Rebuilding a Granby

[bell4]

Hello WtW! I'm a long time lurker who finally made the jump(s). In the last 2 months I bought a 2004 Dodge 2500 quad cab short bed and a 1980-ish FWC Granby. The plan is to do a staged rebuild starting with narrowing the camper to fit in my truck and then redesigning the interior. I figured what better way to join a new community than with a build thread.

Quick background on myself, I live in the western foothills of Denver CO and moved here for the mountains. I ski inbounds and backcountry, ice climb, rock climb, mountaineer, backpack, mountain bike,.... about the only thing I stay out of is water. Boaters are nuts that water is cold!

Yes my basement looks like an outdoor gear store between all the climbing gear, ropes, tents, backpacks, stoves, and sleeping bags. So why add a camper? My wife and I have lived here in CO for 6 years now and we've hit a lot of what the front range has to offer and decided it's time to extend our range. We've come to learn Rocky Mountain National Park like our own back yard and want to start getting to more of the parks out west. Carrying our home on our back so we could get in more long weekends seemed like the next logical step.

So on to the build!

Here is what I brought home. A friend with a 96 F250 long bed was kind enough to lend me his truck for the transport. After a near death experience with a pair of rental cable camper jacks I got it safe and sound on some furniture dolly's and wheeled into the garage.

The interior was clean and well taken care of but I have an aversion to dark wood paneling so that’s going to have to go. Can't explain it. The interior doesn't have any smell to it but there's definitely a little mold on the side liner that I'll need to address:

On to the de-construction! Time to see what this FWC is made of and just how will I be spending my evenings after work.

First up the drivers side rear corner. I very quickly came to love my 1/4" hex driver in my cordless drill. The screws came out easy enough but the corners were held on with a combination of butyl tape and caulk. It comes apart easy enough but cleanup is a pain:

A little help from the persuasion bar

then a lot of screw removal and staple prying later voila!

a little siding removal and hmm this is going to take more cutting than I first thought

I want to keep the furnace so got to figure out what to do with that vent too

Of course no work can be done without a supervisor and I've got mine. She is always curious as to what I'm up to (just in the off chance what I'm doing involves dog food). This time she was happy to not have to take a spot on the concrete to watch

Since everything in the kitchen depended on what I was narrowing it all had to come out. Stove, sink, furnace, water tank, and fridge.

Hose clamps? We don't need no stinking hose clamps! How this was not surrounded by copious water damage will remain a mystery.

 

[bell4]

more interior de-construction

all gone

counter gone too

back to the corner. Time to get to work

A little time with the hack saw and angle grinder and here is what you get

more cutting and a little test fitting to figure out how the furnace will still fit here.

I went out and got some new 1x1 16 gauge square aluminum and cut it to size. I attached everything with 'L' brackets and lots of screws

I trimmed all the pieces off the 3" wide piece of aluminum tube I cut out originally and re-used it. You may notice a 'L' bracket attached to the door frame as it turns out the weld was broken. This quickly turned into a theme as I disassembled the front.

 

[Desert Rancher]

Wow, you are ambitious! Others have done re-builds with good results so hang with it.

I have the exact same camper, an '86 Grandby (even the plaid upholstery) in very good condition. If there is anything I can offer as to pics, details or mods, let me know.

Have fun!

~DR

 

[MarkBC]

Welcome to WTW, bell4!
Wow -- what a great first post! Great documentation of your ambitious project!

 

[bell4]

It's been a fun project and something both my wife and I are excited about. It helps when the boss isn't questioning every purchase "But it's for the camper" .

I'm going to do my best to document every step of the way so hopefully it'll be a help to anybody else who decides to go down this path. Thankfully the design of the camper is pretty simple between the aluminum frame and plywood floors. I've got the front done as well but I still need to get those pictures off the camera and uploaded.

Luckily my wife has been letting me spend most of my evenings and weekends in the garage instead of doing other stuff around the house so I've been able to hit this project pretty hard.

Thanks for the kind words and I'm open to ideas and suggestions that anybody has as it's easier to make changes now than it will be a month from now. I've done a lot of reading and tried to plan out as much as I can but I'm sure I'll be back in there with the drill and sawzall again sooner or later!

 

[craig333]

Looks like you got a good base to start on. Twisted wire for hose clamps? Maybe in desperate emergency. Some people. Thanks for the pics. Keep em coming.

