Vapor Thermometer

No time to spare

Been working my butt off on the trailer and don't want to take to much time out to post on the blog so I think for a while at least I will just post a brief description and pictures.

Took off, cleaned and remounted the right tail light, it was leaking. ordered new lens from odmrv.com.
Added wiring for smoke, CO and LPG detectors.
Added 12 volt wiring for fridge and hot water heater.
Moved A/C thermostat wiring, thermostat was on side of overhead, now will be mounted on wall.
Finished beefing up the ceiling RH side to hang bunk beds from.
Tore out and painted rear endcap, 5 cans of Krylon Fusion "Dove white"
Recieved some new old stock parts from Barker Mfg in Battle Creek for my Skyliner antenna so I rebuilt that.
Took the shower pan out.
Took off the rear half of belly pan.
Cleaned all the seams I could get to on the interior and caulked them.
Cleaned off all the old exterior caulk on the rear and kitchen window and sealed them with Acryl-R, will go over that with some Vulkem.
Spent all day Friday chaseing down a short in the running lights, found the clearance light in RH tail light was shorted.
Soildered some wires for the tail lights the mice had chewed up.
Moved antenna, radio and 120 volt wiring from behide fridge, the new fridge is taller and covers half the outlet. Not an easy task as I beefed up the ceiling for the bunk beds and that did not leave any room for running wires.

Interior torn out:


Painting the end cap:


NOS Parts from Barker MFG, base plate from odmrv.com"


New base plate is one inch taller than the old one.
I needed to cut the new crank shaft 1" taller than the old one, I messed up and only cut it .100 taller so I machined a new one out of 5/16" drill rod
First pic, old shaft and new one.
Second pic old shaft, new one I cut wrong, new machined one:


All put back together:

Just one more rivet

Starting the interior panel removal


Panels coming off


Bought two bunk beds from a 1976 Argosy.
Here I have added 3/16" plate where the bed mounts to the wall, I have read somewhere they are only rated for 150 pound, I am trying to beef it up so an adult can sleep on it.




Panels coming off

Doing odd jobs

Been tackling miscellaneous jobs again.

I ordered some dump valves and tail light Len's from Vintage trailer supply, the dump valves were $46.99 each and wouldn't you know it the day after I ordered them I went to Richfeild Trailer Supply in Grand Rapids, MI and they have them there for $17.00. I did pick up some parts for my Braund Skyliner antenna for $6.99, don't need them but thought I'd never find them if I did.

Antenna parts:


Could not find the long black ABS WYE for the waste piping to make a new run so I tried to save what I have and it worked very well. I cut off the old valve and then cut slits in the remaining parts about 3/4" apart and drove a small screwdriver in between what remained of the valve and the black pipe. I had to change to cutting the slits 1/4" apart as some of it was difficult to break off and I was worried I would break the black pipe. After I had almost all the old valve chipped out I went around the inside of the pipe with a rotary bur and cleaned it up.

Cutting off old valves.




Read on the web that car modelers were using Easy Off oven cleaner to strip the paint off there ABS plastic models so I tried it on the A/C shroud, took almost all the paint off with hurting the ABS plastic shroud. Also got the A/C unit back form the heating and cooling guys and they said it check out great, cost me $35.00 to have them give it a once over. The compressor what getting rusty so I paint it with some Por-15.

Before and after stripping:
After picture coming

Added a new seal to underside of A/C unit, I used the closed cell foam strip they use when mounting a topper to the bed of a truck.

Before and after:


Making new rubber vibration pads for A/C fan:




Got after some cracks and holes in the bath on the ABS plastic parts, whittled some plastic off parts that would not show and soaked them in MEK for a day to make up a paste and filled in the cracks.

Adding plastic:

Laminating and sanding.

For the past week I finished re-laminating the partition panels, did some more cleaning of interior parts and started sanding the ABS plastic in the bath. The sink, shower base, shower seat and toilet base are all yellow, from years of sun exposure I assume.
I was going to paint all of these parts and sanded a bit on the sink to see how much work the prep was going to be, found that it didn't take much to get past the yellowing.
I think it would take just as much work to prep and paint these parts as it will be to sand a polish, I am going to sand the parts with 320, 800 then 1200 grit and then polish so I don't have to worry about finding the right paint for ABS plastic, also will not have to worry about paint pealing.

