Introducing il Progetto

[desertair27]

Originally Posted by DKB_SATX

re: Going up in trailer size: Well, it's the smallest vintage trailer with pano windows front and rear. Besides, the sum of your trailer lengths is pretty long, I'll only be around 52 feet of trailers, with the 3 in your profile plus the Safari you just bought you're around 95 feet! Do you not have the trailer you took to the Balloon Fiesta anymore, or is it just not listed?

We sold Phyllis (31 Sovereign) to a nice couple in Dripping Springs that are using her for a sweet bed and breakfast. She's living the good life for sure.
I really like the Pano windows you have. As far as the window it's yours when ever you need it.
Mike

[mutcth]

Poor sad donor Argosy. In its demise, it will give a healthier trailer new life. Yay!

Tom

[slowmover]

Glad you found another so quckly. The Kentucky experience was one lonngg drive.

[TouringDan]

Many congrats on finding the one that you really wanted. I bet that you are glad that you held out for it. It looks to be in reasonably good condition. I am amazed that you found it so quickly.

Aren't you glad that the Kentucky jerk did not accept your offer?

Good luck on the restoration.

Dan

[DKB_SATX]

slowmover and TouringDan: I think that il Progetto is easily worth 3x what that pile of rotting subfloor, rat excrement and garden hose in Kentucky was worth. And the asking price was lower, and I got it for less than the ask. So yes, I'm deliriously happy that the hillbilly didn't take the offer I shouldn't have made in the first place.

However, I think that the whole Kentucky Expedition was educational.. it sure made it easier for me to hand over the cash for my "new" trailer. I just wish I had that gas money back, now that I've got an expensive long-term project on my hands.

[TouringDan]

DKB

Sure you would like to have the gas money back, but was it not worth the education you got and all the other forum members got who read your Kentucky thread? You just may have prevented another forum member from making an offer they should not make.

Thanks for the education!

My advice in finding an Airstream/Argosy is to look at lots of them, buy the best one that you can find, go after the one that you really want and lastly pay whatever you have to pay to get the right trailer. Sounds like you did great!

Dan

[DKB_SATX]

What a weekend! I spent my time in service to the Airstream cause, I guess.

On Saturday 15 June I woke much earlier than my usual for a weekday (much less a weekend!) so I could get to Ponder, TX and get the parts-donor trailer rolling before it became murderously hot. I had with me a "recovery tool kit" with all manner of things I imagined needing. I had the spare from my 24' trailer, and I knew that I needed to swap it out for the worst of the donor trailer's May-Pops. Being somewhat paranoid, I left the curbside of the 24' on jack stands and took 2 of those tires too. Really I should've taken one more.

On closer inspection, the donor had 4 brands of tires, in 3 different sizes, on 2 different types of wheels. I picked the least-bad of the 4, put my spare and the 2 tires off the 24' and checked things out. Surprisingly, the lights worked, and the P3 detected a braking circuit. My paranoia played out, but the bad scenario was just an infestation of chiggers around where that trailer had been baking in the sun... I'm still coated with Caladryl and trying not to scratch!

The donor had been baking unloved in the sun for so long that I had to wipe down the shell before I could get "extra strong" duct tape to stick to the thing. Oh, and it needed some duct tape.

I charted a course through the boonies to avoid towing through some tight stretches of bad road through Fort Worth dragging a trailer with mismatched tires and questionable brakes. I went from Ponder, TX through Justin, Weatherford, Cleburne, Meridian and stopped at Sonic in "Historic Clifton" (which I as a native Texan had never heard of, by the way) on my way to Nolanville. I stopped frequently to make sure neither the one iffy tire nor the REALLY questionable hubs were heating up too much.

I stopped in Justin to see if anything was getting loose or hot,


and I stopped in Weatherford to apply a little more strategic duct tape.


I happily left the disreputable pile of parts in Top's capable custody to extract the precious pano window I need, and the rear bumper and a few other odds and ends. I can take parts off a trailer, but I'm worried I would end up cracking that unobtainium pano. A couple of people have already asked for parts, and I'll try to get usable parts to people who need them before I give up the remnants to a scrap metal dealer. Surprisingly enough, I ended the day with the donor trailer in the same number of pieces with which it started the day, and all those parts were in the same county.

I stopped off on the way home to replace the 2 curbside wheels on il Carriaggio so I wasn't relying on jack stands, and got back home about 13 hours after I left for the day. One task down...

[bwoodtx]

What great story! I am glad to know that I am not the only one crazy enough to drag these little darlin's out of the weeds and down the road on a whim and a prayer. Good luck with your project.

I am just about done with my Argosy 24.

[lcurrie]

Thank God for Duct Tape. And Sonic. And Caladryl.

[desertair27]

Congrats on your rescue, trailer rescues are much more fun when everything pretty much goes according to plan. Hate those chiggers!
Good luck on your pano window swap, I know Tops the man!
Mike

[BAB]

Sorry that the chandelier didn't convey....think of the terrific stories you could tell!

[DKB_SATX]

So, I didn't feel like it was enough to just rescue the parts trailer in a whole weekend, so on Sunday morning (16 June) I headed for Powderly, TX (another one of those towns I'd never heard of before I started this project... just north of Paris) to fetch il Progetto back to Fort Worth.

