Digging In

After I brought the camper home it sat in my driveway for about a month or so.  I was busy with hunting and work and never got a chance to start tearing into it.  After I got the garage cleaned out I brought it in and started working.  The following is from about the two weeks before Thanksgiving.  The first order of business was to remove the canvas.  I had to send it in to the outfit that was to build me a new canvas.  I used Canvas Replacements out of Wisconsin.  For anyone needing new canvas for their camper I would recommend them.  They were great to work with and happily answered all of my dumb questions.  The photo below shows some of the mildew and damage on the original canvas.

Taking the canvas out ended up being extremely easy.  There is a channel that the top of the canvas slides into from above and hangs.  To remove it, you just remove the three or four screws to make sure the canvas doesn't pop out and pull the canvas out.  I rolled up the canvas and boxed it up to be sent to Canvas Replacements.

Next step was the roof.  Originally I intended to just clean up the hack repair job the previous owners had done.  They told me the roof did not leak any more.  They lied.  I decided to go ahead and just rebuild the roof after coming across a few threads where people had done it before.  One was even a Bethany almost identical to the one I have. 

Getting the roof off proved to be a challenge.  It uses a bunch of springs to counteract the weight of the roof so you can lift it up easily with your hands.  The struts that link the roof/camper base/springs lock in place once the roof is all the way up so it doesn't fall down on you.  The struts are bolted to the corner brackets on the roof assembly, so there is no way to disassemble the roof without disconnecting these.  If the roof is lowered and the weight of the roof is removed from the struts, the force exerted by the helper springs on the struts makes them dangerous.  What I ended up doing was using a winch connected to the roof trusses of my garage to hold the roof up while I disconnected the struts. If you do this, don't do it like I did.  I disconnected the struts in the rear first and the roof slid rearward and into my head.  Thankfully no permanent damage to me or the roof, but it could have turned out bad.

Anyway, once I had the roof disconnected I used camlock straps to hold the struts down and out of the way while I worked.  You can see the straps in the picture below.

You can also see how hosed the roof was.  After removing the vinyl outer roof surface, I found water had completely delaminated the plywood underneath.  Each 'ply' just peeled off like a wet blanket.  It made for really easy disassembly.  At first I tried to salvage the steel sheet that was the inner 'ceiling' of the camper.  After looking at it the steel was corroded and in pretty rough shape so I'll have to get something else to make the ceiling when I rebuild the roof.

I also found the wooden boards the front springs attach to were broken  (see photo below). This is apparently a common problem with these.  The force of these springs is supported by a piece of 3/4" MDF and a strip of plywood, which broke in two.  With the amount of force exerted by the springs I'm surprised they have lasted this long.  I'll have to take care of this later as well.

At this point, I got pretty busy with Thanksgiving so I wasn't able to work on the camper for a while.  The last few weeks have been extremely cold, so I'm too much of a wuss to do much with the camper.  Once I have enough for another post, I'll update again.  Thank you for reading!

Bill