Weekly Update – ’77 and ’67 Progress

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.