...especially if you might have your roller in your back pocket!
Zep
In case things don't workout, here is the way I made a magic roller. It's a worn out skateboard wheel, some all-thread, a couple of nuts and a piece of 1x6. I made it to roll a boo-boo out of my RR banana wrap.
I wonder when the neighbors kid is gonna try (Tri?) skateboarding again?
__________________ Hi Ho Silver RV!
Vernon, Sarah, Mac the Border Collie and- 'Epiphany' the 29' Airstream
HiHo, thanks for the idea. I immediately went to the local ice rink/climbing wall thinking they'd have roller blades, but no. Guess I'll have to go to the bigger city...
Hey, the temperature is way up here, like almost 50 after three weeks of Siberia (not to mention that the holiday frenzy is over), so I devoted a few hours to the Safari.
Cut the floor and removed part of the forward section. Wow! Almost no rust. One good tap with the hammer and all the elevator bolts screwed right out. But MAJOR BUMMER is the floor is 15/32"! Hello? And no space in the frame members for splices between floor sections. I as hoping to retain all the good '5/8" flooring', but now that it's clearly less than 1/2" I'm going to 3/4" it throughout. Holy cow.
Most of the work was in getting the forward dome down. The next big effort in this area will be putting in the segments to replace it. I'm going aluminum all the way. Many "hidden &#*$(%*$&^#^#" rivets were found during this exercise. Urge to maim, but reached for the 2-Buck instead.
Anyone need parts from the dome? The dome itself has a big of a crack, but the cabinet/shelf came out intact. The spotlights are spoken for.
I've been thinking about the interior and have almost decided that the place where the old [useless] bath closet was could be a nifty little computer corner, if the aft dinnette seat was able to shift from side-saddle to aft-facing. Note toilet in the left photo to give you some perspective. Yes, I'm sitting on the heater--it was handy, but a little low. A new water heater goes there. A suitably angled wall will isolate the computer from the pooper room.
The dream team worked on the shell and made some real improvements, but they are too subtle to really show up well in a photo. In lieu of that, here's the helpers, Kip and Royce:
Today was the beginning of puzzling out the templates for the new dome panels. I started by assuming the middle panel would be 18" wide at the top and 12" wide where it joined the window frame. The other four would be 12" wide along the shell end (the end of the panel away from the window) and 8" wide at the window. The result is in the left photo. I didn't like that very much, since the bottom panel didn't even make it to the window, so I moved the lines over a little (not very obvious in the photo, I know, but it made a big difference), which you can see in the photo on the right. (the colors are photoshoped in to make the panel edges more visible.)
Then I went back and studied JCFerguson's work. I like his panel shapes much better. His what I am calling #6 panel really makes a difference in the "fatness" of the shell end of his panels. What I'm wrestling with right now is what the slope of the bottom edge of panel #6 ought to be--I'd like it to leave the shell at a more horizontal angle. Maybe that's not possible.
One thing I didn't quite understand in Carlos' post was his explanation of how he matched the tar paper to the lines--I have to assume he drew the lines on the fiberglass end cap/dome, which is the light colored substrate under the tar paper in this image (this and the previous image are from his posts)?
I'll put outlines of all my panel shapes in a later post. The #4 and higher panels are much more scimitar shaped than you would expect.
I think what Carlos did was to tear the tarpaper in small tabs to expose the lines. Maybe you can bypass this step if your pattern pieces already have the lines on them.
...
I think what Carlos did was to tear the tarpaper in small tabs to expose the lines. Maybe you can bypass this step if your pattern pieces already have the lines on them....Malcolm
Thanks, Malcolm. What confused me is that in his post in his thread he said something that made me think he didn't have an end cap (or maybe he just didn't have ready access to his trailer at the time). It looks to me like he used his flexible straight edge to draw the lines on the end cap itself. I have to assume he riveted the plywood strips to each other and to the end cap.
I'm not going to have the luxury of an in-place end cap. I know I can drill the panels in place and use clecos, then take it outside to buck all the panels together. I'm thinking of drilling 1/8" pilot holes, then making a fixture to simulate the curve of the shell end and the window frame, then final drilling to 5/32" and bucking the whole thing on the fixture to ensure I get the curve right. I'm also thinking I'll have to put a 20 degree crimp along one long edge of each panel and maybe have to shrink that edge a little in order to get a smooth final product.
BTW, I did have the luxury of an end cap in the post above--it's the empty back bedroom in a mid-bath Ambassador. I can't wait to see how that relates to the front end cap in the Safari. Can the end caps in the 70's models really be 3' and 4', not both 3'?
