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TCM visits Eagle Cap Campers in La Grande, Oregon and watches the welding sparks fly, the fiberglass strands stick, and the lamination train run down the line.
It’s amazing how many ways there are to build a truck camper. While many of the core materials and manufacturing processes are the same from manufacturer to manufacturer, there is always at least one significant difference that makes each company and their products unique in the marketplace.
Eagle Cap Campers is an excellent example of this difference. While Eagle Cap’s floorplans and overall appearances are similar to other brands, a closer look immediately reveals what sets them apart. What is the difference? In a word, fiberglass.
On the outside, Eagle Cap campers glow a bright white from their custom front and rear fiberglass caps and side walls. On the inside, their granite coat counter tops give the feel of a solid surface material with the light weight and durability of fiberglass. Even Eagle Cap’s fiberglass bathrooms are manufactured on site in their fiberglass shop. If there’s a place where fiberglass can be used inside or out, Eagle Cap is on top of it.
Of course there’s a lot more to Eagle Cap Campers than fiberglass. To go beyond the glossy exterior, we visited Eagle Cap in La Grande, Oregon.
LEFT: Eagle Cap Camper’s manufacturing facility consists of two buildings; the main building with Eagle Cap’s offices and production line, and a second building with the welding, lamination, and fiberglass shops.
CENTER: After morning break, we assembled the entire Eagle Cap office and production team for a group shot. Behind the team is a row of campers just off the production line. These campers will be individually weighed and go through a final quality control inspection before delivery to an Eagle Cap dealer.
RIGHT: This photograph was taken just inside the front bay door and shows the end of Eagle Cap’s U-shaped production line (right side) and their wood shop (middle).
LEFT: There’s no getting away from the piercing metal on metal grinding screech of sawing aluminum. Here Nick Sherer cuts square aluminum tubing for an Eagle Cap 1165 triple slide. Notice that he’s smart enough to wear hearing protection. We were not. What?
CENTER: Once the aluminum is cut, each section is numbered and labeled. When a frame cut list is completed, the aluminum sections are bundled together for Matt Christensen, Eagle Caps’ frame welder.
RIGHT: Matt takes the bundle of aluminum sections and assembles them into a frame jig. Once the frame pieces are in place, he welds them together forming a new aluminum camper frame.
LEFT: Once a frame is welded, Matt sands the welds down and scuffs the frame. Scuffing the frame allows the aluminum to adhere during Eagle Cap’s unique lamination process.
CENTER: Here’s a close-up of an aluminum frame after the welds have been sanded and the smooth aluminum surface has been scuffed.
RIGHT: Damon likes his music loud. When we say loud we mean don’t try to have a conversation loud. Every time we showed up, he would run over and turn his music down. We eventually convinced him that we liked his music and he kept it on. If there’s an ounce of bad-ass in an Eagle Cap frame, it’s from Damon’s music. Rock on, Damon!
In this photograph, Damon is also scuffing an aluminum frame for lamination. Once he completed the scuffing, he carefully checked the frame over to make sure the frame was uniformly scuffed. Eagle Cap sure takes it’s scuffing seriously.
On the other side of the building from where Damon is scuffing frames to a steady beat, the Eagle Cap fiberglass team is working on Eagle Cap’s fiberglass nose caps, end caps, side walls, shower stalls, table tops, and counters.
LEFT: Shawn Johnson kept telling us how much she enjoys working in Eagle Cap’s fiberglass shop. Based on the enthusiasm she showed us, we certainly believe her. Here Shawn is spraying fiberglass and resin into an already gel coated rear end cap mold.
CENTER: Once the fiberglass and resin begins to coat the mold, Ray Johnson and Ray Sutton begin to roll the fiberglass down. Straight out of the fiberglass and resin gun, the fiberglass coats the molds like pink hair with a terrible cowlick. Think Cyndi Lauper with bed head and you get the idea.
RIGHT: In this photograph, you can see the fiberglass as it looks after it’s sprayed (left) and then after it’s been rolled flat (right). Once completed, the resulting part offers all of the high-gloss, strength, and weight benefits of fiberglass.