 

[White Dog]

Great start! Two things I find particularly interesting. The first is how the until looks in pretty good overall shape for 25+ years old. The second is the broken welds. I guess I'm a little surprised. How many have you found and any idea why the broke?

 

[pods8]

About time you came outta the wood work. Good progress. Have you sketched out the dinette you hashed out with the wife? Still thinking of doing a plate over the bracketed connections?

 

[bell4]

Looks like you got a good base to start on. Twisted wire for hose clamps? Maybe in desperate emergency. Some people. Thanks for the pics. Keep em coming.


I laughed when I saw that one. As you can see in the pictures the wiring was a bit of a rats nest too but the braided wire hose clamps were my favorite.

Great start! Two things I find particularly interesting. The first is how the until looks in pretty good overall shape for 25+ years old. The second is the broken welds. I guess I'm a little surprised. How many have you found and any idea why the broke?


I was surprised by the broken welds myself based on what I found on the outside. Total I found about a dozen broken welds. The front 3 vertical supports under the window were completely free but didn't move easily as they were held in tight from the compression. They all had that polished look on the floor support where the vertical support had obviously walked around a bit. The failures were all along the edges of the weld which makes sense as that's the weakest point in any weld. The breaks were all clean crack like breaks too not the rip style I've seen in aluminum before from fatigue. Other than those there were the 2 at the passenger side front corner which I had to remove anyway to narrow, and the other 2 were along the floor for the 2 verticals that make up the rear door frame.

Best guess as far as what caused them to break is a twisting or racking force as I can't find any evidence of a force trauma such as dents or crushed pieces from being dropped. Again how this happened without any other signs of exterior abuse or breakage is beyond me.

About time you came outta the wood work. Good progress. Have you sketched out the dinette you hashed out with the wife? Still thinking of doing a plate over the bracketed connections?


yea yea yea I didn't want to start a thread and drag everybody along for the full ride. I'm not quite to the interior yet. Trying to get the exterior completely back together before I start rebuilding the cabinetry and dinette inside.

We are definitely going to do a dinette. Right now the thought is to make a bench along the passenger side wall that's 3/4 the length of the camper, a bench along the front window, and a single seat towards the rear leaving room for a cabinet between the rear seat and the back wall. The table will be rectangular with hopefully enough room to seat 4 in camper comfort. At least that's the idea. We'll see what it takes to make that a reality and how it turns out.

 

[bell4]

Ok, got the rest of the photos off the camera and sorted out so on to the front!

LOTS of screws and butyl tape scraping later I had the siding off the front.

cleared out and ready to get to work.

Though a problem quickly arose. Both the top and bottom welds on all 3 of the aluminum posts under the window were broken. All that was hold them in place was the pressure between the window rail and the bottom frame rail. You can see here the shiny metal to the left where it had walked around

Back to the front corner. Measure twice, cut once.

and the finished product. You can see I put brackets on all of the vertical supports as well to re-attach them. That was a slow process but had to be done. you can also see I finished pulling the plywood off the floorpack on the drivers side.

Time to start rebuilding. I was able to pry the plywood side off the floorpack and keep it intact so I could use it as a template. This is the piece that needs to be narrowed. I got some ⅝ CDX and got to work. The stock camper is 64” wide and I needed it to be 58” so I took 3” off. Here is the result, clamped, glued, and screwed. The old one is slightly out of the photo to the left.

On a side note I don’t know where they find ‘C’ shaped trees that they must use to cut CDX from to get it to bow like that but once I have this camper operational I’m going to try and find that forest as it must be a sight to see.

So nice new and narrowed CDX on the camper frame

Attached along the full length. I didn’t have the staples originally used to attach the side to the floor pack so I used 3” screws.

and the big side piece cut out using the old one as a template and on the frame

Again the wonderful curvature of the CDX made this an entertaining job.

Done and installed. Also started replacing all of the fiberglass insulation with 1” rigid foam.

One side down so onto the other side. After doing the drivers side the passenger side took me a third the time.

 

[bell4]

The narrowed side and the non-narrowed side. You can really see the difference in the side steps here.

One thing I noticed is on the passenger side there is no extra space added like there is on the drivers side where the furnace lives. I figured more space never hurts so I made it the same as the drivers side

One of us was not as excited about my progress as it require the removal of her couch. So I moved the cushions where she could again see what I was up to and all was well with the world.

As I mentioned work on this side moved fast since I knew what I was up against. The front piece of the aluminum frame that I had to narrow fell out when I removed the old plywood. All that was holding it in place was the screws through the plywood. You can see it sitting on the floorpack towards the front.

