So the next big project is to convert our Scamp's dinette into a "U" shape dinette with new, more comfortable foam & fabric, a new table, and exterior access hatches to the space under the benches. In the process we're also swapping our 10 gallon fresh water tank for a larger tank that'll sit under the bench across the back of the trailer (the "bottom" of the "U"). (Many of the ideas I'm using are stolen from work CamperBob did on his Scamp 5er.)

Click to view attachment Before pic (without the cushions)

Click to view attachment The water tank takes up almost all the curb-side under-bench space.

Click to view attachment I used a sharpie to mark the bench and the vinyl floor for a reference point to help me measure my cut lines later.

Click to view attachment Here is the water tank with the bench removed. I'm replacing this tank with a larger one under the back bench, something I can get away with because this is a 5th wheel. (You wouldn't want to move the weight of all that water to the very back of a traditional trailer. It would make the trailer unstable for towing. If I had a traditional trailer I'd probably install two smaller tanks, one on each side as close to the axle as I could manage.)

Click to view attachment Here's the water pump compartment with the lid removed. You can also see the waste line from the sink and the vent from the gray tank looping up and back down through the floor. I'm moving the pump to the other side of the trailer to make as much room under the "curb side" bench seat as I can. The waste and vent lines will also be moved around somewhat for the same reason.

Today I also ordered two locking hatch covers from eBay, one 13x17 inch hatch for the street side, and a 13x24 inch hatch for the curb side bench storage.

More to come.

<sigh> The inside of my trailer looks like a bomb went off inside.

You are not alone, the bomb went off in mine last week, all the benches have been pulled, trying to get the ensolite reglued and prepped for finishing.

1 week and 12 hours to go before packing up to head off to Emily. Now I have to deal with the time bomb and weather. I feel like I'm out on the left coast with rain just about every day. How do you people out there get any work done on your trailers with all that rain?

Peter, I'm wondering why you would not put the tank(s) under the floor between the frame rails? Is there any room there in a 5th or is it already occupied with something else?

A couple reasons. First, the original tank was inside, so I just kinda followed suite when I planned out the install for the new larger tank. Putting it across the back of the trailer under the rearmost bench seat in my new "U" layout just kinda made sense in that context. It opens up the space under the curb side bench so much to have it across the back, and since I'm planning to put in a large curb-side access hatch, that's important.

In retrospect, installing the tank under the floor between the rails wouldn't have been practical, either. The space under the dinette is taken up with the gray waste water tank, and there trailer doesn't have enough ground clearance for commonly available 19-20 gallon tanks placed forward of that point.

The trailer's still a mess inside, so it still looks like a bomb went off inside my trailer, but I'm at the point where things are starting to get put back together, so things are heading back into their storage spots now. It's sort of post-bombing-cleanup, I guess.

Here's what I've accomplished so far:

Click to view attachmentI've moved the thermostat control from the dinette area to near the front door and installed an on/off switch for the porch light. (Easier to get to from the loft end of our 5th wheel.)

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment I re-plumbed the space under the kitchen sink to neaten up the rats nest of plumbing for the water heater, sink, and waste line so we can actually use the storage space here. This required drilling a new hole in the side of the cabinet for the gray water waste line from the sink. The yellow cable sticking through the hole is 110v AC wiring for an outlet I'm installing in the front corner of the bench; a convenient spot to plug laptops and AC cube heaters in. There was some similar neatening work under the cabinet on the other side, too.

Click to view attachmentI moved most of the electrical and plumbing lines up off the floor and attached them to the underside of the bench support. (This will free up floor space under the bench when I put the access hatch in, but it helped tidy up the under-sink area, too.) Note: The outside electrical socket in the picture with the yellow cables running to it will have to move under the sink when I install the hatch.

