

Stage 1 - to be continued. Cheers

 

[trackhead]

Funny seeing the inside, as I obviously have essentially the same camper. Our water intrusion point was the old refrigerator vent. Living in the Alaska rainforest at the time wrecked the camper. The floor essentially had 1 centimeter of standing water in it when I pulled it up. That was the impetus for me gutting mine, same logic you followed. Seal all possible entry points......

On my current built I rented an industrial tent with wall and a huge diesel heater for the Monstaliner install. Outside temp was -12c, inside tent was 15c. Blasted hot air for 16 hours and it worked out.

Why do all camper projects occur in the winter?

 

[NOPEC]

On my current built I rented an industrial tent with wall and a huge diesel heater for the Monstaliner install. Outside temp was -12c, inside tent was 15c. Blasted hot air for 16 hours and it worked out.

Why do all camper projects occur in the winter?

Always winter because there are waaaay better things to do outside when it is above 0! (other than skiing, of course....)

 

[NOPEC]

Further to my last post. this is the second installment of this build thread;

c. Re-do all of the interior walls that were affected by the fiberglassing (cont'd)

After I glassed over all of the window holes and other large openings, I then had to fix the inside walls. I filled the holes in the pre-existing inside wall by gluing one inch hard pink foam board to the newly fiberglassed exterior wall. There was already one inch of hard foam in the rest of the wall, so thickness wise, it matched perfectly. I used PL700 Premium construction glue (it doesn't eat foam like the PL400) for all of the interior wall gluing. I left a generous space on the edges and completely filled the resulting void with low expansion foam in a can. After trimming off the excess foam, the original wall was now ready for the new wall to cover everything up, hopefully...

I had thought about FRP skins and other non-wood options (such as arborite) for the new interior walls, but because I live out in the sticks, going to look at and source these materials was outside of my scope of interest so I just went with 4x8 wood panel door skin material. It is relatively (was) cheap, light, easy to work with and easy to source at my local building supply store. I used cardboard templates to mark out the panels and double coated the skins (both sides and edges) with Zinsser 123 primer and then pre-painted the exposed interior side with several coats of a high quality BMoore paint, knowing full well that touch ups would still be required.

I glued all of the new walls over the old ones employing a very high tech system of using old wooden scrap lumber screwed to the floor and other surfaces and then forced hard against the wall while the glue dried. Primitive but it worked really well.






After the new walls were all in place, I started to rebuild the inside: install new componentry (fridge, stove, hot water heater, plumbing, countertop, etc.), figure out the new wiring which now involved a new AC circuit, solar controller, fuse block, etc., etc. It was still winter outside of the camper.




Once winter started to slacken, it was time to start on the exterior. I had all of the rough outer surfaces of the window and other holes to deal with, but what I had really been waiting on was the challenge of transforming the exterior into one contiguous box instead of all of the bits and pieces that it currently comprised of.

I suspected that there were lots of surprises waiting underneath all of those goofy aluminium extrusions that covered the edges of the fiberglass sections. I was not to be disappointed!!





Next Post I'll go into fixing the exterior. It took a bit of time and effort...... cheers

 

[Cletus]

This is great! Thanks for putting this together, look forward to see how you managed the next part. I'd love to tear into mine further, winter sure puts a damper on camper work though it didn't stop you I guess.

 

[trackhead]

Nice work. I used FRP on my interior but I don’t think there’s any advantage over wood. I kinda wished I used wood for a few reasons……

 

[NOPEC]

This is great! Thanks for putting this together, look forward to see how you managed the next part. I'd love to tear into mine further, winter sure puts a damper on camper work though it didn't stop you I guess.

It is amazing what you can do with long underwear, a tarp and a headlamp.........

 

[NOPEC]

Build Thread on NOPEC - Continued -

Making the exterior "One"

One of the many downfalls of older (maybe newer as well) factory built mass produced campers of any sort, is that they are invariably screwed together, basically turning a bunch of small pieces into a single entity. This labour saving, mass produced technique most often involves covering these inevitable joints with thin pieces of extruded aluminium which are screwed through to join the pieces, after roll butyl caulking has been placed in the joint. Following this step, the whole affair is subsequently covered (and hidden) with a strip of roll vinyl which is sized to fit into the aluminium strip.

There are several problems with this system, all of which contribute to the eventual failure of the joint and very often, leaks. Here are a couple of the issues.

The combination of the vinyl cover and the thin aluminium is not waterproof. In fact, the small ledge in the aluminium designed to hold the press fit vinyl in place, is a perfect place for water to gather which it certainly does, especially on horizontal surfaces. The roll caulking is usually of crappy quality and dries out over time. Some it during this current build of mine came out in solid, hard, flat, useless chunks. The "RV" quality vinyl that covers the screws, especially the white, seems to degrade, shrink and harden very quickly when exposed to UV.

