Carbon fibre camper box system
More information on the carbon living area used by Maltec, I have been asked about more info on the Maltec living area box so I looked at some outtakes and have put them together here to explain how they make the back.
The rear box comes as a very high-quality carbon fibre molding with around 30mm of honeycomb insulation, the very high cost for this is offset on these vehicles because it saves lots of labour and some weight, if you were to build one yourself the labour costs are very low so it wouldn’t justify such a system unless weight was your primary motivation.
The box is a monocoque design and is very stiff and strong. with normal composite type inserts I am sure this is a very durable type system.
The box is universal, you will see in the back of the box are two universal wheel arches, so they can be put in any location depending on the wheel base.
The rear door also has an outer skin,they appear to be fitting side doors more on the later cars and this piece is used to blank off the rear door now, the hinged rear door looks like great idea when first viewed but I don’t think it works 100%, and Maltec must think the same, I used a wider normal opening door and it works very well at the rear.
On the tub ( ringed orange in the video) you can see the space for the hinge, on the Defender being built it is not present, it could be on the side the rear or the front, but the front is the most practical location.
at the end of the video, you can see the side door on the Mercedes overland camper, ringed in red is an aluminum frame that they insert into to hole they cut out of the back, the pieces removed becomes the door. the blue-ringed area you can see were they max out into the carbon box edges.
this method of cutting a hole then inserting a welded aluminum frame is used for the windos and any acces panels, it is a very clean and neat solution and very adaptive.
I didn’t get any images of the mountings of the main box but remember from before they use the standard locations and make extensions to reach the box and then mount them using the same OEM rubber mount method to keep flexibility of the structure.
using this unversal back they can fit it to many vehicles easily and put windows doors anywhere they want.
one downside is the mounting of outside accessories, while they mount ok with through the side fitting/bolts if they get mashed on a tree etc, they rip an outer layer off the carbon which can be repaired but the honeycomb structure relies on its form for its strength, I did see one a few years back in the shop for repair with the sand ladders ripped off and it had made a mess of the side. not an easy repair on the trail.
Thank you!
[…] video raised some questions about the box they use on the rear, so here is some more info on it. http://www.beady.com/blog/carbon-fibre-camper-box-system/ Maltec overland vehicles visit video is here … Your Dream workshop , a visit to Maltec […]
[…] Carbon fibre/fiber living area for overland camper The Maltec visit video raised some questions about the box they use on the rear, so here is some more info on it. http://www.beady.com/blog/carbon-fibre-camper-box-system/ […]