Click to view attachmentThis rats nest is the space under the street side counter where our converter and fuse box live, and it's where I moved our water pump to. While I was re-routing and re-wiring stuff I segregated the microwave and refrigerator onto their own electric circuit. Now the 'fridge, micro, and eventual "Lightning Rod" electric hot water heater add on will be on their own circuit, separate from all the trailer 110 AC outlets. Doing this will make it easier for me set things up so I can flip a switch and change the outlets from shore power to a little inverter, a 100watt, 110AC inverter that can power our little laptops and planned TV/DVD player from battery power.

Next up, final plumbing for the fresh water tank, cutting our bench seats so the larger water tank has room to pop through the bench seat walls, and putting the benches back in.

Today I got the new fresh water tank installed and got the dinette benches notched to go around it.

Click to view attachment This is the old fresh water tank atop the new one. Old held about 10 gallons, the new one probably 17 gallons.

Click to view attachment Where the new tank goes. You can't see it, but I put the tank in-place and drew its outline on the floor.

Click to view attachment Measured the distance from the mark I made from the bench and onto the floor before removing the bench.

Click to view attachment Transposed the measurement to the street side bench.

Click to view attachment Drew the outline of the hole for the tank using the transposed mark as the point where the front edge will set.

Click to view attachment Scored the edges where the cutout line is and put some masking tape down to protect the "keep" side of the bench from being scratched while sawing the cutout.

. . . more to come . . .

Peter,

Your mods continue to be amazing. I can't wait to see your latest mods in a few weeks!

-Isaac

Click to view attachment Who is that masked man? It's Trailer Man!

No, seriously. If you've worked with fiberglass, you know it can irritate your skin and make it itch. If you cut fiberglass, little bits of fiberglass dust get in the air, then into your lungs, where they do damage. Wear a mask!

Click to view attachment The bench cutout for the street side water tank. I realized after the fact that the "leg" on the left would get in the way of the plumbing and electrical lines I secured under the seat, so it came off shortly after I took this picture.

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment Curbside and streetside, respectively, here's what the tank ends look like under the installed benches. The big single hose on the left is the inlet, the hoses on the right are the overflow and feed line with a drain valve (which has an "L" you can't seen that vents through the floor). Each side has wood blocks that stop the tank from sliding right-to-left while the trailer is moving, and there's a metal strap (from the plumbing section of the hardware store) that drapes over the tank and is stretched tight and screwed to the floor to stop the tank from bouncing when the trailer's moving.

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment And the two sides of the "U." Still lots of work to do.

This probably a stupid question, but how are the benches held in? Screws? Fiberglass? Bolts?

Removing the benches is easy. There's a "curb" kind of thing that the top back of the bench rests on (it's what I zip-tied the electric cables as well as the hot&colt water lines to in earlier pictures). In my Scamp four screws hold the top to the curb, two more go through a horizontal rib at floor level. Scamp liberally applies white silicone caulking to fill the gap between the kitchen-end of the bench and the kitchen base cabinets, and applies a more discrete, thin line of caulk across the floor. You have to use a utility knife to cut through the caulk before you can pull the bench out.

Ah. Thanks. They can't be providing much, if any, structural support for the shell, then.

IMHO every little bit helps. If you've ever put up metal studs for drywall you will know what I mean. That said, If I were doing Peter's mod, I might have considered shifting the tank an inch or so streetside so only one bench had to have a large cut out and the other could have had a hole cut for the fill tube only. But hindsight is almost always different.

I'm not too worried about supporting the bench. There'll be spacers under the back bench seat that rest on the water tank, and the back bench will be screwed down to the "L" rest where the table drops down to on the fiberglass benches.

And, yes, I considered cutting just one bench, but placing the tank center-back allows it to rest against the back wall as one point of support without it being rotated out of alignment.

Today I:

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Made a new box to protect the gray waste and gray tank vent tubes from cargo shifting under the curbside bench while we're moving.

Click to view attachment Filled to old fresh water drain and vent and the gray tank vent line holes in the floor with Bondo: Covered the bottom side of the hole under the trailer with duct tape, then ladled in and putty knifed down the Bondo filler.