Eagle Cap Campers is the only non-fiberglass clamshell truck camper manufacturer that makes their own fiberglass wall panels. Where other companies buy their fiberglass or filon walls in rolls or pre-laminated panels, Eagle Cap starts with a fiberglass wall mold and creates their own.
Eagle Cap also laminates their aluminum frames directly to the fiberglass without a layer of luan plywood. Scuffing the fiberglass and aluminum is a significant part of this technique that saves Eagle Cap time, material costs, and camper weight. The finished walls also have a very bright exterior gloss.
Once the fiberglass walls are gel coated, sprayed with fiberglass and resin, cured, and scuffed, the wall sheets are hand carried by the fiberglass and lamination teams to the lamination tables in the next room. The walls are placed on the table gloss side down.
LEFT: With all of the elements scuffed and ready to go, the “glue train” is fired up and run over the surface of the fiberglass wall. The first pass lays down a layer of honey thick adhesive.
CENTER: The second pass showers the adhesive with a fine mist of water to kick off the adhesive. Once the water hits the adhesive, the team is in a race to assemble all of the wall elements on the table before the adhesive sets.
RIGHT: Prior to running the lamination race, the side walls and other components that need to be laminated are carefully placed near the table. As soon as the adhesive is wet, the team begins to assemble the wall sections on the table.
LEFT: As soon as this side wall was laid onto the table, the team quickly moves to place the rest of the wall elements. The atmosphere is intense and focused as the team has little room for error or wasted time at this step.
CENTER AND RIGHT: With all of the sections now placed, the team pulls over a sheet of clear plastic over the length of the table. This is followed by a second heavier blue plastic sheet which is clamped down to create the vacuum seal. Once the clear and blue plastic sheets are clamped, the team applies a vacuum to the table.
LEFT: Located in the center of Eagle Cap’s production line, the wood shop builds all of Eagle Cap’s cabinetry. Here Robby Shells builds a cabinet for a refrigerator.
CENTER: A popular option for Eagle Cap Campers is a full wall storage wardrobe in the passenger side overcab. The advantage of the full-wall overcab wardrobe is significantly more storage, but you lose the passenger side window. Several of the campers on Eagle Cap’s production line were ordered with full-wall overcab wardrobes.
In this photograph, Barehk Welley is working to to complete a full-wall overcab wardrobe. He explained to us that this wardrobe fits into most of Eagle Cap’s larger models.
RIGHT: Juan Carmona is the third member of Eagle Cap’s wood shop team. Here Juan is working on a cabinet for an Eagle Cap 1050.
LEFT: Eagle Cap is well known for their granite coat table tops and counters. They look and feel like solid surface counters and are very light weight. Once the granite coat tables and counters leave the fiberglass shop, Gary Grant routs and completes them. Here he’s buffing the surface of a counter extension.
CENTER: At the beginning of the Eagle Cap production line, Mike Trumbo builds the camper floors and basements. Here he’s installing a set of holding tanks into an Eagle Cap 850.
RIGHT: There’s always an impressive amount of wiring that gets installed into a new camper. To keep track of all the wire runs, wire gauges, and other complexities involved in a truck camper’s electrical system, electricians on a production line are always highly specialized. In this photograph, Ron Sauer, Sr. installs the battery disconnect switch on an Eagle Cap 800.
LEFT: Once the floor and basement are completed, the interior cabinetry and overcab assembly are installed. The next step is to install the exterior walls including the front nose walls. Here Creighton Moore installs one of the front nose walls by securing it to the overcab floor. Note the aluminum framing and the well fitted foam insulation.
CENTER: Eagle Cap is well known for it’s fiberglass front nose and end caps. These fiberglass caps are designed and manufactured in house by Eagle Cap’s fiberglass shop. Once the caps are completed, Jim Smith installs the lights and other exterior features before installing the caps into a camper. In this photograph, you can see how bright and white the gel coat is by his reflection.
RIGHT: Eagle Cap uses TPO, thermoplastic polyolefin, for their roofs. In this photograph you see Creighton and Jim roll out the TPO over a layer of freshly applied adhesive.
