I first used a stiff brush that I think was originally for installing wall paper to brush off the insulation residue from the inside of the outer skins. I later used a bucket and sponge to clean off the inside of the outer skins when I decided they needed a bit more than just the brushing. I am still not entirely sure that was actually necessary though. I spent about $10 to buy a small pump up garden sprayer that has been great for applying cleaner to large areas. When your floor is out you might not mind using a garden hose to wash off the soap. Also I have a wet-dry shop vacuum cleaner that has been invaluable for the remodeling process. You could spray on cleaner, hose it off and then vacuum the water out of any place that it collects. Be careful if you decide to use a presure washer. I understand that the more powerfull ones can dent the aluminum.
I am glad to hear that you were able to get your center section out without too much trouble. Mine put up a real fight. It seems that it had been taken out before and someone had wedged extra aluminum strips in to keep it tight. One thing that did help was to spray in some silicon lubricant along the track to help it slip out more easily.
I hope you are taking lots of photos as to what things looked like before you removed them. Also I am very glad that I labeled all my inner skins. It has been long enough since I took them out that I needed those labels to help me find the right pieces. I found that it was a good idea to put labels on the back side of the panels that indicate which edge is on top and which one is underneath. When I put my back end cap panels in place I found that the upper panels and the end cap all lapped on top of the lower panels. It was just the opposite for the skins in the front area for some reason. I also used masking tape to put tags on all the wires as I disconnected things. I imagine that you may be as suprised as I was about just how much wiring there is inside the walls of an AS.
I hope all goes well from here. You have undertaken a large task which I am still in the middle of myself. This last weekend I finished installing the end cap and wall panels in the front of my AS. I also installed a piece of aluminum over the place where the water heater used to be in my AS. I am going to move the water heater elsewhere and decided to cover up the hole. It seems to have worked and it is barely noticeable that there was a hole there before.
Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions about removing the floor and etc. I may possibly be the only person in the forums that has replaced his floor twice in one remodeling cycle. The first time I used presure treated plywood not realizing that it should not be in contact with aluminum. I had to take it all out and did the job again using Polyboard. Have you read all the details that I posted about the process? Is there anything I can help you with? Just let me know.
Don, If my explanation wasn’t good enough, let me know. I have read a lot on this site prior to beginning all of this and I have indeed seen your posts and pictures, previously. Looks like you did a 4.0 job on that bath! I removed all of the inner skins over the weekend and immediately afterwards the rains came last night. I have identified several leaks so far. You are correct, leaks do indeed occur underneath that center panel. I found one on the center vent (pictures below) and there is one near the rear vent somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet. Also, other leaks were found. Two around the door, one on the fridge vent, one on a POP rivet over the door that extends to the outside skin ( I have no idea why there is a pop rivet through the outer skin) and believe it not, the fresh water fill tube next to the door leaks into the fresh water tank (presumably, the seal is shot around the fill door). I’ll keep you posted….
By the way, where is Danielsville?
Last edited by Jim & Susan; 02-21-2005 at 04:09 PM.
Reason: Attachements didn't load
Steph, Thanks for the words of encouragement! When you say Softsrub, I assume you mean the name brand of the same name? Also, you’ll get a kick out of this picture. This is what the interior looks like once it has been fully removed!
Wow, that's what my living room looks like - only I'm so glad it's only a 17ft trailer. I'd never get a 27 ft interior in there! Looks like you don't have much room left to work
Malcolm,
Seems you and I think a lot alike. I also used a stiff brush to sweep away residue after the skins and insulation were removed. And yes, I will clean with some type of cleanser and water underneath. The purpose of removing all this stuff is twofold. Firstly, to have access to the floor so that it can be replaced. Secondly, to get rid of the smells. This camper was apparently parked in the piney woods of western North Carolina for some years by the PO before I bought it. At some point in the recent past it was lived in full time by someone. The point being that it has lots of strange smells that must go. I have thought of the garden hose idea, but not the garden sprayer. Good idea. I wouldn’t want to use the pressure washer for the reason you mentioned.
My center ceiling section came out without a problem (other than the fact that I didn’t realize that I needed to remove it first before the lower sections). Your suggestions may help Ron below.
It’s weird. I labeled things almost exactly as you did with a couple of exceptions. I used a Sharpy on the backside of things where they wouldn’t be seen. And, I used a label maker to tag wires and so forth so that they wouldn’t fall off over the several months that I expect this to take to complete. My front and rear cap are arranged exactly as yours.
I remember reading about the whole floor episode with the treated wood. I hope the Polyboard is working for you. I am simply TOO CHEAP to go that route (trust me, this is truly MY failing, not yours, I‘ve got two kids in college and HAVE to keep costs down if possible!). At any rate, I hope to be moving on to removing the floors sometime next week and I’m sure I’ll have few questions there.
