Nothing in our experience beats the structural integrity of clamshell fiberglass construction for a truck camper, but the very definition of this manufacturing process is limiting. Once you’ve made the expensive fiberglass molds, manufacturers are stuck inside that envelope. Changing floor plans or adding external features is often impossible.
Matt from The Traveling Together Journal is building a fiberglass truck camper using a very different technique. It’s not exactly production-friendly the way he’s doing it, but his approach allows for nearly unlimited design possibilities.
Matt starts by building walls from five-millimeter plywood and a one-inch by two-inch Douglass Fir frame. Then he uses pocket screws to put the frame and plywood together and fills the resulting wall voids with expanding foam. Expanding foam is used by at least one manufacturer we know of, but isn’t commonly found at truck camper companies.
Next, he covers the entire wall with a sheet of 6-ounce fiberglass and coats the sheet with epoxy resin. In theory, this wall should be waterproof, well-insulated by the foam, and offer a high strength to weight ratio.
When he joins his walls and floor together he uses pocket screws, chopped strand paste, and more fiberglass cloth. This should result in a strong, lightweight, and seamless structure. Absolutely brilliant!
Thanks, Matt, for making this video. You’ve demonstrated one way to make a fiberglass camper that’s not limited by molds. It probably would not work in a production environment, but it offers some intriguing ideas.