Click to view attachment Installed new LED lighting around the fan over the dinette table. The lights switch is the little red push button under the twist knob that raises the vent cover. (These are IKEA LED lights, btw. Since their voltage requirements are pretty strict I soldered a 12V regulator chip from Radio Shack into the circuit.)

Click to view attachment Cut a front cover for the tank. The top cardboard piece is the template I test-fit in the spot before cutting the cover. The cover is made from Masonite enameled on one side with the white enamel used on dry-erase boards.

Click to view attachment The tank front panel's back side.

Click to view attachment Panel set in place, but not installed. I used a router to cut a slot in the center so you can see the level of the water inside the tank. The inside edges of the gauge slot are painted black. Silicone caulk will fill the gaps between the panel and the bench seat fronts.

And today's progress -- Almost Done!

First, here's how I make a cardboard template and cut the wood for parts that are adjacent to walls that aren't too curvy. (No inside corners, for example.)

Click to view attachment Use a big piece of scrap cardboard. (This one is already marked . . . hey, I bought a new grill for the trailer!)

Click to view attachment Hold a marker to one edge of a wood block and guide the other edge of the block snugly along the wall you wish to match your cutout to.

Click to view attachment Cut along the line and test to make sure your template is the right shape.

Click to view attachment Use a sabersaw to cut the curvy edges.

Click to view attachment And a circular saw to cut the straight lines. (This cordless is part of a $120 Black and Decker "Firestorm" system that has one "motor" unit that attaches to several different heads, including this circular saw, a (anemic) router, saber saw, sander, and drill). I like this saw for cutting panels because it's small, slow, and maneuverable, which makes it much easier to follow a cut line without drifting.)

Click to view attachment This is the support for the back side of the back bench, made from furring strips that are glued and screwed together. You need a back support because there is no "curb" support where the table used to be. The bottom end of the legs are tapered somewhat to fit the tight space behind the tank. There are also furring strips glued with urethane glue to the front edges of the bench, and another furring strip glued along the top edge of the front cover for the tank.

Click to view attachment Assembled they look like this.

Click to view attachment The back support is glued toward the back underside of the bench. Be careful to align the spot where you glue it with the position it'll be in when snug to the tank. This isn't flush with the back!

Click to view attachment It all comes together like this.

Click to view attachment The seat back will be 1/4" plywood with upholstery covering. Here I'm marking a radius on an upper corner.

Click to view attachment Two pieces of plywood are glued and screwed to furring strip supports that give a slight angle to the back.

Click to view attachment The top support is slightly different: it was cut with a bow in it to match the back of the trailer between the window and where the table was. The rest of the supports that hold the plywood in place are straight.

Click to view attachment Two of these, one attached to the trailer wall with the "L" facing up and one in the middle of the seatback facing down hold the seat more or less in place.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment The little block of wood under the "L" rail on the wall slides just over the furring strip at the bottom of the seat back, preventing it from bouncing up and off the "L" rail.

Click to view attachment The plywood seat back supported on its "L" rail.

Click to view attachment I glued 1/2 thick high-density foam to the back using 3M Super 77 adhesive, then trimmed the excess.

Click to view attachment Then the thickest batting I could find at JoAnn Fabrics was glued on, leaving 2" of overlap past the edges.

Click to view attachment The fabric was stretched tight and stapled in place, starting from the center of one of the long sides and working out, then the other long side from the center out, then each of the short sides, center out. Lots of staples, each hammered a second time to make sure they stay.

Click to view attachment Lynne has been busy making cushions. My sweetie is a wonderful woman.

The corner pillows are a "work in progress," and I have some things to do, like adding trim to the front edge of the back and side benches, replacing the Scamp reading lights with the new LED reading lights I'm making, and I have to make a table, but that's next weekend . . .

