1967 Streamline Duchess Frame Off Restoration: April 2015

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.