Jayco Sportster 8ft - Renovation

[Manfred65]

We had a little break in our work to keep "the brain clear" and "Oktoberfest Time" is sometimes hardcore work for bavarian busdrivers.


I had some trouble with my charger. I made a test installation to charge the battery on domestic power ( 230 V ) and the output was only 10.85 V. But there is a good support from the italian manufacturer so i got the idea to make a bridge from camper batterie + to truck battery + ( now, with this "fake" the charger is thinking he has also a vehicle battery in his system ) and he provides full charging power ! Thumbs up! Charger is working!

Next electric problem was the cable installation of my new electric roof winch, you remember?

After some burned 80Amp fuses it was clear that there was a short circuit somewhere. I checked the lines and connections again, i think the 25th time, and everything was installed correctly. After contacting the dealer of my winch , the manufacturer came out with a new installation drawing where i figured out that they had reversed two connections on the winch relais compared to the old plan !

I changed the connections and it worked !

The roof lift is now working comfortable electric and raises the roof in seconds ! I love it !

 

[Manfred65]

This weekend we finished to attach the Aluminium-profiles.
Two cartridges of Sikaflex-PU-Glue, a few hours of Aluminium sawing, filing and sanding and one fit of rage later every profile was fitted in his place. I hope they are still there after the first trip!

Cabover passengers side:

Drivers side:

...and the left rear corner:

...some adventurous technics are necessary because it is not good to have too much pressure. The glue needs a minimum thickness to bond it all together.

....and please do not ask me about "german gap measures" and flat edges and corners.

I am glad to finish this without burning it down !

These Aluminium Profiles ( Corners 2 3/4" x 2 3/4" and cabover 1,5" x 1,5" ) are not as flexible as the original narrow profiles but i need them to cover the damaged edges of the original aluminium panels.

 

[Manfred65]

After the corners have been finished we started to install some useful "add ons":

Please help me with the name of these parts:
They are lashing rails , used to fix goods in vans or trucks. In Germany they are well know as "Airline tracks".
What is your name for this ?

Next idea was to create a "vanity" in the dead room above the fridge:

Test:

Perfect !!

 

[Manfred65]

Today we picked up our Pickup-Truck from the workshop.
All necessary changes for registration in Germany are done now and the official legal weights are perfect for our needs!

GVWR 10141 lbs
Payload 2987 lbs

They made me buy a SCT Programmer to programme the speed limit to 50 mph ( ~ 90 km/h ) but it is not flashed at all!

Now work is going on on our Jayco and a little TLC to the Truck.

 

[takesiteasy]

Almost finished! Nice work. Looking forward to some camping trip reports soon.

 

[Manfred65]

@takesiteasy : My wife and me had a look on your travel Blog the last hour. We hope we can report our trips like you. During the winter we will do some smaller work on truck and camper to finish it until spring.

Have you already fixed the problem with the muddy shoes ? We think about a piece of lashing rail ( there are also
small round spots available ) + hanging bags, made of tarp, there to store the shoes inside.

No progress on the camper today. We prepared our cars for wintertime and replaced the A/C condenser on the truck.

 

[billharr]

You can be proud of the work you have done. Enjoyed following along. Looking forward to your first trip report.

 

[takesiteasy]

@takesiteasy : My wife and me had a look on your travel Blog the last hour. We hope we can report our trips like you. During the winter we will do some smaller work on truck and camper to finish it until spring.

Have you already fixed the problem with the muddy shoes ? We think about a piece of lashing rail ( there are also
small round spots available ) + hanging bags, made of tarp, there to store the shoes inside.

No progress on the camper today. We prepared our cars for wintertime and replaced the A/C condenser on the truck.

Thanks for checking out the blog. We haven't solved the shoe problem yet. We will look forward to seeing your solutions.

 

[ski3pin]

Manfred65, this has been quite the project and adventure for you and your wife! We have enjoyed watching your progress and it all come together. Good job!

