Here's a look at the A frame before I started painting. It's already been prep'd with Marine Clean and Metal Ready.
Here's what the final product looks like. It's still a little shiny because it's still drying. I'll get a picture tomorrow when it's all dry.
I also removed the fresh water tank in between the coats drying and tomorrow I plan to remove the rest of the floor.
Did some more floor removal today. Looking at this mess, no wonder the trailer stunk.
Is this Airstream common practice?? I'm glad that the fresh water tank didn't have a hole in it. Yes, that's a pile of rat/mouse poison sitting on top of the water tank.
Here's the next panel that came off. Notice the corn in the middle, right next to the rat/mouse poison. I guess that it didn't work. There was also a stray vertebra bone in this mess. Don't know where that came from.
That spider-web of wire's there in the middle is the brake wire. Definitely going to be replacing that.
One more panel off. Had to save that panel to use as a walk way. I'm running out of places to walk. I've only got about 3 panels of flooring left and it's all gone!!!
Decided to take off a window and clean it up a bit and put on new weatherstripping.
Here's the window all cleaned up ready for new weatherstripping
New weatherstripping on
Cleaned up the rusted window arms. They cleaned up quite nicely with a wire brush attached to my drill.
And the pretty window back on.
I cleaned up the aluminum with a sanding sponge inside and out. It left lines in the metal, but I'll worry about that when closer to when the trailer is done.
I ended up doing 2 windows and it took about 3-4 hours to do both. Learned the hard way with the first one that I put the weather seal on wrong. I'll have to pull that one off and re-install it.
Finally deciding to remove the entire floor, I started the process today. It may not be a conventional method of how I'm doing it, but it's working.
Instead of removing the "entire" floor, what I'm doing is cutting the floor around the edge of the walls, leaving the c-channel in place and that way, I don't have to technically remove the shell. When I'm ready to put the new floor in, I'll do it in sections, like I'm suppose to and remove the slats that I left behind. This way, I don't have to worry about building a support structure for the shell and still be able to do a complete floor removal.
Here's the section near the fresh water storage tank. As you can see, there alot of rot in here. Now that I'm this far into the project, I can say for certain that there was a restoration done sometime before. I can see the old floor bolt holes in the frame and the insulation around the fresh water tank is much newer than the rest.
I did find a roach motel around the water tank....YUCK!!!!
Here's what the process is looking like. I've got the first three flooring sections out.
It appears that I'll have to do some frame welding. One of the cross members is not looking to good. Not a big deal, but adds a little time to the restore. Otherwise, I'm quite happy with what I'm finding as far as the shape of the frame!
Woke up this morning and decided to check all of the traps that I setup in the trailer and wouldn't you know it.......one of them had a mouse stuck on it.........HOPEFULLY THAT IS THE LAST ONE!!! Probably not, though. I cut out the front floor, so now there is a HUGE hole in the floor. Oh well it made me happy anyways.
Tomorrow I'll get the rest of the paneling out and maybe cut out some more of the floor.
Well, no work on the A/S so far this weekend, but I was able to finally get the new hood on my truck. It's a functional ram air hood and the truck screams with it on. Has a nice roar to it when you put the pedal down :)
Next for the truck.....a new exhaust. But I'm going to have that put on professionally at a local high performance muffler shop.
Pulled the bathroom out today and wouldn't ya know it, a HUGE rat's nest under the tube. I half expected it, but didn't realize that it was that big. Had about an inch of rat poo that I had to vacuum up in the corner and ended up sucking up the floor with it........OH NO!!!! Found some more floor rot, so it's new flooring in the front and new floor in the rear. Heck, I could probably get away with replacing the whole floor. It would certainly be easy right now with everything out. (expect the refer and closet.....ran out of flat surfaces to store my tools on :)
I also got to spend my first thunderstorm in the Airstream......NO LEAKS.....the one that I found earlier wasn't leaking at all....
Anyone know what this hole in the floor is for?? There was nothing running into it and if you look at the next picture, it was being used as a grainery by the mice/rats/squirrels, what ever decided to store it there.
Here's the grainery. I think that I sucked out about 10 pounds of corn from here!! There's going to be one made mouse from this. OH WELL!!
Here's a look at the back end with everything removed. Look at all of that filth. I Decided to clean some of it off the walls before I removed the panels. Krud Kutter is some awesome stuff. I spray it on full strength, let it set a couple of minuets and wipe it down with a sponge and water. Works great!
Here's the floor rot that I found in the rear.
This is the corner that had the rat poo in it and it's completely rotted out, so bad that like I said earlier, the vacuum just sucked it up. Probably the easiest floor removal that I'm going to do :)
After a day's work, this is what it looked like when I stopped for the night. Cleaned up the walls a bit and drilled out most of the rivets. Tomorrow I may pull the roof down, but in doing so, will lose my lights, so I hope it's sunny tomorrow.
I figured by now that all of the critters would have left, but after taking a break earlier today (just after sucking up all of the corn from the belly pan), I went back in the trailer and a pesky little mouse come running out of the vacuum hose and headed under the hot water tank. I'm figuring that he headed into the walls, but couldn't track him down. If only Whiskey was in the trailer when he went running.
I've also got a fan club growing in the neighborhood :) After seeing all of the interior parts in the front lawn over the last week, my neighbors across the street and on the side have been curious as to what I'm doing and have visited over the last couple days. They are pretty intrigued and anxious to see the rig when I'm done with it. Even got a surprise visit by one of them a couple of hours ago. Kinda scared me, as I had the radio going and was drilling out rivets with my back to the door. But I invited him in the now empty trailer. He's a older gentleman who enjoys restoring old vehicles, so he know's what it's like and what I'm doing :)
