roof raise, new skin
I've been watching videos and reading about roof raises - I notice that some raise their bus roof by going straight up, making in effect a big wind catching sail, while others have a transitional slope, but have to use thinner metal to get the bends right and once it's painted with gloss paint, the waves and wobbles show up - a number of years ago I set a camper on the deck of my flat deck 1 ton truck and tucked my load under and beside it - on a trip, with that blunt camper sitting way up in the air catching the wind, I got 4 miles per gallon - before I went on another trip I made a concave scoop for the front of the camper and achieved 7 MPG the next time I went somewhere with the same load almost doubling the mileage, so if I do do a roof raise, I'll definitely have a sloped transition just because of the difference in fuel costs ( and as a bonus, the items stored on top of the camper didn't collect road grime ) - on the matter of material and forming the curves, in my travels via the internet, I found that bus bodies, not on frames or wheels, are being advertised for $100 - $300 for storage containers - my thought was to buy a matching body to my bus, cut a section of roof out to use as the transition on my roof raise - it would already have the bracing, be made out of the right gauge, and take no time trying to get it to conform to the proper shape - it's one of those ideas that came to me as I woke up in the middle of the night and could be impractical, so I'd like to hear ( read ) some critiques