Cutting this side was much easier too. I cut out the outside vertical support, shortened the bottom and middle, and re-attached the outside vertical.

The metal from the front corner was mangled since it wasn’t attached for who knows how long so I replaced it and re-attached it

Then I made a mirror of the drivers side out of another sheet of CDX and glued, screwed, and clamped it all together.

Both sides narrowed and new plywood in place

Finally time to paint. From another thread I found recommendations for Glidden’s oil based porch and floor paint. So I got a gallon, tinted it steel blue, and got to work. This stuff goes on THICK. The CDX sucks it up too so I did my best to glop it on.

2 coats later

So that’s this past week’s work. I’m still working on it just about every day after work so I’ll keep up with the updates as it comes together. I’m sure I’ll have some questions for everybody especially when I get to the interior work.

 

[pods8]

Glidden works well. You planning to add turn buckle bolts/ports or through bolt the floor to truck bed?

 

[Ted]

Fantastic build thread, bell4. Great documentation and photos to go with it. We live for projects like this. Keep up the good work.

 

[bell4]

Glidden works well. You planning to add turn buckel bolts/ports or through bolt the floor to truck bed?


I'm planning to add eyebolts to the bed of the truck and the camper then connect them with a turnbuckle system. I need to get under the truck and figure out where the best spot on the bed is to bolt through. I'll double up some plywood or add a steel spanning plate to the camper where the camper side eyebolts attach. Haven't quite figured that out yet. Depends on how much space I have to work with.

Any recommendations on the size of the eyebolt required or optimal locations in the bed?

 

[pods8]

There is a channel near the front of the dodge bed that I though made a rather secure attachment point. I used a longer eyebolt to go through it a put a piece of pipe inside the channel so it wouldn't crush down. I think I used 3/8" hardware but not positive off hand. I did use 2"x2"x1/4" square stainless washers top and bottom to spread the loading.

I can get dims/pictures off my hawk for the camper bolts, not sure if the rear location is the same but just farther back on a grandby. You've got a bit of flexibility to put them in good locations though. Use a good grade bolt (the stock elevator bolts tend to bend) and an eye nut. Mcmaster is a good source for the misc. parts.

Edit here are some pictures on the frame member at the front of the bed on my old 1500, the 2500 looks similar:

 

[Desert Rancher]

Excellent work!

FWIW regarding mounting-

Mine is secured with (4) #5 3/8 bolts in each corner thru the floor. Fender washers on the top side and a 3x5x.18thk backing plate on the bottom under the bed. Also, a rubber bed mat under the camper.

It has never moved.

~DR

 

[Mark W. Ingalls]

Note the total lack of triangulation in this and other older FWC frames. No wonder the door heads crack.

Contrast the photos above with this screen shot...

"Flex frame," my skinny arse!

You might ponder some angle braces while you're this deep into it.

Keep on!

Ingalls

P.S.: I think they use such wide stock because mitering is such a fussy process...

 

[MarkBC]

Contrast the photos above with this screen shot...

Mark, what year is this frame -- is it the very-latest, as in 2011/2012?
I wonder what my 2005 frame looks like...? I'd like to know every time I consider bolting something to/through it and want to hit the frame.

 

[Mark W. Ingalls]

Mark, what year is this frame -- is it the very-latest, as in 2011/2012?
I wonder what my 2005 frame looks like...? I'd like to know every time I consider bolting something to/through it and want to hit the frame.

Screen shot from YouTube video; judge the year for yourself.

To increase your chances of a hit, use a stud-finder.

 

[bell4]

Pods and Desert Rancher thanks for the eyebolt info. I've got a Grainger and a Fastenal close enough that I should be able to find the right sizes and hopefully in grade 8.

Mark W. you bring up a VERY good point about the lack of triangulation in the frame design. I don't know why that didn't dawn on me as to why there are all of those broken welds at the floor level. I've built a couple vehicle roll cages and if there's one thing that roll cage design beats into your head it's triangulation, triangulation, and when it doubt add more triangulation.

The good news is that I did recognize the deficiency to racking forces and in my next update will be what I did to address this issue as I finished it up last night. The short version is, I plated it. I had some 18 gauge sheet metal leftover from another project so I borrowed a friends plasma cutter and cut out a rectangle to go over the front and two inverted 'L' shaped pieces to plate the rear to the right and left of the door and attached them with lots of screws. While it's still exposed I might go back and add some rivets too just for good measure