Hi from Victoria, Australia

[phin]

Hi, my name's Phin and I've recently acquired some Land Rover camper bits. I grew up around Land Rovers, as my grandfather had them on the farm - in particular this one:



About a year ago I was looking for some Saab 900 parts around Castlemaine only to find the seller had a lot of old Land Rovers. I couldn't help myself from buying this one, bought new by a Dutch couple in the UK and subsequently driven all around Europe and Australia before being left here. Doing a bit of work on it, detailed further athttp://www.aulro.com/afvb/series-iii/16 ... rsion.html.



Then a couple of months ago an Australian manufactured camper roof (with Land Rover attached) was advertised up in Sydney, so I had it brought down. It's manufactured by Trakka, who did a lot of Kombi camper conversions in the 70s and 80s. It looks like the pop top bit has been adapted from their Kombi design. The conversion, while sturdy, isn't really very refined at all. It's basically a big bit of fibreglass and canvas and that's about it.





I was going to restore and fit it in spite of the shortcomings, but then this week I saw a Dormobile roof for sale and I just couldn't resist, you don't see many around in Australia at all. it's been stored in a garage for the last 25 years and hopefully shouldn't need too much work. I'll be hopefully fitting this in the next month or two.





I thought I'd drop by and say hi, I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions!

cheers
Phin

[jerryd]

Welcome aboard phin I'm sure you'll find lots of helpful advice here from fellow enthusiasts. Feel free to drop me an email anytime if you have any queries

[RMS]

Welcome Phin,

Yet another couple of good finds down under, well done

I'm sure we'd all be interested in how you get on with the restoration(s).

Does the Trakka/Kombi have any internal furniture? It would be great to see how a different conversion company did the interior.

I've just had a read through your thread on AULRO, some nice work there, and some familiar names (I know Pete,
Nitemare, and of course Jerry is a member on here )

Keep on posting your progress, with pictures, please

Cheers,
Robin.

[phin]

Many thanks!

The Trakka I have doesn't have any internal furniture at all. The company started around 1974 and my roof is on a late 2A so it's possible that it was transferred from another vehicle at some point. Apparently they did a few Land Rovers early on but I've never seen a photo of another one. Their internal furniture for the Kombis was apparently a high standard marine ply so it's possible something similar was fitted to their Land Rovers. The main problem I have with the conversion though is the way the roof attaches - not very elegant:





I might try to see if my brother wants the Trakka roof as he's looking to buy a Defender soon. I don't think he'll want it though, he wants a Dormobile, and who can blame him...

cheers
Phin

[RMS]

Ah, I see, it does look as though someone just "made it fit" rather than designing it for a Series roof!

However, no matter what it looks like, it does make the difference between laying on the bed to put your trousers on and putting them on standing up, so I'm sure someone will take it off your hands.
I know I would if it were over here - I'm fancying an ambulance, possibly and it looks like that roof could be transferred to any flat roof.

One of our members has something similar, pictured here at the Spring Adventure show last year, taken, I think, from a VW camper:



Being able to stand up really does transform the experience of a camper

Cheers,
Robin.

[DrivingDutchman]

Welcome to the forum. Very interting story about that trakka roof.
Looks suitable for a lot of vehicles if you alter the bit that goes over the rear door. That looks if it was designed specificaly for landrovers to me.

Are you planning to do the interior by your own design or source the correct dormobile furniture?

Anyway keep them pictures coming.

Cheers,

Michiel

[phin]

The funny thing about the Trakka roof is that while the pop up part appears the same as a Kombi, the roof base looks to be designed specifically for the Land Rover. The length is spot on and the rear door arrangement looks like it came straight out of the fibreglass mould. It is odd that they decided to design the roof sides such that the bolts are all exposed, making the roof look way too narrow for the body, as shown below.



That said, it does have its benefits - the pop top runs most of the length of the roof (I measured it at around 2.3 metres long from memory) and has a channel either side so a bed could be mounted up there with ease. Also, with so few series camper tops around in Australia, it should appeal to someone.

In terms of interior furniture, if a whole lot of Dormobile parts turned up I'd be very tempted to use them. But assuming they don't, I'm planning to keep it simple and build something faithful to the period, probably just a bench on one side and a storage locker on the other. The Land Rover already has some rudimentary internal furniture, I may reuse some of it depending on how the dimensions work out with the Dormobile roof.





cheers
Phin

[phin]

Hopefully will be putting the roof on tomorrow...

[jerryd]

Are you not going to paint it first phin ?? It's a big job to do but once done and fitted you can forget it

[phin]

Hi Jerry,

I was leaning strongly towards painting it, but circumstances conspired against me:
- The rest of car has what might charitably be described as a patina, which I quite like. With a clean and a polish the roof paint should lose some of its chalkiness and match the hard top sides colour better.
- I have the whole family up at the farm for Easter and this will be my last chance to get some labour to help put it on for six months or so.
- The Vapormatic tractor enamel I was going to use turned out to be a poor match for the hard top sides - too creamy. In contrast, the Vapormatic marine blue was a quite acceptable match.

The big problem I've had is that the rear lifting arm is seized and when I'd tried to lift the roof the fibreglass was swinging into the roof gutter. I disconnected the arm and poured a lot of penetrene into it last night and I'm hoping it will be better this morning. Anyone had this problem before? Any easy fixes or is it a matter of getting a new set from Dormobile?

cheers
Phin