Took about 4 hours to get the toilet base to it's present condition with 320 grit wet paper.

Wall panel sanded with 80 grit ready for new laminate:


Toilet base sanded, shower seat shows color before:

Small update

Well it's been a month I suppose I should give an update.
Haven't been doing much but did get a few things done, I have been busy fixing other things around the house and doing a lot of work for other people.
I dropped my camera and broke it so I don't have very many photo's of my work, I did recently buy a new one so have a few pictures of the work I have done.

Took the black tank out so I could get the dump valves and piping out, I had bought some rebuild kits for the dump valves on eBay and rebuilt them but the valve to the black tank still leaks so I will buy new valves and install them.

Took the rear inside panel off to check if the saggy rear end had been fixed and it has, the PO did a superb job of doing it, the PO used a piece of steel flat stock the length of the rear for reinforcement, I think I'll take that out and paint it just so I don't get any galvanic corrosion from dissimilar metals.

I found when I took the rear panel off that mice had chewed up the wires for the tail lights where they go through the ribs also found when I took the center ceiling panel out that mice had tunnels in the insulation from the rear all the way to the front. I had set some traps out for them and hadn't caught any. One day I left a half eaten sandwich in the trailer just to see if there were mice still in the trailer and the next morning it was gone, I thought I don't have mice I have rats. I set out more traps and some sticky paper and the next morning I had caught one mouse, haven't caught any in the three weeks sense then.

Took the A/C unit and antenna off the roof, the antenna was leaking and it needs to be rebuilt, the A/C unit came off because it was caving in the roof. I beefed up the roof and brought the A/C unit to heating contractor just to give it a once over I covered the holes with some sheet aluminum and used waterproof tape to seal it up, I'll reinstall them when the weather warms up.

I found an airforums member who was redoing there trailer and getting rid of some bunk beds, the kind the fold in half and down to make a backrest for the bottom bed. They are in Kentucky, I drove down there and picked the beds up and a dinette they tore out.

Last Saturday the whole family scrubbed the entire interior, took about 5 hours but it looks much better now.

Hopefully if I don't get asked for more favors I shoud be able to get a lot more work done on the trailer in short order.

Bracing I added for A/C, before and after:




Some of the parts I've cleaned up:


Mouse turds and tunnels:


More destruction:


Tail light wires chewed up by mice:

Shoveling out the manlift

After taking out the center ceiling panel I noticed the A/C is caving in the roof. Read the thread at airforums.com I'll need to fix this before I can start putting the trailer back together..
I am going to need to remove the A/C unit and put some bracing in the ceiling and then reinstall the A/C. I have a manlift so I thought I would put it to work instead of using scaffolding but first I had to dig it out of 4' of snow. The manlift sits next to the driveway and it just got buried from snow blowing the driveway, took me about 4 hours to to dig it out, took another few hours to get it out of the rut it had created from sitting there in the fall rainy season, it weighs 12000 pounds.
While it was out I shoveled the roof on the house, broke off some dandy ice sickles and salted the ice dams, the house is a 150 year old two story house. Because of the design it is impossible to insulate were the walls meet the roof, I have had a few years where the ice sickles are long enough to reach when standing on the ground. They were not that long this time but because we have had such cold weather with no warm days the Ice dam had crept out over the edge of the roof 14" in one area over the driveway.

Why do I have a manlift you ask. I needed a new roof and in its 150 years it has never had the shingles tore off, there were 7 layers of asphalt shingles and one layer of cedar shake. The cheapest estimate I got for a new roof was $12,000.00 and that did not include any insulating or repairs that would surely need to be done. I paid $5000.00 for the manlift and $3800.00 for the materials and my Dad, brothers and a few friends had the old roof off and a new one on in three days. They did a lot of repairing and replacing of the deck fascia and sofit. I kept the lift and did painting, fixed window, made and installed storm windows and the kids and I drop stuff from it just to watch things smash.

When it get just above freezing I'll start work on the A/C.

The roof caving in and the lift

Everything is dying

Well it's been a week I suppose I should fill everyone in on what going on.
Last week after I tore out the bath I was going to take the black tank out and repair the dump valves but it has been to cold, 10-20 degree.
I spent an entire day just pealing silicone caulk off the bath counter top and walls in the bath and I probably have another two days yet to go on the shower pan, seat, cabinet and all the trim. My fingernails have been worn down to nothing, silicone is great stuff but not for something that moves and every thing in a trailer moves.

