Construction

The phase of new construction is now underway.  I was going to leave the interior end caps in place but there was still a mouse smell - so I pulled the endcaps, cleaned them, and sprayed them with Kilz primer.  Then, I used an enzyme cleaner and doused all of the skin inside the walls.  Smell is all gone now and I've started installing Reflectix insulation.

This was one of the last bits of insulation.  You can see pest damage & tunnels.

Reflectix insulation going in.

Wiring from under the chassis.  Brown wires are for the brakes.  120v black (with plugs) and red wires are for the 2-way holding tank heaters.

Cast your votes!

Interested in this project?  Want to help determine how it turns out?  I've added three poll questions to ask folks following the blog what equipment and material choices they'd like to see used.

1) Which fresh/cold air system?

2) Which wet bath concept should I use?

3) Which furnace should I use?

In order to vote, view the blog on a computer screen and see the options in the left column.  For some reason, it doesn't work on the mobile site.

Insulating the floor and belly pan install

It's been tricky to attach the shell over the bellypan but I got it all figured out and sent rivets through the top shell, belly pan, 'C' channel, and belly pan.  The belly pan aluminum is crimped over the channel, so the rivets go through it twice.  

  Here's where old meets new.  I used the old pan in the corners - because I didn't think I could figure out how to shape the aluminum and they are still in fair condition.

New pan on the street side.  Looks great.













This is "foam it green" brand sprayfoam.  It's the 202 kit of structural, closed cell product.  I put it on thick, so it only covered about 80 sqft.  Price with shipping was about $250, so that's more than $3/sqft.  Not as expensive as some options but certainly more than others.  Overall, I'd say that I'm moderately pleased.  It is fairly rigid and has decent adhesion but wasn't very difficult to remove in areas of overspray.






One of the biggest complaints I've heard is that the product makes a mess.  So here's a picture of the mess.  Not too bad in my opinion.

Buttoning up the belly pan over the sprayfoam insulation.  I had to carve off a few bits.  For carving, I used a dewalt saws-all blade as a knife & it worked great.

Reattaching the shell

 Finally have the shell back on the chassis.

In this picture, you can see that I've removed the sawhorses and have begun lowering the shell back onto the chassis/floor.

As with lifting it, I use a bottle jack to support half the shell, put some short legs on the wood frame and lower it down to the new level.

The 'C' channel and brackets attaching it to the studs were in bad shape.  In this picture, I'm fabricating new L brackets to make the attachment. Easier to drill holes in the large material before I cut it.  

  Cutting the new brackets.

Piling up the new brackets.

Reattachment is tricky.  This Streamline trailer had belly pan wrapped and crimped on the 'C' channel.  I'm faced with the challenge of trying to figure out how to make sure my wood floor has the right radius corners (old ones were so rotten I had to guess), attach bellypan, attach shell, attach floor, and sprayfoam the underfloor.  In this picture, you can see that I've crimped one section of bellypan so that I can lower the shell over it.

 Removed most of the external wood framing.  These back two legs are allowing me to use floor jacks to adjust the shell for final touchdown.

 Instead of rebuilding the curved corners, I'll keep them and wrap as much new material over them as I can.

 This extra sheet of new is to guide the lip of the shell over the new bellypan lip.

 All of the external wood is gone and starting to lower the back.

 Installed the rear 'C' channel and lowered the shell.

 All of the interior wood framing is gone and starting to make solid attachments all around.

Finished Wastewater System

Wastewater system is done!!!  Both holding tanks are in and glued.

I had to alter the frame but was able to put two holding tanks between the floor and belly pan.  These tanks are from Inca Plastics and are 23 gallons each.  Tanks were just a bit warped and didn't fit within the dimensions on the blueprint, so I had to cut some of the iron and re attach.

 Here you can see the cable valterra valves.  I welded a piece of angle iron to mount the handles and will figure out how to make that look pretty later.

Things are starting to look good!  The new wheel wells are beautiful.  Lafe Shoopman of L&C Custom did a great job on the wheel wells and only charged me $300 for both.  I lifted the trailer 3.25" with the new InlandRV (dexter) torsion axles and so I took three inches out of the wheel wells.  This should give me precious extra cabinet space.  My only complaint is that InlandRV did not respond to three requests asking them how much travel I should allow for with the new axle setup.  Annoying.  I couldn't wait forever so I just cut off what I added in height.  If that doesn't work, I'm going to be super pissed at InlandRV.

Put the trailer back under the shell!  Oh hells yeah.  Feels great, can't imagine how good it'll be to get it reconnected - much less useable!

So far, it's looking pretty good.  The rear end was completely rotten, so I didn't have much in the way of templates.  My plan is to lower the shell down onto the chassis and make the final adjustments to the wood and attach the bellypan, etc all at once.  I think I'll be able to do any needed modifications but we'll see:)  I also plan to use structural sprayfoam under the wood floor as I put the belly pan on.  Lots of stuff in the airforums about how sprayfoam falls apart but I can't find a credible account of closed cell foam failing - so I'll give it a try.  Properties are too good to pass up.  Fiberglass batt is popular but it's also the reason I had to do a frame off in the first place!

Turning the corner...

Finally turned the corner on my restoration project!  Can't tell you how good it feels to be constructing instead of destructing.

