Date:         Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:04:26 -0700
Reply-To:     Mark Drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Mark Drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Subject:      VW Campertop dreams
In-Reply-To:  <6da579340610231544r501305a5p41cda05e6346a74e@mail.gmail.com>
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Yes, the Adventurewagen top is too massive and double sided to boot.
Part of why that is was to allow a double bed upstairs, a feature that
many owners don't use and I don't much care about. Add the cost of the
windows the AW has and the cost to replicate it is high, as is the weight.

The top we are talking about is only in essence a taller Westy top. Add
8" to the sides all around, for example. This would really open up the
interior space even with the top down. It would also allow for either
thick mattress pads for the upper bed or lots of rear storage, even with
a passenger roof. The Westy support bar would have to go, replaced by
gas charged struts on the outside like lots of other tops use. The Westy
support bar would otherwise block the new headroom area.

The standard main section of the Westy top is about 7100 square inches
of fiberglass, external surface area. Adding 8" of height would add 2000
square inches. Assuming the same thickness as the original Westy top,
that would add 35 pounds. Yep, that is all. The original fiberglass rear
section weighs about 120 pounds. About a third of the added 35 pounds
would be in the rear, where lifting it is not needed. Of course,
insulation would be a nice addition and some more reinforcing might be
good too. Make it 50 pounds heavier then.

Mark

John Bange wrote:

>
>
> Out of curiosity, today I picked the brain of an electrician I know
> who's built fiberglass boats before, just to get a feel for what it
> takes. Man, it sounds like a LOT of work. First, you gotta make a
> "plug", which acts as the "master" for the mold. He says he used thin
> plywood on a wood frame in the general shape, with plaster over that.
> I have no idea how well that'd work for a pop-top, but it sounds like
> it'd work. Then, once the plug is made, you coat it in wax and lay
> fiberglass over it to make the mold. Apparently the rule of thumb is
> that the mold should be 5 times the thickness of the part it makes, so
> the mold will end up weighing at least 5 times as much as the finished
> part (no wonder those Adventurewagen molds are so heavy). Once that's
> done, you have a one-sided mold. If you want the inside to be "clean",
> with a nice gelcoat finish like the outside rather than just rough
> glass cloth and resin, you have to make an inside mold. That's
> apparently an ADDITIONAL pain, as it requires carefully layering and
> sculpting sheets of appropriate thickness wax inside the outer mold to
> mimic the exact dimensions of the part you want, then hitting the wax
> with gelcoat and another 5x-thick fiberglass layer to make an "inner"
> mold. I've never actually seen a carthago top up close (or a westy top
> for that matter!) so I don't know if they're two-sided, but the
> Adventurewagen tops definitely are.
>
>......................