The eagle has landed!

If you're bored of hearing about remodels of small fiberglass campers, then move along. Nothing to see here. My life is consumed with getting this project finished before it gets freakishly hot here in Nevada so I can get all Jerry Garcia and be one with nature. I'm staying focused and will keep on target. I'm getting this thing geared up so I can get the hell out of Reno for weekends spent biking or surfing. And maybe more midlife crisis in the fall...I've got the jonz to hunt some wild Rainiers and waves in the Pacific NW.

The latest news is a huge turning point...I've rebuilt the frame with extra supports and added a new axle. Then I glopped on some heavy layers of Por15 paint to seal the rust and protect the frame for another 40 years. I ran some strips of camper seal between the frame beams and camper for some possible vibration protection. Metal rubbing on fiberglass is bad. I'm not sure if it will hold up, but at leas it's worth a shot. Then with the help of 2 others, we carefully heaved the camper onto the frame and shimmied it into place. I had a huge grin and was slapping high fives all over the place. It was glorious. GLORIOUS. The whole rig rides about 3-4 inches higher with the new axle. Better clearance for gravelly backroads. That was achieved because the new Dexter axle is a trailing arm torsion beam that has a 10 degree rise and we needed to weld a 3" C-Beam spacer to raise it above the belly pan since the old axle was a leading arm and sat low because it was bottomed out and beat. Totally beat. The rusty old bolts that lock it into place on the frame have all been replaced with stainless steel. Fuck you rust. And finally, tonight I finished scraping the walls of the old junky insulation and then added a hotcoat layer of resin the the entire inside of the camper for a nice, even surface to apply the wall covering. That sucked, but I got it done. Resin's tough to apply to the ceiling even with a crapload of catalyst to make it go off quick, and I will probably have some in my hair for quite a while. I'm going to try to find a few things to finish up tomorrow before my flight to London. It will be nice to be 8000 mils away from his thing for a couple weeks.