Silver Bullet

Here's what I found today after taking off the rest of the belly skin. It's a fatigue crack just aft of the forward axle. Don't know the exact cause of why it happened, but going to take a guess and say it was from bad axles.






The frame is also bent just below the crack, too








The crack travels up about half way through the frame. I'm going to jack up the trailer tomorrow (maybe) and probably take off the front axle to see if the crack is as bad on the other side.









Here's another look at the crack. There is also another crack on the opposite side of this cross member, but smaller than this one. Still a problem that I'm going to have to fix.

Got the last two sections of floor out. As you can see, another grainery on top of the grey water tank. Ended up finding one dead rat and 3 dead mice in the last two sections. They must have eaten the rat poison that was in there. It felt like a little justice has been done :)







Here's a look at the top of the grey water tank.








And here's where the rodents were coming in.








Both tanks out and as you can see, the black water was leaking at the valve. The galvanized steel case is practically gone on the rear, so will have to make a new one.

It feels pretty good that the floors are out and I can finally switch gears and actually begin the restoration/sealing of the frame. I figure that I may be able to paint the frame beginning tomorrow and start looking for someone to do some welding on the frame. Only a couple of the outriggers need replacing and one crossmember. I might be able to hit my mark of having her road worthy by April :)

Had some bubbling in the POR-15 paint. Still trying to determine the cause. Likely user error :)

I'll have to wet sand and reapply a third coat.

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!