I also spent the good part of a day experimenting with refinishing the ABS plastic counter top without painting it, the two things I found that work are cleaning it with Acetone, this takes most of the yellow off after a couple of wipes but leaves the surface rough and it leaves the surface tacky, it took about two days for Acetone to evaporate and for the counter to return to its original state. It still had some yellow streaks that need to be sanded out so I finally decided I an going to sand and polish it all. I started out with 320 grit wet paper and added a little dish soap to the water followed that with 800 and 1500 and that looks pretty good has an egg shell color to it now, haven't figured out what to polish it with yet. At this point I only have a 6" X 18" area done so far.

I sanded down the laminate on the bedroom side of the bath walls in preparation for new laminate and also did the bath door and laminated it, then all hell broke loose. My just out of warranty truck died, two days and $8.07 later its fixed, a vacuum hose was leaking.
My computer died then another one died, bought a new motor for my old snow blower three years ago and that just blew a piston rod, couldn't find a new motor to fit so I went and bought a new snow blower. The evaporator drain on the furnace cracked, still haven't fixed that.

Today I went back to work on the camper, a few weeks ago I purchased two solid core doors to make benches to work on when I re-laminate all the interior panels I was going to put wax paper down so the contact cement wouldn't get on the wood but that turned out to be a pain when I did the bath door so I went down to the Haworth discount store and bought two piece's of laminate $1.00 each and laminated the doors I am using as work benches.
I also tore out the self in the front camper, the little narrow cabinet that was next to the front gaucho and the center ceiling panel. I took out the ceiling panel so I can run wires for CO2 detector, Propane detector and switches for the fridge and water heater.
After I get the black tank and shower pan out I think I will be done with the interior destruction.

Before and after, bath door:


A little bit of sanding on the bath counter top:

More bath destruction

Today I tore out more of the bath so I can check to see if the rear end is sagging, all that's left in the bath is the shower pan and black tank, it appears I do not have a sagging problem. Yippee.
I was planning on taking out the shower and black tank also but my daughter is home from school again with one of her migraines and she didn't wake up untill 11:00 a.m. so I let her skip the rest of the day.
She wanted to help but there was not much she could help me with on the shower or black tank besides most of the work thats needs to be done to get these out is outside work so I changed gears and we got a good start scrubing the walls.






As long as I have this much of the bath tore apart I am going to take the belly pan off in the rear to get to the dump valves and rebuild them and check to make sure every thing is OK under the bath before I start putting it back together.

Standing on my own feet

Last week I thought I would replace the Chinese races in the new drums with the Timken ones I purchased, The inner one is the same but the outer one takes a larger O.D. bearing than was in the old Kesley Hayes drum.
I put in a call to Axis axle and told them of my predicament and they sent me out 4 new outer bearings and also sent 4 new seals for free.
I packed all the bearings and when I when to install the inner bearing I found that Rock Auto had sent one of the wrong size. I gave them a call and they had the new bearing on my door step at 10:00 am the next morning.
I had three of the drums installed last week and today I put the last one on and got the wheels mounted, I didn't measure the before height but I bet I gained 2 more inches of height with the rebuilt axles. I can see the top of the tire through the wheel well now.

Total cost so far $547.00 and I still need to get the wheels\drums balanced and alignment checked. The local Airstream dealer does neither, I'll have to find a truck stop and get the wheels balanced and I will probably end up at the Airstream factory for the alignment check.
If I had to do it over again I would buy new axles from Axis axle $600.00 for the pair and everything would have been included.

I only get about 3/4" of travel with the new torsion springs, I hope this is because there new and it's 15 degrees out, I have read on airforums there should be up to 2" of travel.

Jan 12 2009:
"Duh, maybe I don't get the travel because I have gutted the trailer sense taking the axles off."

I also noticed after getting the wheels on that the rear axle is about 2" longer than the front axle, on the street side the rear wheel sticks out farther than the front wheel 1-1/8" and on the curb side 3/4". The axle is not a replacement either as the serial numbers on the axles are only 3 numbers apart. It is also not because of tow in/out casper chamber, what ever it's called.

Here are some before and after pictures: