Weekly Update #8 & #9

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!