Thought some of you might be interested in my home-made lifting roof project. It's on my 25 yr old 110 (it's an '89 Hard Top retro-fitted with a 200Tdi):
I've no particular trips in mind - the van gets used for working out of on locations, (and for holidays) and I have been in various pretty rough (and slightly exotic) places already with the 110 in my more than 15 years of ownership, but will be going to the north of Norway at some point soon to visit family, and then in a year or two maybe down to Morocco as well (been there before a couple of times) so decided now that I have a small boy that it needed to be made a bit more spacious and comfortable for three of us, and be able to contend with cold & snow and also hot climates too.
Rationale: pitching tents gets to be a pain. I've done plenty of it in several decades of travel, want to be freed of that chore with wet tents and setups in the dark or chucking it down rain or snow.
Roof tents are top-heavy and very expensive, and you're outside, which is nice when its nice, but not so nice when it's sub-zero and a howling gale and you've just climbed out of a nice warm van.
So, a lifting roof seemed ideal.
Problem: expensive. Very expensive. Very very expensive. As of writing this, about £6k to £10k depending on your wallet. Too much for me. And more than three times as much as my (now 25 year old) Land Rover cost me.
I gave it some thought and realized that for the DIY approach there are two major 'construction' hurdles to overcome and one 'practical' hurdle to consider:
The construction one is that doing it on the drive at home with limited fabrication space & equipment means that the curve upwards at the back door, and the curve over the windscreen will require specialist skills to properly fabricate the shaped metal needed to accommodate the curves. And the practical hurdle is that removing the old roof to install a lifting mechanism to lift it will mean having the vehicle off the road for some time, which is a problem for me. And you need the means to easily hoist it too, which I dont have, and as I'll be doing nearly all of this on my own it needed to be manageable......
Gave it some more thought and then realized I should just leave the existing roof intact, and build up out of the existing gutter line. Then bolt the 'new' roof to the curve of the old roof at the sides, and bolt through the alloy front and back, and fabricate a lifting mechanism above that on clean straight lines - ie not having to worry about curves at back door and windscreen.
I did a wander around the web and eventually found two easily available alloy extrusions that would allow the roof to work - one a Z section that gives a water-resistent upstand to use for the lower section, and the other a long L section to use as the lifting bit. Crucially the combination of these two sections together leaves enough space between their vertical faces to allow the fabric sides to pull inside when closed. The various early drawing are below - the design 'evolved' considerably as it progressed so things like the roof attachment and roof rack design are different in the final version.
Now, so you could see what went on I tried to duplicate the build thread which I've been maintaining on Expedition Portal, and cross-post to here, but although ALL my images are hosted elsewhere a lot are 1400px wide and this forum only accepts 1270px or so which would mean me re-sizing ALL the hundreds of images I've uploaded (and trying to keep the same filenames), or reposting another set at reduced size. I've not really got the appetite nor the time for either at the moment. So......I'll show you what I started with - a couple of pieces of alloy and an idea and where it finished up:
- Alloy extrusions for top and bottom of new roof.
- attachment.jpg (25.68 KiB) Viewed 6501 times
- Alloy sheet cut to desired widths/lengths
- attachment-1.jpg (45.98 KiB) Viewed 6501 times
- Lifting roof operating and fabric fitted
- attachment-2.jpg (59.21 KiB) Viewed 6501 times
The Exped Portal thread is http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/t ... f-on-a-110, all 42 pages of it, but I'm happy to post updates here and if anyone has any questions I'm happy to oblige with answers if I can.
Build cost thus far - just for the buying and fabrication of the alloy sheet & extrusions, and various bits like gas struts, stainless hinge, seals, roof hatch (yacht fitment) and excluding lights, fridge, etc is about £1200. I did some welding myself on the steel bits but the alloy welding on the corners was done by the local alloy boys (and they did the folding of the front angled piece above the windscreen using a template I supplied) and they got paid. Fabric was cut and sewn by local tentmaker/tarpaulin maker and they got paid, but all the rest was my own labour. I would have done the sewing but wanted to save time. I didn't scrimp on stuff either, so Sikaflex and similar was used, also quality rivets, good stainless fastenings where appropriate etc. SO if you wanted to save money you could buy cheaper fittings, non-stainless hinge, avoid the roof hatch etc and cut the cost.
It was on my drive from July until December working in these condition (north of Scotland):
- December driveway workshop!!
- attachment-4.jpg (46.21 KiB) Viewed 6501 times
Anyway, hope this is of interest and gives some of you the impetus to have a go.
