With the lifts working properly we finished skinning the exterior and installed the windows. The door was trimmed with 2 inch wide aluminum strips for an outside edge for the weather stripping. The split between the doors has weather stripping as well. Final adjustments on the latch catch are made. All the edges then got trim. Attached with 3M VHB tape. This took a few days. The final results were awesome. One thing that wasn’t finished on time was the…
The body skeleton is reattached and floor set in place. Then its onto finishing the skin. The upper portion gets skins cut to fit. More cutting sheets of aluminum to fit then attaching using 3M’s VHB tape. Between installing the skin I start working on the doors and latch. The two doors allow access when the lid is up or down. Inside view of latch and door jam. Doors get skinned once latch, door jam and seals are in place….
Next I pull off the body from the frame. Then take it outside to sand blast. The tires are covered and chassis is cleaned with thinner. The whole chassis gets a layer of heavy duty paint. (Customer requested paint over powder coat) Once dry I roll it back inside and place strips of neoprene foam on the edges. This is to keep the aluminum from rubbing against the steel chassis. Suspension components are installed. Air line is connected and electrical…
The door turned out to be tricky. Lots of weird angles. A better shot of the lower rear section On to the upper roof section. Following the same bending technique we form the outer roof supports and weld in place. Supports and lower tubing welded on. Cross bar and window tubing are welded on then set on the main body. The other side is then built. Then both sides are connected together. After all the major parts are welded we…
Now its onto the long process of building the body out of aluminum. The entire trailer was build by me in a CAD program. So from that I disassembled the parts of the trailer (tubing) and made cut lists. A friend of mine came to help start making all the cuts. Jim, the customer, arrived after the first couple weeks of building at took over cutting the material. All the base tubing is clamped into the chassis. The outside edges…