Our main focus right now is to finish the canvas.  We need it to hold the roof in place (so we can ditch the annoying tie down straps!) and so the camper is waterproof! Until then, it’s just a fancy box!

A lot of campers are made of wood and just have the canvas screwed into the wood. That would be convenient and quick, but wood rots.  We have two pieces of aluminum angle epoxied to the camper shell and roof that we are going to attach our canvas to.  The top will just be screwed in but the bottom will be thru bolted.  We decided on 4″ bolt spacing.  No real justification other than I looked at other campers and thought 4″ looked like what they had.  Then Jason went through and drilled all of the holes while I followed him with the countersink bit to clean up the holes so we didn’t risk damaging the canvas. It was a pain in the ass.

I decided to tackle the project like a motorcycle seat cover… just start in the middle and work your way out.

We’re still not done with the back piece.  The aluminum is 1/8″ thick and even though we have oversize pilot holes, we keep breaking a ton of the screws for the upper canvas in the roof.  So many, in fact, that we ran out and need to go buy another box of them.  That was super frustrating.  We’re also waiting for the hand-sewing kit we ordered to actually finish up the last corner, so we’re going to have to wait until Friday to finish this installation anyway.

Regardless, I think it actually turned out fantastic! The windows are huge, work well, and flow a ton of air.  The canvas is a pain, but straightforward to install. There are some waves in the canvas, but not as many as I think even show up in the photos.  I can’t wait to take this thing camping!