T4 Trophy over cab child bed option 1994

Hi all

great to see this site exists for sound advice.

Im about to possibly bay a T4 trophy 1994 which has cupboard above the cab. i want to put a child bed up there instead and so can the cupboard and carpeting be removed fairy easily? I know the bed was an option from new but dont know if they have simply put some cupboard in from of a full lined but empty space in order to just drop a fold/ slide out bed in there.
Has anyone pulled this apart and knows how to do it.? I would reinstate it if we ever sell in on.
any pointers most welcome.
dai

Welcome to the forum Dai. It's a question that gets asked quite regularly, and the strange fact is that - to the best of my recollection - nobody has ever come back later, having asked the question, to say "I've done it and it's easy".

I don't know about the Trophy, but I've had to dismantle that part of a similar A/S high-top, so I'm familiar with the type of construction that you would be dealing with.

It's probably fair to say that the job would be somewhere between "easy" and "hard" depending on your skill set! If you're ok with a bit of joinery, a bit of trimming, and a bit of upholstery, then it probably wouldn't be a massive challenge. If your DIY skills don't extend that far then it's probably not going to be so easy.

The Trophy is actually a bit more challenging than mine would have been, as it has a cutout above the driver/passenger (mine had just a simple straight front to the cupboard above the cab). I'm fairly sure that the way A/S would have done it would be to lose the shelves on either side, below the high top windows. You can probably see that doing this and then reinstating it later won't be trivial, if you want it to look "factory" when reinstated.

The bed panels that A/S would have used are not quite trivial either, as they have overlaps to minimise the extent to which weight on one panel can lead to a step in the join with the next panel. Trimming something like that looks to be quite a hard job if you want it to look good. The number of panels will depend more than anything on how large a child you need to accommodate. I confess I've never looked inside the over-cab cupboards in a Trophy, but when you account for the slope of the roof, I think you'll find that they are not very deep at all. For storage, that's fine because you can push stuff into the corners, but for sleeping, the corners don't help!

Above all else, I would recommend that you do some measuring up on a real Trophy to see what the practicalities are. I can recall trying out the top berth on my Rapport (another A/S high-top of similar dimensions in that area) and that would have been cramped for anything more than perhaps an 8 year old - that had 3 slot-in panels, IIRC.

Thats good information. thanks.

Im very handy with tools etc and have no problem making anything in wood (apart from fabrics and covering side, which i can hand over to someone i know).

As I dont have any acsess to the Trophy yet as it is for sale up in Northumbria and I live in London,  I was thinking about it now, im wondered if the dimentions of the high top front roof are all the same on these T4s?

Perhaps as an eaiser compromise, just the middle cupboard door could be removed allowing feet and part legs to lay within it and then bed boards made to straddle the storage tray bins running down the upper sides towards the back. Thus everything is still there that was integral to the layout.
I guess i need to know the opening size of the cupboard and hieght from the roof.

Am I correct in thinking that people always sleep front to back and not side to side in theses? given we are talking about accomidating a child 1.30cm tall.?

Has anyone made any improvements to the sleeping setup in a Trophy for 3 people to sleep individually?

I like so mauch what else it has to offer.

Dai

I agree that both the Trophy and the Topaz are great designs, which pack a lot into a small space. I've been tempted by the Topaz for quite a while now, but never been able to find one I could afford!

The problem with the Trophy is that if you sit in one of the front seats and look up, you'll see a "U" shaped edge to the roof above you, rather than a straight line. The central cupboard is shallower because of this, and I think you will find that it will not provide much space at all. It also creates an issue because any stored bed panels will block the "U" shaped opening. On the Rapport, A/S solved this by hinging the frontmost panel so that you could clip it up to the underside of the front roof slope.

None of this is complicated, but it's all going to be time-consuming to fabricate and trim.

There are of course other options. On earlier A/S conversions, they included (as a paid-for option) hammock-style beds in the roof, which comprised two metal poles with a canvas section between them. Though I have to say that, from personal experience, they are not very comfortable!

I can confirm that the T4 is not wide enough for a person of average height to sleep across comfortably.

Yes I remember those pull out hammocks when I was 10. Needed a shandy then to sleep in one:smile!:
It is a good to roll or fold away a solution which could straddle the two upper side via two cross bars clipped in either end of the tray bays. Should be long enough for children.