The industry standard #8 screws are fairly small and have a pretty thin thread depth. You basically fill this thin thread with caulking as you screw through the layer of butyl tape while securing the joint. If the backing is wood you are probably fine but with a thin substrate of FRP or aluminium panelling, it takes nothing at all to strip the backing material, either because of the threads being filled with caulk and/or over torqueing, resulting in a loose attachment. Hopefully these days, stainless screws are being used for most manufacturing but the older units all generally seem to present a sea of rusty fasteners which also have contributed to poor joints/leaks.

So what to do about it.

I took all of the aluminium trim off. I removed all of the rusted and failed screws, there were hundreds of them. Any that were allowed to remain (secure and free of rust) were re-tightened and supplemented by new #8 stainless screws (assuming the hole was not stripped) and/or replaced with a #10 stainless screw if there was any hint of funkiness remaining in the screw hole. I cleaned everything up with acetone and then scarified the entire joint and surrounding edges using a new, clean wire wheel.



The Kodiak/Travelaire/Kustom Koach (they are basically all the same..) Canadian fiberglass campers were a bit ahead of their times but a bit backwards at the same time. 30 years ago, they were already using FRP/foam sandwich panels in their walls but at the same time, were putting them together in a fashion that potentially led to more water problems than say their competition like Bigfoot campers that used a completely molded two piece shell. The problem is fitting both a separate molded roof, back and floor, to a side panel wall. What Kodiak did was fit the panel in behind (or under) the molded roof, back wall and the floor section. It worked fine at the top seam because there was an overlap (which shed water), but really bad on the bottom because you now have created a perfect ledge for the water to sit on. The photos should show this.

I sealed the area of the joints by fiberglassing over the entire area where the screws were. So basically, all of the screws and screw holes became fiberglass. I made wooden edging which I screwed into the fiberglass walls to act as a form edge on both the top and the bottom. I used Tuck/Duck tape to cover the edges of these strips followed by heavy paste waxing to ensure a good release. The layer of fiberglass fill was to be about three eights to half of an inch thick by about one and a half inches wide, designed to cover all of the screw heads with a bit of extra thickness and width to spare. I glassed in an initial layer of fiberglass cut matting and let it dry. Then I glassed over this matting, filling the void up to the top of the edging strips with West Systems epoxy which I had thickened considerably using fumed silica (Cabosil brand). You can just see a ghosting of the buried screws in the photos..





I did some highly scientific ballistic bench analyses (waling on a test piece with a BPeen hammer) and yes, I could crack it but it didn't really move much so I was confident that it was going to be just fine.

So, once everything cured and the edging was removed, I now had two edges and the newly created long "domino like" profiled strip to feather all together.

I started off using the same slurry of silica and epoxy but it I found it too difficult to get a consistent and even fill.


So, I switched to a marine two part filleting product made by Total Boat. This is great stuff and made things waaay easier and I think, more consistent considering my lack of experience. It generally took two coats, the fairly thick initial one which after copious sanding, had to be supplemented by a lighter second layering to fill in the voids I missed on the first pass and fix the screw ups. I also was attempting to round the joints instead keeping the angular shape I started with which also took more time and fiddling.



At the end of it, I was delighted with how well it all came out. That massive series of joints were now both completely waterproof and as well, the entire shell was now "one" and considerably stronger.

After lots more sanding, filling and smelling the world through a respirator, it was time to try out some exterior finish in order to get this thing moved along to look like something I would want to be seen in public with!! I'll post another installment soon. Cheers

 

[RyanE]

This is great! Thanks for sharing from another BC'er. I'm in Golden. I will keep and eye out for your rig this year!

I'm interested to see the window replacement, I'm considering this for mine (Bigfoot Columbia River).

Looking forward to more!

 

[NOPEC]

This is great! Thanks for sharing from another BC'er. I'm in Golden. I will keep and eye out for your rig this year!

I'm interested to see the window replacement, I'm considering this for mine (Bigfoot Columbia River).

Looking forward to more!

Thanks Ryan. Don't know about you guys in east BC but it is chucking snow here today and I think after a first clearing pass down the driveway, its a good day to take a run at the last "installment" of this build thread. I'll definitely touch on the Arctic Tern windows. Cheers

 

[NOPEC]

Second Last Installment of the NOPEC Build Thread (Caution - This one got really long...)

The final pre-paint finishing of the exterior fiberglass, featuring tons of sanding.

