Brisbane made Olympic 12 foot pop top

[Evan]

Hello - I recently bought an old Brisbane made Olympic 3.1 m pop top. It has a large Olympic torch molded on the side door.
Does anyone know much about them? I can't see any pictures of them on the internet. It will be an easy unit to pull and very easy to set up.
I would add a photo but don't know how.

[shesgotthelook]

Is this it?

vintagecaravans.proboards.com/thread/9426/big-bird

[Evan]

No - mine is half the size with vinyl in the two foot gap under the pop top roof.

[Don Ricardo]

Hi Evan,

Welcome to the Forum and thanks for telling us about your pop top Olympic. I am wondering if your are referring to an Olympic camper trailer? I have some pics of one of those somewhere painted in royal blue.

Either way it will be fascinating to see some photos of your rig. There are instructions on how to post photos on the Forum if you click here. The easiest way to post photos is using the Attachment button, but you may need to actually register on the forum first.

Alternatively, if you would like to, you can email some photos to me and I’ll be glad to post them for you. My email is [e-mail]

Don Ricardo

[Don Ricardo]

Photos of Evan’s Olympic van posted on his behalf:

















Evan, this forum is focused on caravans built before 1970, and normally we don’t have a lot of info on vans produced after that. However, Olympic is an interesting case because they built vans from the late 50’s through to the 80’s. The early vans were bondwood and/or aluminium, before they started producing fibreglass vans in 1963. The fibreglass vans with some changes and developments continued to be produced until the mid-80’s. There is no convenient cut off line between the fibreglass vans of the 60’s and later, so there’s info on Olympics on the forum produced past the Vintage era (ie after 1969). You may be interested to check out the Olympic thread in the ‘Down History Lane’ section of the forum here (if you haven’t already found it).

On the Olympic thread you’ll find a history of Olympic written by one of our late forum members, Boblor (Bob Taylor). It’s clear from the history that Olympic was pretty innovative in their caravan designs and manufacturing methods. You’ll also see that Olympic - in the 80’s at least - picked up products originally designed or produced by other companies. One of those products was Tony Pusterla’s Condor caravan that Shesgotthelook has already referred to. Another was a camper trailer called the GT Kampa originally produced by Chesney, which Olympic called the Tina Kampa.  You can see a leaflet for the Chesney GT Kampa here.

You referred to your Olympic van as a ‘pop-top’.  I would refer to it as a ‘camper trailer’.  Pop-top usually refers to a caravan with full hard walls and a lift up roof that increases the head room inside the van.  Your van may be an Olympic Tina Kampa, but there seems to be one important difference between your van and the Chesney GT Kampas which the Tina was apparently based on, and that is that the Chesney had slide out ends (each one forming a double bed) to provide more room in the van, a bit like the later Jayco camper trailers.  In contrast your van doesn’t have the slide out ends, but is all contained within the floor shell of the van.

The above info does not really provide an answer about the background of your Olympic, but hopefully it may provide you with some leads to follow up.

By the way, I mentioned in my earlier post that somewhere I have some photos of a van like yours that is royal blue.  I don’t know whether all the Olympic camper trailers were the same colour or whether the photos are actually of your van.  That will be an interesting thing to find out - whether they were all royal blue?

Don Ricardo

[Evan]

Thanks for this post. Much appreciated. I will chase up the links and if others know more about this camper trailer, please reply.

[hughdeany]

Hi all,
That’s a ChesneyGT Kampa mould with an Olympic door,
It looks like the beds have been removed from each end and been made into an upright camper trailer like a Jayco Penguin.
It looks like the Royal blue colour is paint,not gel coat so probably started life as a white van.
Hope this helps
Cheers
hughdeany

[Don Ricardo]

Hi Evan and Hughdeany,

Evan: I found the photos I was referring to. They are actually of your van (as indicated by the rego plate) and posted on the Olympic Facebook page in March, presumably by the previous owner. On Facebook, forum member Kimbo identified the van as an Olympic Tina Kampa, and said that she thought she had some info on it. So that at least tells you what you have!