Made & installed a table today. It's a simple piece of MDF, cut to shape with Lowes in-stock laminate and a white iron-on Melamine tape edge. Same basic shape as the standard Scamp table, but just 24" x 30" in size.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

It'll be interesting to see how the iron-on tape holds up. When I built tables for my sister's and her friend's trailers, I used aluminum L-shaped edging attached with screws--mostly for durability.

I love Formica (or generic equivalent) for a table surface--easy to install, rugged, easy to clean, not prone to water damage.

The main liability with the edge tape is it's easy to catch the end of the tape on a trouser seam or other bit of clothing as people slide into and out of the dinette. If, on the other hand, your table has gentle rounded curves and not angled corners you can wrap the tape all the way around the edge to a single seam at the back where it won't experience as much wear-and-tear, then iron-on tape can last for years. Occasionally a top or bottom edge may get pulled up, but you can generally fix that by setting a standard clothes iron to its highest setting and pressing the stuff back into place.

When the edge tape finally does give out you can remove it with a hot iron iron and a pair of needle-nose pliers; just start at the seam at the back and use the iron to melt the tape's hot-melt adhesive so you can pull it up with the pliers, then work your way around the table. Once the old tape is removed you can iron on a whole new tape, carefully trim the overlap above and below the table off with a razor edge, and the table edge really is as good as new.

Replaced one of the two dinette reading lights with LED reading lights I made.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment The lights are converted Home Depot track lights I bought on clearance that have been stripped of their "track" connectors and had their 110v AC lamp sockets replaced with pin-base sockets designed for MR11/MR16 12v track lights. The socket design allows me to easily upgrade the LED light if a better, brighter 2w LD light comes along. The 6-LED "Warm White" 12v MR11 wide-angle spot I installed here is from LEDWholesalers.com. The push-button on/off switch to one side of the light came from Lowes.

Click to view attachment The wiring is pretty straight forward except I soldered a 12v regulator from Radio Shack into the circuit between the switch and the light. The regulator protects the LED bulb from getting cooked if the voltage the converter supplies to the 12 volt system peaks over 14V.

Click to view attachment Much prettier than the reading light the Scamp came with.

I would have gotten the other side of the dinette wired up this evening, but I broke one of the "legs" off the regulator while I was soldering it into the circuit, so I have to buy another regulator tomorrow, remove the old one, and solder the new one in place.

Both reading lights are installed now . . . now our entire 12v lighting system runs on LEDs, so I can turn every light the trailer on and still use less energy than just two of the old 12v incandescent light bulbs the trailer came with. Better yet, the new lighting does a better job of lighting the trailer up than the old incandescent lights did, and the new LEDs don't have that annoying blue color. (Something cold cathode fluorescents and older LED lights tended to have.) That should make boondocking with our one roof-mounted solar panel a lot easier.

There are only a few things left to do on this project, and most of them will have to wait for me to get to other projects before I can do them. The major one is the gaps between the dinette benches, the kitchenette cabinets and the white panel covering the water tank at the back of the dinette which need to be filled/caulked and a caulk line run along the floor line, but that needs to wait until I put the exterior hatch doors under the bench seats so we can access the storage areas from outside. Hopefully that'll get done before we go out for two weeks with the trailer later this summer. Another annoyance is the fresh water tank outlet started leaking, so I'm going to have to pull the tank and figure out how to plastic-weld a new fitting in, and that has to be fixed before our trip.


Click to view attachment So this is what the new "U" dinette is gonna look like for a while. I'm really happy with it.

One last thing to show you. When I cut the MDF for the table top I had two big triangular pieces of scrap. Rather than throw them away I glued them to a bit of scrap plywood that fit between my two dinette benches and made an insert that fills the gap when the table top has been dropped to convert the dinette into a bed. I just drop in the insert then turn the table around so the "front" edge of the table points "back" and I get a nice solid sleeping deck.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

Great work Peter — as usual. But I'm interested in the access panels. Are they metal or fibreglass or poly? Hinged or just pullout? If hinged, up or down? I have been looking at some hatch covers at West marine suitable for fibreglass application, but have been a little gunshy about actually putting holes in the exterior of the Burro. What tools do you plan to use, and how will you secure the panels to the Scamp?
By the way, if you make house calls and you're interested in a working holiday on one of the lovely Canadian Gulf Islands just a short ferry ride to Victoria or Vancouver, I think we could work something out (LOL)
cheers
Ian

Thanks for the compliment! And, as for the questions:

>Are they metal or fibreglass or poly? Hinged or just pullout?

