Month: April 2011

About three weeks ago we decided to do the “bare minimum” to get the ’77 safe and road worth so that we could use it this summer while the ’67 is still a long ways from being ready.

The axles had as negative of an arm position as possible so we ordered new axles that will actually be custom manufactured for this trailer today. I went with Axis axles through Colin Hyde this time with 10″ brakes. We were missing one of the original wheels, so it was a perfect time to upgrade from the original 15″ wheels to 16″. This gives us a lot of good tire options, instead of just one or two D rated tire options with the 15″ wheels. I ordered HWT series 4 aluminum wheels and BF Goodrich Commercial T/A All Season E rated tires. These tires have lasted other Airstreamers for 80,000 miles without any issues, which is better than all of the 5,000 mile Goodyear Marathons that everyone has issues with. The wheels are here and I’m just waiting for UPS to deliver the wheels.

The rear 3-4 feet of this trailer had sub-floor rot and also serious frame rot. We removed the last piece of sub-floor by jacking up the shell off of the good sub-floor/frame and pulling out the bad sub-floor from the rear of the trailer. The damaged portion of the frame was then removed, replaced, and POR-15 was applied. The new section of floor actually went into place without much fighting and is now fasted to the frame. This week we will close up the banana wraps and put the bumper back on.

The tongue looked really horrible and a PO had built a wooden box around the spare tire holder. The tongue has since been cleaned up and received an initial coat of POR-15. The spare tire box was removed and the nice spare tire holder also received a coat of POR-15. The electric jack was not attached to any existing wiring, but it is in great working condition.

There was a really odd looking pan under the living room floor and upon further looking it turned out to be some type of air tank that I believe was used for hydrolic brakes at some point. This thing had electric brakes from the factory and did when I bought the trailer. Some things will never be 100% understood.

The fresh water tank was dropped, sanitized/cleaned, and is now ready to go back into place. We had to repair the main bracket plate as it was really badly rusted, but now should hold up just fine! I will post some pictures once we put it back in.

The old AC was DOA and so we removed it and have a new 15,000 BTU Carrier heat pump unit waiting to be modified for the drain line. This unit should work out great and I’m looking forward to getting it installed. Three new Fan-Tastic vents are on their way and will be great on those not so hot days.

The biggest news has to be that the shell is now back on the ’67 trailer and turned out great. There was absolutely no good curve to go off of on the rear so I was a little worried (the sub-floor was completely rotted, the c-channel was broken and bent in three different places, and there was a big dent on the street-side skin right next to the utility door). The shell is now attached much more securely than it was from the factory and the lines look really nice.

Things have been very busy lately and thus a very late update on last week’s progress is included in this week’s update. After getting the floor dry fitted we drilled all of the holes for the elevator bolts and then went ahead and countersunk those holes. The sub-floor was then removed and flipped over for the first coat of floor paint on the bottom and all of the sides. The sub-floor was then installed and all bolts and nuts tightened for their final time.

The floor fits really nicely and the only issue we had was needing to adjust the street-side wheel well area to fit a little better. The POR-15 and the painted floor looks really nice together and all is ready for insulation now under the floor!

The process of polishing began and we started on a corner panel that we are going to be replacing because it has damage that is too severe for repair. We are using a brown and then white rouge on a variety of 6″ polishing wheels. We tried black and use that on some of the areas in need of more help and also even tried some green. The brown and then white passes seem to give the best results.

The end results were incredible! We have since damaged this panel even futher as we tested wet sanding to remove some of the deeper scratches that even the black rouge couldn’t touch. The end story is that even very fine wet sand paper is a no-no. This is a 44 year old trailer so it is still going to have scratches since I don’t plan on replacing every panel and some scratches add to the character of this vintage trailer. This first few stages of polishing is only an 80% polishing and we will finish it off down the road with a few passes using a cyclone polisher and Nuvite.

The PO had at some point used silicon around almost every window so the current fun task is to remove all of that as it makes polishing a nightmare and we need to fix those windows. The curb-side has had a full pass of brown and will get a pass of white soon.

The floor is ready for the shell as soon as we install all of the c-channel. I still need to fabricate a new banana wrap for the street-side front before we can once and for all attach the shell. The aluminum for the belly pan and a few panel replacements is sitting in the shop waiting. The next few weeks should be productive. We are now in a race to get this thing put back together by the the beginning of May as we would like to use it to do some camping as we take our time finishing off the inside. We will be very close!