Can of beans Sovereign 1972

[Can of beans]

Haven't read it, sorry.

[cameront120]

No need to be sorry. There's a character in the book called "Can o' Beans".

[Can of beans]

The wheel wells were leaking, and it turns out everything is on top of them.
plus the oven was falling through.

now for a poll though,
since I have it stripped out, what should I use to paint the interior wall panels, I'm leaning toward Krylon, but I'm hoping one of you will tell me that a layer of Kilz and some latex keep the sticky residue contained.
so what should it be?

45 cans of Krylon Fusion?

Kilz and Latex?

???

[Minno]

We used Bonz primer, 1 coat, and Latex exterior paint, 2 coats. You will need to wash and RINSE the walls very very well before you paint with anything. Five years later, it's holding up well. We used a small roller for the walls - works better than a bigger roller due to the curve. Good luck!

Kay

[Can of beans]

No more Sticky coming through?
how many gallons would you say it took?

[Minno]

We actually didn't have the "sticky" problem on our walls (had everything else though!), so I can't really speak to that. I would think the primer would take care of the problem. I scrubbed the wall panels very well with Simple Green when they were out of the trailer, then washed and double rinsed again before we painted once they were reinstalled. I think it took 2 gallons of primer, and 2 or 3 of paint? Sounds right for a 31 footer. With all our freeze/thaws in Minnesota, we went with exterior paint thinking it would hold up better. I've had to touch up a few times when Chris scraped the walls installing cabinets, but those blend in well once they've dried.

Kay

[Can of beans]

I think we're leaning towards re-skinning the interior with clean aluminum.
through work, I can buy .032 5052-h32 sheet for 0.67$/sft they have it in coil so I can get the lengths I need. Then it's just trace and trim, simple right .

at that point, a strong part of me wants to redo the interior cabinets and furniture, but the stronger part of me (wife) makes me admit that I would probably not get it done for years.

I have a dream of mostly aluminum walls and cabinets lasered out at work and trimmed to fit. I think it's probably way to ambitious though.
we would probably settle for fixing a couple things and repainting the existing panels in some shade of white or light color.

Heres a post i designed for a shade structure at work, it was a fun project.

[Can of beans]

i forgot to add a picture of our trailers new home. just a gravel floor for now though. 36' x 42'

[Can of beans]

So many rivets


i feel committed now, i kinked the top center skins a bit taking them down
I couldn't get the arch to pop the other direction the whole length.

I'm pretty sure the place I'm sourcing the aluminum from will slit the sizes i need right off the coil though. I marked all the holes on the backs of the skins, so I'll know what to keep or remove from the walls.

[Can of beans]

I got the rest down today, and all the insulation out. There are a lot of scorch marks where all the lights are grounded through the shell. how hard would it have been to run two wires instead of one.

So far I've only found two mouse homes above the decking. the odd one was inside the front cap above the reading lights. as I pulled out the insulation, I thought about what I wanted to put back in, I like the cleanliness of the bubble wrap types, but my engineer side says that's snake oil not insulation. If I could afford it I would use some closed cell epdm foam I used at work, that stuff was nice. I think it would cost $3-$4K though. I'll probably do new fiberglass with foil backing.

so far no real leaks either, besides the windows, vents, wheelwells......

[duncans]

It looks so clean in there! How many critters / carcasses did you find? Was the floor so rotted that shell off was the way to go?

[Can of beans]

Many Many carcasses,
The frame is now bare, I'm in the process of designing the axle lift, Gray tank mount, and some new cross members. Work on the trailer has been kind of slow.

The axle lift will be 3.5", this gets the gray tank I found over top of the axles. When I replaced the axles a couple years ago, I went with the standard down angle, and I've always thought the trailer sat too low. the fold out step sits basically on the ground.

The axle lift idea came from this forum, and I looked at the Dexter lift, but I decided to make my own that's a tandem lift. I didn't like the idea that they were separate, and I saw it as a chance to strengthen that area of the frame. my lift extends farther forward and back to help with frame sag. it also has tabs to mount a dropped cover for the section where the gray tank will be.

I'm mounting the gray tank in the frame bay directly behind the shower trap, I found it on amazon for $68, it's 37 gallons with rail mounts, so when I change those two cross members, I will incorporate some tank mounting brackets and tank straps.

one of the cross members was cracked loose from the frame on one side anyway, so I figured I would make new ones. my big mental breakthrough is that they don't have to be just like the factory ones, I can improve them.
I'm pretty excited about having a gray tank, and not having to carry the giant blue tank around, I had a 35 gallon one, and haven't had a problem, so I should be Ok. I plan to add a bypass valve to allow the bathroom sink to drain to the black tank if I need to, mostly so because we've never come close to filling it, and it will extend the gray water capacity.

[duncans]

I know you've made big progress, so how about some updates? Add lots of photos, please. I love to see that progress. Thanks!

[Can of beans]

It's been a very long time since I've done an update, so here I go. I pulled the frame out completely, and stripped it down. Then a quick road trip over to Dad's shop (where there's a welder), and a pile of laser parts later, I had a newly repaired and upgraded frame.
Many of the cross members were in questionable shape so those got replaced, I fitted my gray tank mounting system. While I had it open I took the opportunity to add a few upgrades.
I added an additional cross member in the area inside the entry door, the floor always seemed soft there to me.
At the corners I added additional outriggers, to support the beds better.
I welded up the torched in hole where the black tank valve exited through the frame, because I will have to exit below the frame now and it was a jagged square cornered mess through the side rail.
I added an outrigger under the water heater area.
I replaced the rearmost crossmember with a new version that doesn't have any holes in it, rather than the original with the speed holes and and riveted on cover.
I added my new 4" lift / frame reinforcement, I'm pretty happy with this, now the bottom most fold out step is useful, my new gray tank is still above the axle tubes, and I won't scrape the trailer frame every time we exit our driveway.