You’ve been a great help and it is sorely appreciated.
Jim - Does your AS have any of the vista view windows (the ones up above the other windows)? I can't tell for sure from your photos. I made some observations about mine today that might be of value to whoever has to deal with them.
In my AS I have 5 of the things. The plastic frame around each of the windows is slotted along the sides to accept a piece of aluminum that is about 36" long and about 12" wide. The aluminum can slide up into the ceiling and down over the window to shade them. The plastic of the frame is getting brittle and there are a number of places where there are cracks. Also they were held in place in large part by the inner skins but they did have about 3 rivets into their top edge from outside. Most all of these riveted points were cracked around the rivets and I found it easier to pull the frames off of the rivets rather than try to support them in place. I realized today that I really have to repair them and get them back in place before I can finish installing the inner skins since the skins actually end up holding them in place to a large degree.
Today I got as far as cleaning them up and looking them over carefully for what is needed. I am going to try to repair and re-enforce the cracks from the back sides using some epoxy to glue popsicle sticks across the cracks. If that does not seem to work well enough then I will break out the fiberglass repair kit that I already used some of on repairing my AC shroud. I will see if I can use a little of the epoxy to fill the cracks from the good side and then sand them out. I am thinking of spray painting the frames and the shades using Krylon in an aluminum or silver color.
I did notice that the sliding aluminum panels evidently are supposed to have plastic trim strips on their sliding edges to help keep the panels from binding in the tracks. At least half of these strips are gone in mine. The good news is that the profile of the plastic trim is exactly the same as some that I bought at an automotive supply store to use on the edges of the aluminum around my wheel wells. I think I may have just about the right amount left over. This trim material has a little bead of adhesive inside that grabs when you tap the trim into place. This should be just what I need. I have wondered if there is some type of lubricant that I can put in the plastic track to help the things slide easily. I don't know if silicon spray is safe for plastic - I will have to check the label on the can I have.
I thought a bit about how to re-install the frames. I could drill out the rivets and re-attach them that way but decided that might not be necessary. What I am going to try instead is to use some heavy duty 3M double sided trim tape that I bought at Home Depot today. I can put a strip along the top and bottom edges of the frame and stick it up into place. It really only needs to keep the frame located until the body panels are put back into place. It would also keep it from sliding around once the inner skins are back in. I think I will drill the rivet holes a little bigger so they will just fit over the old rivets without getting in the way.
I shall report how this all works out later when I have more results.
When I was working on my vista view windows today I used my sharpy marker to mark the back sides of the sliding aluminum panels to match their frame labels. I suddenly realized after marking 4 of the 5 that the back side is actually visible from the outside when the window shades are down. I will definitely have to paint these surfaces now. The silly thing is that I also realized about the same time that they were also all the same size. They actually need it anyway though.
My masking tape labels on my wires actually have the oposite problem - they are a bit hard to get off when I am ready to take them off. I have a label maker around here somewhere that I should have used. Too late now but I would recommend it to anyone else starting the task.
I was actually a bit suprised to find that most of the upper inner skins overlap the panels below them. My service manual suggested that it was all the other way which I though made sense as far as any water leaks. Oh well - I guess the factory did not necessarily build everything exactly as described in the service manual.
What type of plywood are you thinking of using for your floor? I found that the Polyboard was actually cheaper than the presure treated plywood that I used to begin with. Of course there is the extra cost of adding some additional support under the Polyboard.
Malcolm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim & Susan
Malcolm,
Seems you and I think a lot alike. I also used a stiff brush to sweep away residue after the skins and insulation were removed. And yes, I will clean with some type of cleanser and water underneath. The purpose of removing all this stuff is twofold. Firstly, to have access to the floor so that it can be replaced. Secondly, to get rid of the smells. This camper was apparently parked in the piney woods of western North Carolina for some years by the PO before I bought it. At some point in the recent past it was lived in full time by someone. The point being that it has lots of strange smells that must go. I have thought of the garden hose idea, but not the garden sprayer. Good idea. I wouldn’t want to use the pressure washer for the reason you mentioned.
My center ceiling section came out without a problem (other than the fact that I didn’t realize that I needed to remove it first before the lower sections). Your suggestions may help Ron below.
It’s weird. I labeled things almost exactly as you did with a couple of exceptions. I used a Sharpy on the backside of things where they wouldn’t be seen. And, I used a label maker to tag wires and so forth so that they wouldn’t fall off over the several months that I expect this to take to complete. My front and rear cap are arranged exactly as yours.
I remember reading about the whole floor episode with the treated wood. I hope the Polyboard is working for you. I am simply TOO CHEAP to go that route (trust me, this is truly MY failing, not yours, I‘ve got two kids in college and HAVE to keep costs down if possible!). At any rate, I hope to be moving on to removing the floors sometime next week and I’m sure I’ll have few questions there.
