This past week was spent dry fitting the floor and the shell to the floor. The hoist system made this process as painless as possible. The two most difficult areas were the door and the rear outer curve since both of those areas were not original by the time the trailer was in our hands.
The door inset in the floor will be cut completely through for the first 1/8″ and then sealed. The new flooring is thicker than the original so there is a little “gap”, but this new floor is very sturdy!
It is such a great feeling to have the shell sitting back on the frame, but later the day that picture was taken the shell was once again raised up to make room to paint the floor.
Once the floor and shell dry fit was completed then all of the new elevator and bolt holes were drilled. The elevator bolt holes were all countersunk with a Forstner bit and ready for their bolts. The new floor is 3/4″ AC plywood that will be coated on all sides with a good floor paint. There will be many more elevator bolts in the new floor than were there originally, at least twice as many. The new elevator bolts also have 1″ heads and will really help keep things snug and secure. The picture below has a few elevator bolts just stuck into the holes, but nothing has been tightened down since the floor needs to come off to get it’s bottom and sides painted before we install them for good.
Already this week the bottom and sides of the floors have been painted and also the plywood support members. The frame area of the wheel wells and axles were also painted with POR-15 black chassis paint, but we ran out on the street side and have to wait for more to arrive via mail since there are no local sources for that product. If you are planning on using that chassis paint then make sure you get enough since it goes on like tar, but gives and absolutely amazing finished result that you will see in next week’s post. The aluminum for the belly pan and a few c-channels is also on it’s way so the next few weeks should be really fun as the trailer starts to come back together and will very shortly be towable!