[Can of beans]

Once the Frame was rebuilt, it was time to tow it to work.
For a fee , they graciously sandblasted the frame and powdercoated it for me. The girls picked the color, and it's called "Platinum Sparkle"
I went with powdercoat for the simple reason that it was drastically cheaper. as in more than $1000 cheaper. I debated on basic black for the color, but I believe the cost difference for the color was about $25 powder is so cheap. I bolted the axles back in temporarily, and towed it home.

[Can of beans]

Once I had the frame home I considered the changes I wanted to make, as I re-assembled. My Dad had a big white trailer that had a tire blowout, and when insurance replaced some damaged side panels, he kept the material, so I had several sheets of aluminum painted white on one side and bare on the other with a bit of wrinkling at the bottom. These were perfect to use for protecting the underside of the plywood in areas that I new were damaged before, I also new that I wanted to add a spare tire carrier in the future in the front factory location so I skinned those areas.
I also skinned the area over the entryway step, and just to be different, I skinned the area inside the wheel wells where the plastic wheel well doesn't reach the frame. this area is constantly wetted from road grime, and I thought it couldn't hurt.

My wife and I debated about all the possible coatings for the floor plywood, and in the end we decided that for the most part, the floor lasted 40 years with bare plywood, so we decided for only a minor upgrade. we painted the all new floor plywood with a latex paint and screwed it down. I've not added any holes through the plywood yet, I have all the original sheets so that I can match holes later, but with the plumbing changes, and other future changes I didn't want to blindly add holes where they weren't needed. Plus I want to be able to limit any future mouse highways.

[Can of beans]

I broke down and bought new wheel wells for the trailer from Airstream they turned out to be slightly cheaper, and no trucking charge from our local Airstream dealer compared to the online stores.
In some ways they are better than the originals, they have features to clear plumbing on the modern trailers, but the overall fit is still terrible, they are also a bit narrower than the originals, and the wheel opening is higher. They will work, but I will need to add a new line of rivets to attach them to the outer shell. I'm still pretty horrified by the fit where the plywood, shell, and wheel well all meet in the corner, but after looking at the Duncans trailer I can see this is factory, and the answer from Airstream is (1) tube of caulk in each corner. glad to see they addressed this in the last 40 years.

[Can of beans]

for the most part the c-channel, and F-Channel for the floor to shell attachment was in serviceable shape, I wire wheeled the corrosion, and gave them a quick couple coats of Rustoleum rust conversion paint. this should limit future corrosion I hope.
then my wife and I slowly re-located them all matching the holes to the shell. by the time I got to it, the plywood had cupped slightly from sitting out in my barn so long, so some clamping and forcing was necessary.
I had ordered the buck riveting kit from VTS, so we proceeded to buck the shell back together. I made some heavy aluminum washers out of some scrap at work, and we used those to help spread the load across the channel as we screwed an bolted the shell down. I made sure to bolt the channel down at every outrigger for better or worse, then lag it to the plywood in between outriggers. the front and rear plates were attached first.

[Can of beans]

now that the shell is attached, the next most logical thing to do seemed to be rebuild the fixed windows. I started with the vista views since I had done one of those before, it's much easier with the interior out of the way. Mine have the inner snap ring design, and that makes them pretty easy to rebuild.
this time around VTS now stocks the polyshim tape in both sizes, so I ordered that, and new UV resistant acrylic for the inner panes. the worst part about this project is cleaning the old tint of the glass panes, but soaking them in a garbage bag full of water in the shower for a couple weeks seemed to be the answer. then I scraped them clean with a razor blade. Since they have shades, we won't be adding the tint back. the polyshim is much easier to work with than the material I used last time, and I could easily re-assemble them to a much nicer product.


we debated drilling all the olympic rivets and replacing them here, the two vista views in the rear bedroom had been replaced sometime early on, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. they don't leak now, and I could only make that worse. so those stayed. we did drill out all the olympic rivets up front and replace them where the two front lower corner skins had been replaced.

[Can of beans]

The stack windows were in terrible shape as well, so I drilled one out to see how it would go, once it was out and I had seen a few pictures of what to do, I created a little press jig out of some garden stakes, and pushed the two halves apart. using some pb blaster to loosen the sealant and lube the gaskets helped a lot. for the other two, I created a better press jig out of some scrap plywood, this way I could screw down the whole frame and use a reversed clamp to push them apart. in the end putting tension on it with the clamp, then striking with a hammer to shock it worked the best.
I looked at options for replacing the original acrylic inner pane, scratch resistant lexan, or acrylic are extremely expensive, so I talked to the local glass company, and had them make me tempered glass windows for the inside to match the outer pane. I also ordered the two different options of gasket from VTS to try out which would work better. we'll see. The roll pins that align the splices on my window were in reasonably good shape, so I'm just going to re-use them. the glass just got finished yesterday, so I should be able to re-assemble them soon.