Next up is to get the the wall skins into place. With the flanges on the TrailTop shell, 1/4″ plywood was simple to just drop into place.
I epoxied the walls to the shell and wood framing, then secured them with wood screws.
In many areas I cut a cheap piece of 1×2 furring strip to spread the clamping force out a bit along the epoxied seams. This is probably unnecessary but I had 3 or 4 cheap 1×2 pieces laying around so it was easy to setup.
I went ahead and smoothed a bead of epoxy into the gaps between the shell and the plywood as well just as I did when building the shell. These epoxy fillets will secure the edges of the plywood and should help minimize cracking of the final finish due to trailer movement. After the epoxy cured, I removed the screws one at a time, drilled a small countersink and reinstalled the screws so they were just below the surface of the walls. The body filler will just go right over and make them disappear.
This project has 3 doors, and I chose to simply order custom RV style baggage doors rather than building them from scratch. Yes, they were expensive but it was money well spent when it came time to install. I simply fit them in place with some foam weatherstrip, ran a handful of screws around the perimeter and I was done!
As I prepared for the final body prep, I needed to decide how to finish around the doors. I did not want to use body filler right to the door edge in case I ever needed to remove a door in the future. What I ended up doing is using 1/4″ square dowels to make a nice clean perimeter around the frames. I simply tacked them in place with epoxy and some spacers.
Once the epoxy set I was left with a consistent gap all the way around. The 1/8″ gap around the doors is caulked. It will look seamless but if I ever had an issue with a door I could just cut that caulking line and unscrew the door to repair or replace it.