I am going to go to a weekly update as my schedule is really busy and also there is going to be a lot happening with the Airstream in the coming weeks. This past week was busy with more cleanup and preparation work. I finally got around to removing the old water heater, furnace, front bulkhead, lower A/C console, all outlets, removed the wheel well covers, and anything else attached to the walls. The walls are now being stripped before we take down the inner skins. I have tried various ways of applying the stripper, but in the end, making sure to have two heavy coats of the stripper is key and no need for any plastic wrap. Here are some photos from this past week.
Month: January 2011
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Destruction Day #12 (Testing Stripping Inner Skins)
I have been dreading this day for awhile as I knew this task would either be a walk in the park, or more likely a nightmare that I would never forget. The ’67 has the vinyl clad aluminum walls, which basically means it has vinyl wall paper on top of the aluminum inner walls (aka skins). This stuff is notorious for being impossible to remove as the bonding process they used was very effective.I decided to give the process a try under the first front street side window.
I have done a lot of reading and researching on various experiences and finally found a couple that found a product that they claimed “worked like a dream”. I went to our local Lowes and found the product (9 years after the account I read about), which was amazing that the product was still available. I then also followed another couple’s advice that said that applying the stripper and then placing plastic wrap over the stripper would help the vinyl absorb more of the stripper. I was very skeptical.
I brushed on a few coats of the Jasco Premium Paint and Epoxy Remover. I then applied the plastic wrap and left it sitting for 20 minutes. The stripper didn’t have much of a smell to it at all, but I do have the windows removed and some good airflow. Finally it was time to see if the stripper would work so I got out a plastic scraper and poked at the test area…
It worked! This worked way better than I even imagined and I think I could remove all of the vinyl from this 30′ in less than 8 hours easy. The test area pulled off all in one piece like a big latex balloon. It was pretty amazing how it would not even budge around the areas that had no stripper applied to them yet. There wasn’t even much adhesive residue left and I am sure some mineral spirits will have that all cleaned up in no time. This is by far the easiest task I have worked on so far with this restoration!
Here is the link to the forum thread where I found all of this very useful information: http://www.airforums.com/forums/f39/stripping-interior-vinyl-covered-walls-2625.html.
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Destruction Day #11
The belly pan has now completely been removed and is folded up and waiting to be used as a pattern for the new belly pan. The rivets have been removed for some time, but I simply haven’t had time to finish removing it until now.
Since it was in such bad shape I decided to cut it on either side of the axles and then just keep it around to use as a template once it is time to button up the old gal. The cutting just took a few minutes and was very easy. I think I need to work on my straight lines. 😉
I then slid out the front and rear pieces and folded them up into quarters for easy storage.