 Steel work is done! 80% new steel.  New ribs, hitch coupler, step, tank supports, etc.  Everything looks great and is mostly square:)  I say mostly because the galvanized ribs in on either side of the wheel wells were a little tweaked and I got them close but not perfect.  One turned out being 3/8" bigger than the other. Everything else is surprisingly perfect.  Like within 1/16" end to end.  BIG SHOUT to my friend Adam Pfiffner (Bloxx & Pfiffner Design Build) who is renting me shop space & helping me get the hard parts right.  Like installing the axles - his design, layout, & welds are perfect. He's the one that helped me with hard and important stuff like axles, hitch, steel design, etc.   

Now starting to install the wood floor.  I went with 5/8" marine plywood (AB) and then coated both sides and edges with smith's two part epoxy.  Very happy with the smiths product.  Using two kinds of fasteners from vintage trailer supply.  one is a bolt through and the other requires a drill & tap.

Floor is all cut and almost done with the smiths epoxy coating.  Must admit, I'm nervous about the shell fitting my curved corners.  The front should be very close because I was able to save sections of the old floor to use as templates.  The rear floor was so rotten that I had to guess.  

 Finalizing my floorplan.  This is the fun part!  Originally, I was going to work around the existing floorplan and infrastructure to make it work for our family of 4.  Going the full monty means I have total flexibility to do whatever I want - & that's pretty cool.  Here's a simple sketch of my design.

Laying out the floorplan with masking tape.  This was awesome to see it lifesize for the first time.  

 Installing the plumbing.  Bath is giving me the most headaches.  I want to do a wet bath over the wheel well.  Why doesn't someone make a kit?  I've looked everywhere and can't find one - so playing with ideas to build my own.  you can see a fiberglass pan here but I'm not going to use it.  After consulting Kent @ Blue moon, I've decide to bite the bullet and go with custom stainless pan & fabrication.  Then I'll do teak or similar accents.

New Family Member

Bringing home the new member of the family!

Crap!  Something in the floor broke during transit.  This is going to be  bigger project than anticipated.

Left:  turns out a strap in the frame that supported the bathroom floor broke.  One thing led to another and the bathroom is gone.

Trying to find all of the rotten places & get them cut out.

Before you know it, things got a little disorganized...

(hope I can remember how all of this goes back together...)

From what I can see so far, floor & frame are too rotten to stop deconstruction.  Time to reorganize and go the full monty.  Never wanted a frame off restoration project but have one nonetheless...

 Right: removed the trim and disconnected the shell.  Researched a few ways to remove & support the shell but none I could find are detailed enough to be helpful - so I'm just winging it.  Can't advise that anyone follow my example but here's how I did it.  I built the custom sawhorses above.  Later, these sawhorses will support the weight of the shell with enough clearance to drive out the chassis & floor.

Below: Then I removed enough of the skin to get at the 'c' channel.  The belly pan on my trailer was wrapped around the outer edge of the 'c' channel and crimped - so there was no way to get the shell off other than to separate the framing ribs and leave the channel with the floor.  From what I've read, other trailers have different construction

.

Once I built a wood frame that wouldn't allow any of the shell framing to spread or split, I used a bottle jack to slowly lift the front, attach legs to support, move the jack to the rear to lift, attach legs to support the new height and then repeat.  I lifted each side about an inch at first and then 2 inches at a time once I cleared the lip all of the way around and didn't worry about pinching or binding anything.

Below: When the shell got high enough, I built cross members to let the shell rest on my saw horses.

The moment of truth.  Would the trailer clear all of the wooden support...?

Success!!!

Below picture shows some of the steel rot.

The rear section was the worst.  It was barely being supported by cross members.

Removing the wood subfloor, vinyl, and oak hardwood that was probably installed to hide soft spots.

Wood floor off.

Chassis back into the shop for cleaning & repairs.  (repairs?  more like reconstruction!)

Meanwhile, the shell & belly pan are waiting to be reunited...  

Not sure how to best deal with the belly pan.  Thought about all new material but am intimidated by the corners - they look hard to replicate.   Perhaps re-attach the whole thing and put new material over most of it?  I'll get to that problem soon.

Removing the rotten cross members & other material...

Removing the jack pads.

I'll rebuild the rear end with more substantial framing and supports.  I will be adding a gray water tank and expanding capacity.

Another jack pad removed.

Documenting the drain system...in case I want to match the dump location.

Getting help from someone who knows what they are doing.  My abilities with plasma cutter and mig are not to be counted on...

The guys at pacific steel bent sheet steel into the 'c' shape and then laser cut the curves to match originals.  This left a tab that we tacked and then bent with a hammer to get the curved shape.  Turned out awesome!

Added extra c channel material on the outer frame from front to back.  Certainly adds weight but felt like it needed to be beefed up.

Most of the cross members are on and now it's time to do the axles.  Went with torsion.  Heavier but better.  First pulled it out into the yard.

Then used some container axles to support it upside down and a forklift to flip the frame and load it onto the axles.

Frame resting nicely and undamaged on the modified container axles.

Pulling the old axles off.

The axles I ordered from InlandRV were the right length but the attachment brackets were inside of the frame.  So we had to weld plates onto the frame so that the new axles could be attached.

New axles attached and flipping it back over to roll on the new hardware.

New axles and lots of new steel.  Just a bit more frame work to do: new hitch & jack, install the step, and build the holding tank supports.