I bought two T H Marine locking access Hatches, one 13x24" hatch for the curbside, another 13X17 streetside hatch. (The smaller streetside hatch to allow room for the electric and water hookups.) West Marine sells them, but I found them for 2/3 the price from an eBay retailer, A Bass Boat Store, and they were very easy to deal with.

These are the same hinged poly units that Camper Bob installed successfully in his Scamp 5th wheel; as for how I install them, I'll figure that out over the next month and a half after Bandon, and will post another topic showing how I do it.

>If hinged, up or down?

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Actually kinda horizontal just now. Later on they'll be installed with the hinge horizontal, running just below the "curb" the back of the dinette bench rests on.



Dunno about this "working holiday" idea. Isn't that something like "honest politician?"

Peter-
You have some of the greatest ideas!!! Thanks for being so generous with your posts! I can't tell from the photos, but did you get the locking hatches? If so, do they have universal keys like all the RV compartments in the world, or are they individually keyed?

Yes, locking hatches with universal keys. I'll take them and my door lock to a locksmith and have him re-key everything to the same key. It'll cost me, but the added convenience and security is quite worth the cost.

Peter-

I'm following your lead and purchased two of the locking marine hatches. I can't wait for them to arrive! The Bass Boat Store eventually answered my inquiry about the keys and said that the manufacturer makes the locking hatches with four different locks. The store believes that all of the hatches they stock are keyed the same. I'm bewildered by how the boat and RV industries do so little in the way of security measures.

I'll look forward to seeing how you install these. I sure will enjoy having easy access to my portable BBQ, other outdoor kitchen equipment, hoses, etc. especially since I'm reorienting the beds, which will make access from inside the trailer a bit more challenging. My only concern is since I will install these hatches about 12" below the windows I wonder if this will weaken the structural support of these thin walls? I'm guessing I'll need to build a wood frame on the interior side and this will help shore up the support of the walls. Any thoughts on this subject?


Lisa

Your "U" shapped seating LOOOOOOKs very nice! Top notch work! You will like it, ours has served us well!
Mike

We want to do this exact update... Thanks for posting as you went along on your project, it will help us build ours right the first time! I have a question, how wide did you make your bench? I know you mentioned the table is only 24" x 30" does it fit the gap exactly as it did before you changed it? I really like this design, it just looks more inviting and comfortable, plus you lose that HEAVY table.

Peter...
You do first class work on every project you take on (like many others on this forum)... always look forward to your posts.
Joe

It's a conversion that works very well for us, April. We spent two weeks straight camping in the trailer and found it was comfortable and functional. We'll experiment with different table shapes for a while before we settle on a final size shape and size, though.

One thing I do need to warn you about is I would NOT move the fresh water tank to the back of your conventionally towed trailer! The 5th wheel has enough tongue weight on it that 140 pounds of water (a full 20 gallon tank) at the back of the trailer won't cause instability when we pull it. That's not true with your bumper-hitched trailer, but you can still turn the back bench into a space to tuck lightweight stuff, like clothes and such.

The table width was 30" bench-to-bench, and it's still 30" bench-to-bench. The 24" depth when added to the back bench seat isn't quite the same length as the original table. We made the table a tad shorter to help make it easier to slide in and out of the dinette. We'll probably make another, even shorter table because it's still a little bit of a chore getting up and down.

If you look at my earlier posts there's one where I show the "filler" piece that tucks over the "nose" of the table to fill in the gap when we want to turn the dinette into a sleeping spot.