You’ve been a great help and it is sorely appreciated.
I've had to take a couple of days off from working on the AS. Life got in the way of my hobby! Also, one of my daughters borrowed the digital camera and now we can't find it (we think she has it hidden in her car at work at Wally World). And you know how that goes, NEVER invade a teenagers car.
At any rate, when I get the camera back, tomorrow, and can thus make a few competent pictures of the subject matter, I DO want to discuss some of the fine points of Vista Views.
Can anybody tell me how to write text in this area that I'm typing in right now. Typing along.....Typing along....And then insert a picture right here........
and then continue to type below the picture with more text......then insert another picture.......
and type somemore......
I've seen others do this, but I've not figured out how to do it myself, even after reading several of the "posting 101" threads by other folks. I beleive it was John HD who put together a wonderful "how to" on replacing a waterline or connector from underneath the TT. It was wonderfully written, step1, step2 and so on.
Hi guys. It’s me again. There have been a lot of post about leaks. Maybe you want my two cents worth. I am about half way thru the dismantling of the interior of my ‘73 Overlander. All of the interior is out save for the floor and the end caps. Over the past few days we have had a bunch of rain here in the Atlanta area. So I decided to take seat, beer in hand, XM Radio set to channel 110, and look for leaks.
The worst I have found is the exterior fresh water inlet. This is the one behind the opened exterior door, coming in to the galley area and terminating thru a fill neck into the holding tank. If you read the first part of this thread, I talked about a weird smell coming from the fresh water tank. What is happening is that the fresh water inlet door is leaking directly into the holding tank, the tank has a small amount of water in it, the water goes rancid and the tank gets a strange smell in it. I don’t have the floor up yet. But I can see parts of the tank. It is a white plastic tank that has actually begun to turn GREEN from the stagnant water. I suppose this means a new tank is in my future. Stephrobts, looks like you called it exactly right. The rain this past few days has actually allowed about ½ gallon of water in around that outside inlet. Pictures to follow once I get the camera back from oldest child.
I also have a leak around a pop rivet that is installed above the door. I have no idea why this rivet is there. Now that I have the interior skins out of the camper, I have a clear view of all the things that protrude from the outside to the inside. This rivet holds nothing in place. It’s just “there” for whatever reason. I can only assume that there was a mistake made at the factory and a decision was made to fill a whole with a pop rivet rather that an “Olympia” (or is it “Olympic”?) This rivet leaks down the side of the door on the forward side next to the light switches. This has definitely contributed to the floor rot in that area over the years.
Other leaks are more routine. The vent above the fridge has a pinhole leak in it where the Vulkem failed in one tiny spot. Same with the center ceiling vent. There is a small leak somewhere around the aft ceiling vent, but I haven’t found it yet.
The vent stacks for the plumbing system also leak. The gaskets around the pipes that protrude thru the roof appear to have never been replaced. This will obviously be done in the near future.
The front window has several leaks around it, although I can’t find them at present as I don’t have the end caps out as yet. This has caused the biggest problem with the floor because leaks flow into the front radius areas and rotted for several feet around. Seems to be a similar problem in the rear, but that may be bathroom related.
A few pictures to follow. More to follow after the end caps are out.
Thanks for the tip on removing the center overhead skin. I did remove it back to the middle vent but did not see any obvious leaks adjacent to where the leak is terminating. (around antennae) I did see that the middle vent is leaking around the rubber gasket seal and instead of dropping directly onto the floor in the kitchen, it is being caught by the center overhead skin.
I think I better check the refrig gasket next.
(Sorry it took so long to get back....we lost a phone line during the storm Monday night. )
Danielsville is about 90 miles east/northeast of Atlanta (just past Athens).
Jim, Do Not use anything with TSP to clean your aluminum. Very bad. You may want to get that garden sprayer and soak the insides with a Clorox solution. Skins, frame, floor. Some believe this should be done with each layer removed with old trailers. Good Bye stuff hanging around waiting to bloom when it's back together.
I used a power washer on my interior, it's lots of fun and sounds cool. When you get the floor up you will find old fiberglass stuck to the top of the frame where it's been wet. This can look fine until you scrap it off and find a hole underneath. In fact it can look like it's solid rusted metal. I had to use a grinder to get all of this off and would have missed some problems.
If you have some bad panels, inside or out this is the time to replace them. I'll be using some new panels on the inside for design effect, also replace two because of all the holes in them that I don't need.
I take it you'll be rewiring since it's all apart? Marine stranded wire is easier to work than the solid.
Good Luck.
__________________ Let those who can play, let those who cann't watch....
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