Hi,
I'm looking for some advice about aluminium skin. The plan I have is to basically replace everything in my 1979 Advantura camper except the existing floor - all the corners are rotten, the roof was repaired but in a kind of what-have-I-got-in-my-off-cuts-box kind of way (thought it is water-tight); and I want to change the layout enough that filling in things like the gas bottle door, various grills and repairing miscellaneous damage means I think it's easier to start almost from scratch.
In my experience, aluminium panels of this era are often joined with a grooved flat lock seam. This looks a bit complicated to me - and I'm assuming the are better adhesives now than in 1979, and so I'm thinking to use a countersunk lap seam (if I sound like I know what I'm talking about, it's only because I read this!) which will fit into a routed channel in a horizontal beam. The lap will "face up" and the sheet above it will just be bonded flat onto the lap, and a trim strip of some sort over the top to hide the seam.
So, some questions:
1) What thickness of aluminium sheet is about right for something like this? I'm guessing 1mm is about right, but I've struggled to find anything definitive.
2) Any suggestions on how wide the lap joint should be? I'm thinking about 10-15mm, but again: no experience here.
3) The Advantura has a kind of stepped aluminium profile (SF10?) - I'd like to replace that with smooth sheet. Is there any reason I shouldn't?
4) What adhesive(s) would anyone recommend for the interior panels and the aluminium? Something with good 'grab', I imagine - I'll be using pre-covered wallboard so I won't want to use any pins, staples, etc.
5) I'll need to remove the aluminium strips on the corners and won't really want to put them back until everything is done. What is a good, waterproof tape can I put around the corners to keep the rain out in the mean time?
If you want something to bond aluminium then something like tigerseal, but i would still want some mechanical fixing to back that up.
The weight of 1mm thick sheet will soon add up and will be quite costly also.
Bending it without cracking it will be an issue also.
They used stepped/profiles aluminium for strength and noise reduction. A flat sheet will distort easier and flex a lot more than one with ridges/creases swaged in.
It will also have drum and radiate noise more readily.
Thanks for answering. I've since found out 0.5 - 0.7mm is more like it, and the current metal thickness is also 0.7mm.
I'll be stapling or pinning the sheet as well as glue.
The ridges and swages add a surprising amount of strength to the panel.
If you can make the tool to roll the edges to form a seal, adding a few swage lines will be a piece of cake.
Know anyone that does pipe insulation on the industrial side? Hospitals and factories etc, they make aluminium boxes with snap fit fasteners which are filled with insulation and clipped around all the exposed pipework.
Dad did that for 40+ years and they had a lovely machine that would do just the type of fold that your looking at making. Spent many a saturday morning huddled to the open gas heater, with the frying pan full of sausages and bacon etc. H&S would have had a fit
I did do some work sometimes and he taught me a lot. Who needs fancy marking out tools when you have an offcut with a small notch cutout. The sharp corner is ideal for scribing the aluminium.
Sounds like your talking about the days when you were allowed to have fun at work. They started legislating against that in the nineties, I think... :)
Makes me realise I know an ex-RAF technician at work. Pretty good chance he knows a bit aluminium.
I think the H&S brigade would have cleared the entire area knowing there was an open flame portable heater with about 10M of flexi pipe.
I wanted some flexi gas pipe some time back and they wouldn't sell me more than a 1M length. As many as you like but no more than 1M. I assume another bit of H&S?
A 1.3M pipe will likely be dangerous too dangerous?
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Topic: Camper Rebuild - Aluminium Advice
