Just wanted to let everyone know that Rob and I have come to an agreement and my wife and I will be trading our 66 Overlander for his #8671 (the 63 safari caravan trailer being converted to mobile Bee educational unit).
We will be spending the next several weeks preparing the overlander to specs we have been working on to further help his grant process, along with several repairs/upgrades for it to be ready to go south. Before the end of the month we plan to drive the 12 hours (each way) to deliver the Overlander and bring the Safari back home.
Though a lot of concern has been raised I wanted to say the following:
Joe (66Overlander) has been an amazing advocate for this trailer, and it likely would not have the same fate had he not been involved in finding individuals to work out a deal.
Rob (current owner) - His educational ideas are outstanding (as were/are his intentions), and can't wait to see what he does with our Overlander and the many kids and adults that will be enlightened as a result of it. He has been
great to work with and we greatly appreciate his willingness to change directions in the middle of his grant to preserve this amazing piece of history.
Various Forum Members - to the forums members that have offered free parts to the masses and have in turn sent or were preparing to send parts to us for the overlander, thank you. I'll be contacting those members offering the parts back, or offering to in turn offer them for free for someone else. A list of free parts given to us by forum members (that they don't want back) as well as a long laundry list of parts from the Overlander we'll be giving away will be posted as soon as the safari rests in our driveway. We want to offer these items to contributing members of the forums for all the advise and encouragment we've received on the tradewind and in this adventure.
Some items we removed from the Overlander will be sold via Ebay to try to offset the Overlander upgrades to prepare the deal and the cost of driving to California and back (afterall my airstream account was already negative for this month before this all started).
What is to become of 8671? We plan to store it for the next year while we pay off the cost of the deal and a few other projects around the house, then plan a shell-off restoration that will return it to as close to the original as possible (Utilizing photos etc from Joe's article etc).
Thanks again, and as soon as we get it on the road we'll post photos of the process.