I'll message Kimbo and ask her to let us know if she can tell us any more or could find her info.

Hughdeany: You're correct about the link between the Olympic and the Chesney GT Kampa. As I mentioned in a previous post, Boblor's Olympic history tells us that Olympic picked up the GT Kampa from Chesney and remoulded it (literally given the the Olympic torch!) for their own product. Maybe they deleted the slide out beds as part of that process. The photos of Evan's van suggest to me that it is complete as is, but hopefully Kimbo can enlighten us.

Don Ricardo

[Evan]

Thanks Don and Hughdeany for you research and homework - much appreciated. Previous history of my van would also be be a big plus! I'll refer to the van as a Tina Kampa from now on.
The wife and I prefer the van without the slide out beds as it is just us two, and there will be less to pack away, less weight, and less cost when the canvas/vinyl needs replacing,etc.
Keep up the good work.
Evan

[Don Ricardo]

Hi Evan,

Hughdeany came across this item and sent it to me to post because he thought you would be interested in it. It’s an article about the Chesney GT Kampa that the Olympic Tina Kampa was based on:


(Source:  Australian Caravan World, February 1974, p 21)

You’ll note that the article talks about the slide out beds. Your van has scissor lifts front and back which would get in the way of the slide out beds, so I’m guessing that Olympic deleted those in favour of the layout of your van.

Don Ricardo

[Evan]

Thanks again Don and Hughdeany. This information helps me get a grasp of the van I have purchased. Good stuff!

[digs]

On the Olympic Tina Kampa, (camper trailer) the access (half) door is hollow fibreglass and has a 660 mm high Olympic torch moulded into the 530 mm wide door.
The top of the door has a slot 380 mm long x 8 mm wide with channels extending down inside the door from both ends of the slot – I want to know what was meant to slide in this slot.
Perhaps a push-in screen? Any ideas?
I have photos but I cannot see any Attachment option!
Thanks, Evan.

[Don Ricardo]

Photos of the door on Digs’ Olympic Tina Kampa, posted on his behalf

See his question in his post above about what should go in the slot:





The full door can be seen in this photo:

[Don Ricardo]

G'day Digs,

I've done a bit of fossicking around in relation to your door...

Given our understanding is that your Olympic Tina Kampa is basically a Chesney GT Kampa with the Olympic torch moulded into the door and minus the slide out beds, I did a bit of a search for Chesney GT Kampa and found some photos of one that used to be owned by Bobandjacqui posted on our sister Classic Caravans forum here. Now, Bobandjacqui are active members of this forum (I see that they logged in 20 hours ago), so you should be able to get in touch with them and ask them how the doors on the Chesney worked in terms of the slot and top half.

As it happens they now own an Olympic caravan, so will probably be quite interested in your Tina Kampa because of the connection between Olympic and the GT Kampa. Anyway let's see if we can get you connected with them and find out what they can tell you about doors.

Don Ricardo

[Evan]

Thanks for this,
I have looked at a few Chesney GT Kampa photos and they seem to show a door that is metal framed with an exterior louvered aluminium panel possibly slotted/ventilated and probably having an interior mozzy screen. Olympic totally redesigned the door in fiberglass, double-walled with opposite side hinging as per photos. It is noted somewhere that there were only 500 GT Kampas made, so how few Tina Kampas were made? I imagine the surviving Tina vans are rare and the slide in door tops even rarer, as perhaps they were an optional extra and not overly robust.
There are also screw holes on the door top indicating a door trim or cover of some kind, perhaps working in association with the slide in door top! The zip up vinyl door top opening has sections of Velcro on the sides that extend down overlaying over the fiberglass door top - but there is no Velcro for it to attach to, so it seems that Velcro somehow was part of the missing door trim/cover.
Surely there are other Tina Kampas out there. Mine is getting lonely!!
Digs

[atouchofglass]

Very interesting van.
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers
Atog