Fiberglass work is relatively easy and very satisfying because of the creation (or repairs in my case) of surfaces that when finished, are tough, waterproof and for the most part, relatively lightweight. However, the methodology that most amateurs like me use, leaves a less than ideal, rough surface that has to be dealt with prior to any finishing. So, the only answer was tons of sanding which doesn't really need much explanation. The nice part about supplementing your fiberglass work with a marine filleting product is that any areas of over zealous sanding or other screwups were easy to do a spot repair on with little fuss and great (ultimately) invisible results.




Paint, Painting and Texture

At the end of much sanding, there were still some surface imperfections that I wanted to at least dumb down a little. I had initially planned on using one of the bed liner products to give a finish with texture, most likely Monstaliner, but COVID was just starting to settle in and shipping got to be insane from the US to Canada. So, I started looking for something available locally. That turned out to be a Coronado brand one part industrial Polyurethane enamel called Rust Scat (unfortunate name...) available through my local Benjamin Moore paint store. The idea that it was one part as opposed to two parts, grew on me as I did the research as far as ease of retouching, changing exterior fittings, repairs, etc.

I had been using Colloidal Silica on all of the exterior vertical surfaces I had previously fiberglassed. It is a thickener that when mixed with the epoxy resin, prevents the resin from oozing out of the area that you are working on and running down the walls. It worked super well for this purpose without having any negative effect on the strength of the fiberglass.

I spent a lot of time with the local Benjamin Moore guys discussing both the use of the enamel on fiberglass and the use of the Colloidal Silica mixed with the paint to give texture. They were 100 percent positive that the Rust Scat enamel would be perfect for fiberglass and although they didn't have any experience with the addition of a thickening agent, they couldn't see any immediate red flags. I took their suggestion and did some basic testing prior to committing to the entire camper and the enamel and the silica seemed to get on just fine.

Prior to applying the finish, I did a complete light machine sanding (150 grit), followed by cleaning with acetone. I was told in no uncertain terms by my BM guys (another unfortunate name...) that serious film forming products such as polyurethane enamel must only be applied in multiple very thin layers with generous drying time between recoating. I used the best quality medium nap short roller I could get and did an initial coating on th entire camper. The second coat was the mix of the enamel and Colloidal Silica, no specific mixing ratios, I just pre-mixed each batch (using a yogurt container...) to roughly the same consistency. I used the same type of roller to apply the mixture working to create texture with both the roller and the thickness of the mixed silica/enamel, all the while keeping this layer as thin as possible. It took a little practice but in the end, it came out really well. A third enamel only coat was put on after an extra long drying time followed by a 4th enamel only coat applied on the roof and front.

We also used black Rust Scat for all of the trim, as well as, the artwork which was done using both the grey, black and a mixture of both colours.





Not Monstaliner but good enough for my purpose.



A while ago, I responded to an ExPo thread called "Paint Recommendations" and gave a recommendation of this product and my use of Silica. I had a really good chat with "Traveling 2gether Journal" who was initially really interested in using Rust Scat but when he contacted the Benjamin Moore Mothership Product Advisors, they came back ultimately and would not recommend this product for use on fiberglass. As such, he decided to go another direction. I don't recall exactly but I think part of the discussion was about the potential for chipping with the harder enamel finish. I have not had a sniff of a problem with what I have done, it is nice and hard, I think it looks great, no chalking, no fading (only two years old mind you), nothing resembling chipping, peeling or other failure and as well, bush pinstripes clean up perfectly with a Novus Polish Kit. Personally, I would use it again tomorrow but of course, everyone's MMV.

Windows

Replacing the aging single pane RV quality glass slider windows with four Arctic Tern double layer Acrylic windows was both the biggest single expense of this project but also, was the single feature in my opinion that really helped with both the thermal performance and the improved livability of the finished camper. These are just great windows.

They are very easy to install if you follow the instructions from the importer. If you don't follow the instructions, you can set yourself up for a major caulkup due to potential serious jigsaw blade deflection when trying to cut the corner radiuses in what effectively is a thick sandwich as opposed to the thinish plywood or metal that most of our (mine at least) jigsaw experience is based on. Advice - You are probably already into these windows for a good chunk of cash, bite the bullet and buy the correct diameter hole saw blade to cut the radius corners, do it right the first time.

Being Canadian and thus a "Robertson Screw Snob", I sometimes find Phillips screw heads a challenge, especially when using them blind. The assemblies of the outer and inner parts of the Tern Windows are joined with 5mm bolts with a Phillips head, threaded into a blind hole. It took some patience but eventually, it all worked out just fine!










Final product, slightly different lighting - Nice to have a partner who is a pretty well known BC artist!!!

For the last "episode", I'll cover a few things like rebuilding the RV quality door, installing gravel guards and give a final look at the completed interior. Cheers