The weather has warmed up for a couple of days--progress! Got the fresh tank removed, which turned out to be easier [in some ways] than I thought. Just remove the tank fill and vent lines, then about a zillion bolts to release the tank pan (looks like 16 guage galvanized steel), and lower carefully. Once down, you need to disconnect the level sensing wires.
Boy, do I dislike this tank design! First, it has a big hole in the center to allow for a steel suport shaft that comes down from some ~1.5" square frame tubes that run under the floor. Then it has a channel in the bottom from the center to one edge for the feed line. The need for this channel is a mystery, since there is an unused one on top that could serve the same purpose.
From the looks of the fittings on the top, this tank could be reversed if the kitchen was on the curb side rather than the street side (mine was on the street side and probably will be again).
The feed line fitting is not as close to the bottom of the tank as it could be, putting the top edge of the line about 1-1/4" above the bottom of the tank. That means that in the best of circumstances, about 22% of the water in the tank cannot be drawn out by the pump. The bottom is about 3/4" off the floor, which means about 10% cannot be drained. I proved this when I finally got the tank out--it weighed a ton (maybe 80 lbs total). After I got it back to my shop where the residual water could thaw out, I could see the water level when the tank was on edge and it was right at 10% of the volume.
This tank has a hairline crack as shown in the next photo. I'm going to attempt a weld and if that doesn't work, then some Scotch Weld glue (the Scotch Weld seems to have worked on the Sovereign black tank). The fittings on this tank appear to have been glued in place, not rotation (friction) welded.
As noted in an earlier post, in order to get to the the drain on this tank you have to remove the square steel plate that is bolted to the support arm in the center. This means you have to crawl under the belly pan--you cannot reach this "feature" without being underneath. Considering that you're probably draining the tank because the weather is getting (and inclement), this is a total pain.
It seems to me that these large, flat tanks need a small sump (maybe 4"x8" by about 3" deep) to fix both the drain issue and the feed issue. If the welding experiment above goes well, I may consider putting a sump along the back edge of the tank (which is near the axle, for protection) and off to one side (I have this conviction that if a downward projecting bump is near a wheel, it has less chance of getting bashed--I've gone done a few rutted dirt roads where the center was a little high...)
Another thing that really bugs me about the tank installation is the heated air tube than went into the pan cavity. Once I got the tank down, I could see the framing above the tank had insulation in the spaces between the square tubes, which means the tank was insulated from the floor. So, we insulate the tank from the living area, then we blow hot air down into the tank area... this sounds like conspiracy between the oil companies and the low mileage car companies.
I'm not sure about the square tube framing above the tank--maybe this was a design compromise as a result of the decision to use only 1/2" plywood in the floor.
By the way, this tank was not rotation molded--it has a top half and bottom half welded (or glued) together.
Man Zep you are not having a good time with the tanks in that beast. How's the fwd floorboard coming? I got most of that 11" long skin shot on my GT Sat.
Man Zep you are not having a good time with the tanks in that beast. How's the fwd floorboard coming? I got most of that 11" long skin shot on my GT Sat.
Floor? Coming? Crap! I found one more big bolt up in front yesterday and got it out, thinking, now the shell will move a little. Not only does it not move, but I put a jack under the edge of the shell up front to see if it was just stuck by sealer or something and it lifted the whole trailer. I've been over every joint like a blind man feeling brail and I cannot figure out where the shell is attached. I may have to take out the twin battery boxes to see if they are hiding a fastener...
Soon, I hope. Pardon me while I vent (women and children, avert your gaze...)
Wally, please come back and give me a little relief. All I ask for is the public disembowelment of the tech who installed my Safari's grey water tank. First, at a capacity of 11 gallons, it is a joke. Second, why did he leave all the unused volume around it? Third, did he have to glue both sides of the dump valve(s) (yes, black tank, too) into the plumbing so that they can't be repaired? Fourth, and best, why did he install it from above before the floor was installed and the shower pan above the floor, turning the hose clamps so that they could not be loosened from below and you have to use a sawzall to get the *($&%(#&#(&%&%(%)$ tank out?
If you're opposed to public disembowelments, Wally, how about eunuch-fication? Oh, and I'd like to be within earshot to hear the lamentations of his women and children...
Does Airstream know how to spell maintenance? How about we do a Dick and Jane reader for Airstream? It might go something like this:
See vintage owner. See vintage owner do refurbishment work. See vintage owner bust knuckles and still have to break the Airstream. See vintage owner get nasty weapon, get in car and head for Jackson Center. See very bad thing happen. See vintage owner smile broadly.
Thank you for reading,
Zep
note to litigators--this is a joke. J-O-K-E. Get it? A sour joke, but still a joke.
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