Installing Westfalia Pop-top in a Chevy Express

[bettyford]

That came out great. I have never used fiberglass and really wasnt sure what you were doing. As for my shop it isn't mine but a good friends who does custom truck and mods Im super lucky to have a friend who has everything I need and gives me the key.
check out his website legacyclassictruck.com he does amazing things.

Ron

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by bettyford

That came out great. I have never used fiberglass and really wasnt sure what you were doing.

Thanks! Fiberglass is a super material, and easy to work with once you get the hang of it. It is basically a thick liquid epoxy, and you soak woven fiberglass cloth in it. When you lay the soaked cloth in place, it will cure into a hard thin layer, and it takes the shape of whatever you lay it on. In order to make good looking fiberglass objects, you have to be creative about building moulds, because they dictate the shape of the finished product. In my case, my mould was simple: just a flexible piece of masonite clamped onto the front of my westfalia top, and bent to mimic the rounded shape of the original top.

You don't find many people who photograph the process of laying up fiberglass because it's messy, and time sensitive. The epoxy cures soon after you mix it, so you have to work fast. There's no time to stop, clean up your sticky fingers and snap photos. If you skip the step where you clean up your sticky fingers, your camera gets covered in epoxy blobs. The only way to document the process is to have a friend handy to take the photos.

Fiberglass is useful because you can create nearly any shape with it, including wildly complex curved surfaces. That's why it's used to create the wild shapes of corvette bodies: it would be difficult and expensive to create the same body panels from metal. Its drawback is that it is heavier than similar structures built from aluminum or steel sheet. I don't use fiberglass very often, but there are some jobs where it is the obvious solution, and this was one, since I needed to enlarge an existing fiberglass structure.

[Silver350]

How did this turn out?

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by Silver350

How did this turn out?

I can't say, just yet, but I expect to update the thread with progress pictures very soon. Thankfully, I've bought a new camera since I started the project, so the next round of photos should be better than the last ones!

Once I got the fiberglass work done on the pop-top, and got the hinges mounted, the whole van was weathertight (at least I thought it was!) so I drove it that way for almost a year. I got motivated to finish the project recently when I discovered that the spring rains were getting into the interior.

I've got a trip planned for the weekend after memorial day, so I'm using the memorial day weekend to finish mounting the top. I spent yesterday evening installing the new canvas tent on the top, then priming the whole top. Tonight, I'll spray paint and clearcoat, and hopefully I can mount the pop-top Saturday night or Sunday. After that, I've got a lot of finish work to do replacing the headliner and finishing the edges of the hole I cut in the top of the van.

I've made several trips this spring to motorcycle trials, and I already love my new pop-top, even without canvas. It is so nice to be able to open the top and stand up to change into/out of my motocycle gear in relative privacy. I have to admit that it feels a bit odd to stand in the van naked, while looking out over the top of the van where the canvas tent SHOULD be!

[Cowboy]

Finally, some major progress. I sprayed primer and paint on the pop-top last week, and spent the long weekend installing the top and the tent canvas. Here's the hole I cut in the roof of the van. Thankfully, the roof supports lined up exactly where I needed to cut the hole, so I only cut out one of the "ribs" from the roof.



Once the paint cured, I installed the weatherstrip along the bottom edge and then slid the top up onto the van. I got the hinges and rear supports mounted temporarily, and discovered (as I anticipated) that the canvas was a bit short to reach the roof of the van. I had about a two-inch gap, and the canvas wouldn't stretch enough to fit. Here, you can see the gap:



I left the front hinges attached, but pulled the rear supports out, and shortened them by about 2 inches. After re-installing them, the gap had nearly disappeared. The canvas will stretch enough to close this small gap:



It took me all afternoon to stretch the canvas and attach the trim that holds it down to the roof. In the end, it all fit beautifully:









And it seems the van has a new identity, inspired by the reaction I get when old Volkswagen drivers recognize the Westfalia pop-top, where it doesn't naturally belong:



In the end, I left the top largely unmodified, and used standard Westfalia canvas, hinges, and trim. The only modifications involved differences in the contour of the roof. The Wesfalia tops are desigend for the pronounced radius on the roof of Volkswagen buses, while my Chevy roof is relatively flat. I had to fill in the gap between the flat van roof and the Westie top at the front of both fiberglass pop-top sections. I used fiberglass in both places, and the result was satisfactory. At the rear of the luggage rack section, I simply trimmed a bit of existing fiberglass off the Westie part to match the Chevy roof radius. I made sure to use a generous bead of sealant anywhere where the pop-top attaches to the sheetmetal roof, so I wouldn't have leakage later.

[cwc]

Great job! I am very impressed with the results.

[bettyford]

That came out great, very clean.

Did you cut the roof under the back piece to gain a little more head roof as well?


Ron

[jage]

Wow, the front to back size is perfect. Very cool.

[vwteleman]

Love the rebadging! The top looks great, and I'm sure you do get a few WTF moments.

On a few occasions when my '89 Westy left me stranded, I dreamt of changing the letters to "WESTFAILURE". Never got around to it.

Cheers,
Brent

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by bettyford

That came out great, very clean.

Did you cut the roof under the back piece to gain a little more head roof as well?


Ron

No, the rear section is a big luggage rack, basically just a fiberglass frame around the perimeter, with a big hole in the middle, so it wouldn't cover a hole in the roof. No need for a hole there anyway, as the bed fills the whole back section of the van. I'll snap a pic of the luggage rack in action next weekend when I take it for its inaugural camping trip, so you can see how the rack functions with luggage in it. I found an unexpected bonus when I installed the new tent canvas: unlike my old Westie tent, the rear window flap AND the screen zip open on this tent, so I can stand inside and reach all the stuff on the luggage rack out back. I expect I'll grow to love that feature! One of the things I loved about my old pop-top was the shelf space it provides in the front part of the tent. It's only about a foot wide, but that one by four foot shelf holds a lot of food and gear and keeps it off the floor. Now the luggage rack will work as a shelf too, for stuff that doesn't need to stay in out of the weather.