Enough lurking already

[alumascoupe]

Hello everyone! I've been lurking on the site absorbing all of the information I can for 3 years now so I figured it's time to join and hopefully contribute.
I purchased a 66 Overlander Thanksgiving weekend 2009. Listed on Craigslist 400 miles away in Indiana, I called and the owners were nice enough to hold it for 8 hours till I arrived ! I did what everyone says not to do and pulled the trigger on the first one I looked at . I returned the next weekend with four tires, temporary tow lights, had them installed and headed north, I thought I was clear of bad weather until I passed chicago and encountered Black Ice in Wisconsin, at one point I shifted into 3rd gear and the disturbance was enough to break the rear tires of my tow vehicle loose and I proceeded to nearly jack-Knife 3x at 50 mph and by the time I regained control was in the other lane, an angel by my side that night 35 mph the last 90 miles on the interstate, fighting sway from semis doing 70 on ice ! Finally made it home safe and rather shaken up after that one, maybe driving cars on the frozen lakes when younger did teach me something ???
Needless to say the AS needed waaaay more work than I expected. I initially beat around the bush and tried to fix what was broken, think mis-guided attempts to silicone leaks and partial floor replacement patches. I ran out of warmish weather and halted progress. I realized the AS was in need of a "full monty" and procrastinated for a year !
June 11' I bit the bullet and started unscrewing everything I could on the interior. I was excited to finally start, and taking stuff apart is easy... I gutted the whole thing with no help except for removing the tub assy. which was a pain to get out the door and too fragile to try alone.
Gutting the interior took less than a week and I figured at that rate it should be going back together before the end of summer, yeah right !!

[blmitch5]

Welcome and good luck! There are a lot of people on here that are in the same boat as you or have been there and now have the perfect trailer! Keep us posted and we love pictures!

[HiHoAgRV]

Welcome to the forums! There are several of us 'doing' late 50's- early '60's Overlanders and documenting them right now. I suggest starting yourself a thread sharing your efforts with lots of photos (we love photos)

It's really not a huge effort to rebuild one of these trailers, just a bunch of small efforts...

[ND10CentCan]

Originally Posted by alumascoupe

Hello everyone! I've been lurking on the site absorbing all of the information I can for 3 years now so I figured it's time to join and hopefully contribute.
I purchased a 66 Overlander Thanksgiving weekend 2009. Listed on Craigslist 400 miles away in Indiana, I called and the owners were nice enough to hold it for 8 hours till I arrived ! I did what everyone says not to do and pulled the trigger on the first one I looked at . I returned the next weekend with four tires, temporary tow lights, had them installed and headed north, I thought I was clear of bad weather until I passed chicago and encountered Black Ice in Wisconsin, at one point I shifted into 3rd gear and the disturbance was enough to break the rear tires of my tow vehicle loose and I proceeded to nearly jack-Knife 3x at 50 mph and by the time I regained control was in the other lane, an angel by my side that night 35 mph the last 90 miles on the interstate, fighting sway from semis doing 70 on ice ! Finally made it home safe and rather shaken up after that one, maybe driving cars on the frozen lakes when younger did teach me something ???
Needless to say the AS needed waaaay more work than I expected. I initially beat around the bush and tried to fix what was broken, think mis-guided attempts to silicone leaks and partial floor replacement patches. I ran out of warmish weather and halted progress. I realized the AS was in need of a "full monty" and procrastinated for a year !
June 11' I bit the bullet and started unscrewing everything I could on the interior. I was excited to finally start, and taking stuff apart is easy... I gutted the whole thing with no help except for removing the tub assy. which was a pain to get out the door and too fragile to try alone.
Gutting the interior took less than a week and I figured at that rate it should be going back together before the end of summer, yeah right !!

Glad driving on ice is worth something down the road....living in the north country teaches you lots of interesting ways to function at minus 40. I am also happy to see another person getting the same disease we have had the last few years. In terms of diseases, aluminitus is incurable but a whole lot of fun. Keep posting and people are very kind to help you as you go.
Sandy

[alumascoupe]

Thanks for the encouragement everyone ! I'll do my best to post photos. While I'm not exactly skilled with computers, I have taken pics along the way but also tend to get carried away working and forget to take "before" pics so there may be some gaps in the process (like failing to photograph the floor going on in one giant 24' section, I was so involved I never grabbed a camera that day, doh ! ) Anyways I'll try to sift through my hundreds of pics and post the useful ones, many are just close-ups for reference sake. HiHoAgRV you're exactly right, its tons of small projects, and thats a good way to look at it, at the same time I don't want to mislead others, I spent the entire summer on one project, polishing. I gave up counting hours in July when I was nearing 250 hrs and I'm sure I over doubled that number by fall, how some people polish in 2 weeks is beyond me and I wish I'd never read those stats ! Just tryin' to keep it real, so no one bites off more than they can chew (its already too late to save me) so there isn't yet another gutted, partially restored AS for sale ! So far I've found that shell removal, proper floor replacement, and polishing are not for the faint of heart ! I can't wait to clear the big hurdles and get back to some variety with smaller projects.