The bench depth . . . I wish I could remember.

I think it's 16 inches, but the depth was more or less dictated by the size of water tank's 12"x32" footprint. The back wall of the Scamp arches away from the tank from there by a few inches and the tank cover/bench extends a bit further forward, so 16" is probably about right. I'll try to remember to get the measurement this weekend when I go visit my trailer.

As long as you don't go overboard (like I did) this makes a good "starter" project for your trailer, April. Just concentrate on making the back bench with storage underneath and a new, smaller table with a podium leg. Don't remove and cut holes in the benches, re-plumbing everything, cut hatch-holes in the sides of the trailer . . . that would be too much for a first mod, and you'd loose use of your trailer while you made the changes.

Trailer mods are evolving projects. Do one little corner at a time, changing the way just one part of your trailer works while leaving the rest alone. That way you don't get bogged down and locked out of camping in your trailer for months and months at a time. That, and by leaving the existing bench structures intact you can play with the dimensions of your new "U" dinette and table and still go back to the original configuration if you don't like it.

Good luck!

--Peter

We have decided to go for it! And using your design as our model, I came up with this fabricated photoshop image of what it SHOULD look like when we are done. It's kind of rough, I used snippits of photos I have taken recently. I really like your design, and used parts of your photo to fabricate ours, thanks for the inspriation!!!

also, we don't have to worry about moving any water tanks, we don't have one. They put a 2 gallon jug under the sink, so we have upgraded to a 6 gallon for now, and will figure out the water system after we have started using it. I'm glad to hear it is a functional upgrade. I like the idea that both of us will have a "lounge" spot when the table is up. I have been trying to think of some way to add a leaf to the table, maybe on a hinge or slide out or something... we will see how that works out.

Go for it, April! Have fun and keep it simple!

--Peter

This is what i got done yesterday. I still have some finishing work to do, sanding, triming and painting. We are still trying to figure the painting part out so they might stay rough for a little while. It amazes me how quickly we can put things together. I will post more detailed photos here:

http://www.fiberglassrv.com/board/index.php?showtopic=32043

Peter---
Thought you might be interested in the table mod I have in the Compact. I'm not the one that thought of it tho. I was at the local auto wrecking yard pulling things out of a derelict camper and scored this. It has a wooden plate attached to the bottom and two simple rabbet cuts to make it slide. Quite handy in the Compact, allows us to sit down then slide the 24" square table in front of us. It slides 7", which really helps one to sit down. We have two table plugs in the floor, use each when different bed configurations are used. Larry

Larry,

That mod has got to be what I'd call "The Cat's A**" and I would expect that it will be a frequent flyer for the people doing mods in the future.

Very cool Lary! We still have not built the table, so I have been trying to figure out some kind of hinged fold up leaf, or slide out that would extend the table a few more inches when we need it, that may be another solution.

I LIKE IT! I'll make one as soon as my schedule gets a little less crazy.

--Peter

Hi: Peter... Our Escape Hatch has a sliding table for the U Dinette. Best thing since sliced bread!!! Very accommodating for my middle aged spread!!!
Alf S. North shore of Lake Erie

I just might have to make one of those sliding tables myself, thanks for the pics.

what are you doing with the old lights Peter?

you must be one of those ppl that wakes up in the middle of the night and has to keep a note pad by the bed to empty your brain onto so you can get back to sleep? Scamp should have you on their design dept. payrole. bravo!

We had six of the original Scamp lights and gave a few away to some friends. The rest we are keeping until we either install them in our Surfside trailer project or decide we want some other kind of lights there. That'll be a while off; we plan on starting work on the Surfside next year after I complete the remaining "big ticket" projects in the Scamp 5er.

thanx Peter. I did find one on the internet to order.
I'm going to keep looking to see if I can find a more modern looking one tho.
I only need one so I may also go for a socket conversion.

I think there'll be 1156 warm white bayonet base LED "bulbs" out soon. That would simplify converting them to LEDs.