 

[Manfred65]

Back in the workshop again:

Watch a real-time-video of our electric Roof-Lift:

AMP-Drag between 23 - 45 Amps in 15 sec of lifting-time with empty cabinet (roof-hanger) and w/o solar panels

 

[billharr]

Your video is set private so we can not see it.

 

[Manfred65]

Hey Guys!

On Halloween we thought: "The horror goes on"

Before installing new LED Lights and a solar panel on the roof we had a look inside the roof. Some of the stables showed rust inside. Also the rear part of the roof was sagging a little. A part of the rear outer frame was replaced sometime. But this job was poorly done! There was more than 1/2" of Sikaflex between the outside Aluminium profile and the roof!

So we opened the inner aluminium cover, grabbed inside and our hands came out WET ! This camper was stored in a dry place for more than a year!
This was the begin of a total strip down of the inner cover:

Here you can see the rear frame and the loose part which is the mid framewood from the rear to the cabover:

The styrofoam was very wet. Water dropped out of the foam !

 

[Manfred65]

Hello Bill,
i checked it.

Sorry for my mistake. It is my first YouTube-Video

I think it must work now.

 

[Manfred65]

Heavy Roof :

we weighed the wet styrofoam:

Styrofoam 2/10" X 4" x 4" = 106 gramms / 0.23 lbs

10.6 kg/sqmtr = 2,2lbs/sqft

 

[billharr]

Damn, 2.2# a foot is about 150# (extra) on the roof. Time to change it all out.

 

[Manfred65]

Thats it !

First i unscrewed the upper Aluminium Profile. Nice to have a lying workplace:

Then we were able to remove the "longitudinal beam" ( made of wood 1" x 1,5" )

The hanging cabinet in the galley is only screwed to 2 sheets of metal with 8 screws. These sheets are glued to the styrofoam!

Snow in november while removing the styrofoam:

We have also to remove the front crossbar because it is completely rotted. Someone drilled holes in the front corner of the roof and nobody sealed them correctly.

Right corner:

Left corner:

 

[Manfred65]

The simple design of the popup mount allows to detach the popup liner in the front for better access to replace the old rotted wood with new parts:

Last week my private hobby carpenter Viola mounted the covers of the seat boxes back in place. The rear one got some smaller changes:
Originally there was a battery compartment with fix screwed cover. Today there are hinges for better access to the furnace.

 

[Bad Habit]

Great work, really enjoy following along. Thanks for sharing all your hard work.

So, when you get it all done, how much of the original camper will be left? Not much it looks like

 

[Manfred65]

What is left from the Original ? Good question !

- the complete interior ( furniture ) Only a few changes like the vanity and the place where the furnace was located. It will be closed y a original door ( left from the former access doors to the truckbed )
- The dinette. Only the floor is changed an lifted 1" We bought the camper without any matress ( dinette and cabover )
- the sink,
- the windows and all the outside panels. It hurts me to install these Aluminium profiles but every other suggestion was to expensive and hard to handle. Can you imagine in which shape new panels will arrive in Europe after a x-thousand miles of shipping ?
- the roof outside. At the moment i think about finishing it with a U-Pol Raptor spray-bedliner. This bedliner can be mixed with several acrylic 2 component-colours. So we plan to paint the roof in the pickups colour !
- the original Jayco decals

 

[Manfred65]

Hello Friends,

back from the (cold) workshop. Only little progress on cold days because the PU-Glue doesn´t work well below 50° F.

We covered the front corners with Epoxi + Thixo so i hope it isn´t necessary to change the sidewalls of the roof.

A longitudinal beam was installed but it was not stiff enough for the roof. The problem is that the original roof was built as a sandwich of two sides aluminium sheet with some styro between them. Hard to build all this "original".

To give more strength to the roof we designed two crossbars, same size than the cabins frame a few month ago.

To give the glue a chance we heated the camper with an electric forced air heater.