Roof nearly done
April 28th, 2009
Today I mounted the bamboo cove panels on the roof.
Hopefully the bamboo won’t split lengthwise. I put some Damplifier butyl rubber sound dampening material on the back, mostly to dampen rattles, but it also increases the strength a bit.
This is pretty much the last thing to be done to the roof in it’s turtled state. As soon as I can get enough peeps in the shop to help flip the roof I can commence with mounting the solar panels.
I have decided to put bamboo panels in the doors as well. Here’s a sample panel I temporarily set into the panel guides on one of the doors.
Great blog. Planning a TGB-20 conversion with a popup roof ala Unicat/Alaskan but never thought of a non-hydraulic system… Hope you get it done it time to enjoy at least some of the summer. Where are you? I’d love to see it before you take off travelling the world! I’m just off the 205 in Portland OR.
Hi Ken. I’m rushing to get things done for this summer. I’m in Seattle — you are welcome to come check it out if you want. I’ll also be at http://www.northwestmogfest.com in Oregon in late summer. Do you have your TGB-20 yet? Even if you don’t, come check out Mogfest. I considered hydraulic systems as well, but I wasn’t sure how to synchronise the throw of the 4 pistons (or 2 in some sort of scissor lift config).
@wesc
The only way I know is to have equal hose runs/bends etc from a manifold and make sure the roof is balanced during construction and the vehicle level. Since the last 2 are problematic it would depend on the type of guides – yours look like they would work well.