This is the bit where we use the aluminium sheet off the roof of the dumped caravan to cover the nose, roof and tailgate of the teardrop. Because there were two holes in the caravan roof where a couple of vents/lights had been, I ended up with 4 pieces. They were around 3m, 2.5m, 1.75m and 1.25m long and a bit under 1m wide. This is the second longest piece.
The algae, lichen and bird poo cleaned off quite successfully with a bit of bleach, but I was going to use it upside down anyway so I just wanted to remove stuff that was going to be trapped inside. On the whole the aluminium wasn't in bad shape, the odd dent and scratch, but liveable with.
First of all the tailgate. The teardrop is 155cm wide and the tailgate length is a single 4ft width of plywood, so the two shorter pieces would do nicely and I'd have a piece left over for the more complicated jig saw on the main body. I cut the aluminium into 78cm widths which left some decent offcuts which will come in handy later.
This is the tailgate with the two pieces in place and a length of trim from the donor caravan along the bottom edge. Looking better already. Then added a piece of the central strip off the old caravan and put the hinge back on. Then some "hockey stick" profile strip along the sides (had to buy this) - because I was attaching this to the 3.6mm ply at the edge here, I riveted these rather than use screws. Here's the almost finished article.
Now to the main body. Unforunately, the length from the hinge to the bottom front edge was longer than my longest piece, so I needed to do some joining. First I loosened the bolts holding the body to the chassis and jacked up the front of the body so that I could slide in a piece to cover the join where the plywood skin meets the base. I put mastic along the edge of this piece and lowered the body on to the first 5cm, then bent the remaining 10cm up the front and attached it to the body.
Next came the longest piece. It was sheer luck, really, that all these bits of aluminium fitted exactly to where I'd got cross-members inside the skin. Or skill. Here it is in place.
Now came the piece I cut off when making the tailgate. And then the other longer piece. In this next photo you can see the orange luggage strap I used to hold the aluminium tight to the body while I attached it.
And here's one showing all sheets attached.
And this is the sate of play this morning. I've got varous bits of trim off the donor caravan attached. You can see the last piece of the central strip on the mesh tray at the front. Just needs to be cut to fit that lower bit.
We've bought some silver plastic strip cover the screw heads in the horizontal trim. Next job is to refit the tail gate. And I'm also pleased that I've got enough cabbage left over to cover the drop-down flap at the back. I aim to decorate and varnish the sides before finally attaching the edging strip. That's the plan anyway.
