Category: Camping

1994 COLEMAN CEDAR XL From Scratch Roof Rebuild.

This is the material and the process I used. Your mileage may vary and if you have done something similar please share. This was one of the most challenging projects that I have attempted in a while. I have attached some pics below of the finished outer roof. While we are a ways from completing this project it is under roof and will allow me to leave it popped up so I can work on it in the evenings.  These pics were taken after a week of rain and as you can see I have no signs of leaks.

 

Back to the roof.  I used 2×2’s to frame it up then I covered it with SurePly. SurePly is very dense and is already primed so it was very easy to coat. To weatherproof it I used 2 coats / 1 gallon of FlexSeal and it seems to be doing the trick at the moment. I will keep this post updated so you can see how it holds up over time. I really cannot wait to get it insulated and get the ceiling up. I will also be adding an air conditioner in the very near future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1994 COLEMAN CEDAR XL Roof Rebuild /FAIL!!!!! Attempts 1 and 2

I honestly hate to post this, but this is how the roof rebuild started. None of these attempts worked! I will be making a post of what seems to be working at the moment and is very light and seems to be durable so far. 

  1. Tried using solid boards and quickly realized that this would be way too heavy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. I didn’t learn from that mistake,  but this was a solid platform.  Needless to say, the reason this was too heavy is that I used 3/4″ plywood so I really didn’t save any weight at all with this build. It was very solid though and one of my favorite fails of this build so far.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. I really thought I had it whipped this time.  🙁

 

 

1994 Coleman Cedar XL. Good Deal???

I recently came across a 1994 Coleman Cedar XL Pop Up Camper at an awesome price. I only gave $500.00 and it was ready to camp, so I thought. Don’t get me wrong it was very solid for what I gave for it. However, I just could not let myself take the risk of the canvas coming down after I saw how it was constructed. Below are a few pics from when I purchased it.

 

Here are the pics that made me decide to build a new roof. After looking at how the top was constructed. I decided to start from scratch. This has been a challenge, to say the least, but we will get into that in another post.  As you can see from the images below the water had been running between the canvas attachments and the “wood”.

 

 

Little did I know that these roofs from the factory consist of a piece of aluminum, some insulation, then 3/16 plywood, a little more insulation, and then some sheet metal only where the canvas attaches to the inside.  Building a roof for one of these campers is not for the faint of heart and to be quite honest was a lot of work and I would never attempt it again.

 

Original roof construction looked like this.