I don't think I was drinking when I inspected the trailer initially, but I remembered the tires being a bit nicer than they actually are. They're not cracked or dangerous-looking, but they looked a bit pale and weathered on Sunday. Maybe it's because it was 93 degrees and nearly that humid? I did notice initially that they're some brand I'd never heard of... "Rhoden" load range Ds. Ah, well, they'll probably keep the belly pan off the ground while I work on things. Only one of them was almost flat.



I peeled off the 1980s F150 plastic hubcaps so it would be easy to monitor the hub temps on the way home. Maybe I'll put them back on to make it look a little less scruffy at the RV storage place. It won't cost me anything, except thinking about old pickups every time I look at it.



The brake controller saw a braking circuit. Most of the lights worked, but the right turn/brake light wasn't working. I ended up getting it to work right with the bulb turned a few degrees so that it was pushed more firmly against the contacts. It did well enough to get me home, but I had to add another line to the task list.

Happily no one noticed the Oklahoma plate that expired in 2009. After a while the brakes actually slowed the trailer, but I'm sure they could use some adjustment. Odds are I'll only need them once more, I'll get new brakes and bearings with the axles it needs, after all.

It'll be sitting here for a while where I'll be doing a bunch of little jobs before Lance is ready to fix the wounded panel and pexiglass pano.



BAB: Alas, I still have that LOVELY "chandelier" in the trailer. I think the seller was afraid if he took it out, his wife would put it in their newer/bigger trailer. I asked him at least twice if he wanted it, while I was going through storage areas to find the last of their socks and t-shirts that hadn't made their way out of my trailer.



I'm considering some sort of ritual destruction of the plastic thing to purge the trailer of the spirit of halfway, slapdash, and half-hearted "fixes."

[DKB_SATX]

Parts for my projects are starting to flow in... today I received LED markers, an LED upgrade scare light and a warm-white version of the very bright 1156-base LED lamp for the porch light.

I ordered a big lot of LED lamps to replace the 1156 incandescents in all the interior lighting, but those will take a while. It's not like I'll be camping in this one anytime soon, but I hate waiting for toys!

[TinyFixation]

I'm so looking forward to seeing what you do with all of your trailers! When it comes time to sell donor parts you didn't need, I might be in the market to buy a couple of items from you. Your donor looks like it has at least two out of three on my list!
Maybe put a small dent in that $6K initial estimate for new parts you mentioned .

[DKB_SATX]

I'm going to use my holiday weekend for getting started on my projects for il Progetto. So far, if I count what I spent on the parts trailer, I've now spent more than half again my original purchase price of the 28' center-bath on the renovations, and I haven't really STARTED. I've just been collecting parts.

My goal this weekend is to get the Marinco 30A inlet installed so I won't be afraid to plug the trailer in, get the VTS deadbolt installed so I can actually lock the door, and perhaps rip the god-awful 20-gallon residential electric water heater out of the thing.

Photos and updates as the weekend progresses.

[Lance M]

Patiently waiting for some pictures and commentary of the work.

Have fun!

[DKB_SATX]

Well, I suppose if things went according to plan I'd be wondering when Murphy would come to visit.

My plan for today was to install a Marinco stainless 30-amp inlet where the "polarity lamp" is currently.



It didn't start out all that badly. I decided that the first order of business should be getting the back window free of the silicone infestation so I could open it, and therefore have a little better airflow for the interior work. UGH! It doesn't look nearly as bad in the photo as it did in person! I must have removed a pound of the crud.



Then, evaluating access to the breaker box and the back side of the polarity lamp, I decided it would be easier to remove the street-side bed so I could get to those areas without destroying the false floor that supports storage bins.


THAT proved to be what sidetracked me. I knew that the previous-previous owner (PPO) had put down lots of OSB with carpet on top in walking areas, and the PO had removed the carpet, screwed that OSB down to the subfloor and put the stick-down tile on the top. What I *didn't* realize was that the PPO covered the hold-down brackets for the bed structure with the OSB, and the PO secured it in place. Ah, well, I was going to do it eventually. I hate stick-down tile, but I wasn't planning on it today.


There's a layer of some sort of leveling gunk over the OSB. It filled every single Phillips screw holding down the OSB so I had to pick it out with a tool before I could put the screwdriver bit into it. Such FUN!


At long last, I freed up the brackets for the bed frame. There's PLENTY of work left for tomorrow. And Saturday. And Sunday, and...


In the process, I discovered that my battery box is probably not trapping hydrogen and directing it out of the trailer as intended. Another new item for the task list!


I also realized that the panel covering the aftmost part of the bedframe is just a piece of semi-matching paneling where one more tambour belongs, and that the aftmost bit of trim is missing. One more esoteric thing to hunt down!

[idroba]

DKB, I did tell you about a nice 31' AS center bath in NM, didn't I ? But Nooooo, you had to have an Argosy. My sympathy is limited.....grin.

Oops, better be nice to him until the real glass front window comes from the donor rig. Then I can snicker more.

[slowmover]

Oops, better be nice to him until the real glass front window comes from the donor rig. Then I can snicker more.

Texas in July is either too hot and too much beer . . or not getting anything done. Wherein lays the balance? The snickers lay on that dividing line.

.

[247stream]

oh man, I hate it when one project leads to 6 more before you can even do the one you wanted to do to begin with! I feel for ya on that note and the TX heat.