This just can’t be said enough. You need to check your camper seals at least once a year, preferably twice, to make sure they’re in good shape. If you don’t maintain your seals, any RV, no matter the type, make, model, or year, will eventually leak. Not checking and maintaining your seals would be like not changing the oil in your car. Eventually your engine will stop running.
Unfortunately, the reality is that too many truck camper owners fail to heed this most basic and critical piece of advice and suffer the consequences. Worse, the blame is often put onto the manufacturers who, again, can’t say tell their customers enough to check their seals. So, check your seals for goodness sake!
Mony Pen, Eagle Cap’s General Manager, has recently taken a very big step towards making camper roof seals a less maintenance intensive issue. He’s had his roof finishing team switch from Dicor, the industry standard roof sealant, to Sikaflex 715.
Sikaflex is an extremely strong adhesive that’s well known to be almost impossible to separate once properly applied. We first encountered the use of Sikaflex on truck campers in 2007 when we visited Bob Mehrer at Snowriver. Bob was using Sikaflex to attach his Happijac jack brackets and told us that it even prevented the screws from moving, a problem which was known to create leaks. By changing from Dicor to Sikaflex, Mony wants to make a similar impact with camper roof sealants.
In these three photographs you see Eric Walling and Cory Bevell, Eagle Cap’s roof finishing team, applying Sikaflex to a new Eagle Cap. To ensure the Sikaflex properly adheres, the team needs to first meticulously clean the roof with mineral spirits and Sikaflex’s own primer. The whole process takes considerably more time and expense than Dicor but, if it delivers as promised, Sikaflex 715 should save Eagle Cap owners even more time and expense down the road. We were impressed.
We were also very impressed when we observed Mike Owen weighing each and every Eagle Cap Camper as it left the factory. Mike uses a set of Intercomp SW500 E-Z scales, similar to the ComputerScales systems used by Five Star RV, Hallmark RV, Truck Camper Warehouse, and a good number of other camper manufacturers and dealers. The Intercomp SW500 E-Z and ComputerScales systems are quickly becoming the industry standard, a change we strongly support.
Mike was able to weigh each camper and move to the next in a matter of minutes. Eagle Cap even has a cart especially designed to hold the scale and it’s pads for quick roll out and use. Why can’t this step be added to final finishing at every truck camper factory? Let’s make it happen.
Once Mike had weighed a camper, he recorded the weight onto a weight log. The weight log records the unit number, model, weight as reported by the Intercomp scale, and the date.
The weight recorded is not a standard dry weight, but rather the actual weight of the camper with the options installed by the factory. After all, who cares about what the camper would have weighed without the options you want? This weight, often called a base dry weight, has little to no meaning when you realize how much weight can be added with options. The next set of photographs make this point abundantly clear.
Every Eagle Cap Camper has two weight stickers. The sticker on the exterior of the unit is the base dry weight. Again, this is the dry weight of the camper without options. You could order a camper in this base configuration, but most campers on dealer lots have plenty of factory options which make this base dry weight a good starting point, but basically meaningless.
The second weight sticker on an Eagle Cap is located on an inside cabinet door in the kitchen area. For this particular 2011 Eagle Cap 850, the base weight on the exterior of the camper is listed as 2,839 pounds. The actual weight of this particular 850 as optioned was 3,310 pounds. That’s 471 pounds of options.
As you can see, Eagle Cap Campers continues to pioneer a unique method of building truck campers. They’re also busy pushing the design envelope by debuting the Eagle Cap 1165 triple-slide and 800 non-slide earlier this year. With their pipeline full and production line running full speed, Eagle Cap is definitely on the right track.
We’re also very happy to see Eagle Cap taking the “dry weight as equipped” seriously and posting the weight information clearly in each and every camper that comes off the line. As a side note, we saw several emerging materials and techniques at Eagle Cap that should help to push their camper weights down even further. When those changes are ready for prime time, we’ll bring them to you here, in Truck Camper Magazine.
For more information about Eagle Cap Campers, visit www.eaglecapcampers.com.
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