'68 Overlander FullMonte

[ALANSD]

Nice work brother. I admire your tenacity and ability. Luckily for me my 66 had little frame rot, and a decent floor. it did leak around the vent pipes which messed up the wood wall in one area, and of course behind the refrigerator, which is where the floor damage happened.
I really like the Overlanders and we have enjoyed ours for 4 years now.
Good luck! Can't wait to see what you do inside.

[SonOfAnder]

After our suprisingly mild winter suddenly turned bitter cold, I felt the need to say "old man winter won't stop me!" And I cleaned out my side of the garage. I had 48 bags of 60 lbs concrete in there left over from a misinformed fence post calculation (the bag called for 3 bags per post when it only took 1.5!) so do the math... That's how sore I am today from lifting them into my truck and hauling them back to HD. They took them all back though. I think I will spend the store credit to build some temporary walls since the 26' trailer frame doesn't entirely fit in the 24' garage! Oh and to add to the muscle ache, my truck couldn't make the turn to get it in there, so my wife and I had to push it in by hand!!

[SonOfAnder]

So my neighborhood welder came through with an almost mirror image replica prototype of the rusted out outriggers that I need replaced! His mentor has a CNC plasma cutter and a big metal break, so these are going to be perfect. They will be solid since we can't really reproduce the factory stamped bevel. I'm not running any plumbing or electric through them, so it doesn't matter. It only adds a few ounces each. He is working on the rusted out step outrigger with the notch too... Should price out less then $15 each! And no shipping! Sure am glad I walked my dog over there and said hello to those guys.

[Atomic_13]

Good find. Those should work great.

[SonOfAnder]

This really slows things down! Not only is my shell buried, there is also a 6' pile of snow now blocking my frame in the garage. I can't even drag it across the street to the welder if the new outriggers were finished... At least the shell didn't blow away or crush from the snowmagedon!!

[reinergirl]

I feel like "little miss doom and gloom" on your thread but also do your best to keep snow off the roof of that shell. Without interior supports and the bottom to provide stucture, I know of at least two instances where the shell has collapsed from snow load!

[ALANSD]

Gotta move South ...just sayin

[MarkR]

Originally Posted by reinergirl

I feel like "little miss doom and gloom" on your thread but also do your best to keep snow off the roof of that shell. Without interior supports and the bottom to provide stucture, I know of at least two instances where the shell has collapsed from snow load!

Ditto Dat! There's a thread on these forums, w/ a photo that is so hard to look at, that I won't include a link, but I'm sure everyone thought how cool it looked w/ all that snow on the roof, right up until it no longer could support it . . . which I'm sure was a lot more snow than what is shown in your picture - just making sure you were aware.

[ArtisanAir]

Is this the picture? I hated to see this and I don't even own it, can't begin to imagine how he felt when seeing it himself.

GO GET A BROOM NOW!

[MarkR]

yep . . . the photo is bad enough on it's own . . . when you put it in the context of his rebuild thread, it's devastating.

[SonOfAnder]

Yes I saw this picture before when I first started thinking about snow. It hurt so much to see that happen! The picture I posted was actually from my neighbor since I was out of town... So the next day I went straight over to check on my shell and remove the snow before we had a rain shower. Luckily, the snow on the shell was all gone! The bright sunny day after the storm had warmed up the aluminum enough to make it all slide right off... Another advantage of the classic round shells of the '60s Airstreams!

[ArtisanAir]

It looks like it gets a lot of sun. That helps the melting considerably. We may not be bothered by the "white burden" anytime soon.

[SonOfAnder]

Custom plasma cut replica outriggers! Cut to size for both the steps and the the rest of them. They turned out pretty good if you ask me. Now if I could just the snow pile to melt so I can pull my trailer across the street to have the welder tack them on! Then it is sandblasting time!

[SonOfAnder]

Really wishing the PO knew how to back up a trailer without jack knifing... Trying to figure out the best way to fix/replace/re fabricate these complex curves of metal. Going to try a few things to fix these, probably with little luck, give up and then maybe build a mold and see if I can pound some aluminum into submission somehow.

Anyone out there have any luck?

[blkmagikca]

Looks like a job for an English wheel.

[ArtisanAir]

The English wheel is a tool normally used for initial flat metal. That is not to say that you could use it to try to re flatten the metal, but would be extremely difficult to get smooth passes through the wheel. Your best bet is to buy a dolly and a ball peen hammer and try to work out most of the wrinkles. You want to focus on the high spots, the low spots or dents can be filled with fiberglass. Use a fiberglass product like bondo hair to fill in the low spots and create a strong sub structure. Then go over it with your normal bondo to finish it out and and smooth the area. This also should help from the damage reoccurring from road debris, although it will not help if you jack knife it.

[SonOfAnder]

I think I can live with this... Took a few hours, but this is the streetside pictured in my last post

I basically beat the crap out of it in my basement with a rubber mallet against the concrete floor at first. That took out the big stuff. Then I used a gallon bag full of lentils and the back of a curved rubber hand sanding block and a mallet to reshape the curve as well as I could. A smaller mallet and a 2x6 cut to the curve of an outrigger clamped to the table allowed me to pound out the rougher spots. Then I sanded it lightly. That showed highs and lows better. Pounded some more. And more. And more.... Turned out pretty good! The curbside needs a patch job. Might try to work on that one tonight!

[SonOfAnder]

Well the giant snow mound in front of my trailer frame finally melted and I was able to bounce it around the corner to the welder's shop. The frame with frozen axles and no weight on it is really not safe to tow! It bounces and flexes like a long piece of sheet metal. Luckily it was only a few hundred yards tow.

New outriggers welded on, the step works great again, as well as a new front steel tie down plate since mine was pretty rusted through. New trailer safety chains, and all new cross members at the rear of the trailer under the bathroom for the black/grey tank. Didn't get the bill yet, but I know this is something I didn't trust myself enough to do by myself.

Next up is cleaning up the frame and painting. Ordered POR 15, one quart black, one quart silver. I have a sand blaster, but not a big enough compressor to run it! Might have to rent a good gas powered one for a day. Hoping to haveanother warm few days in the near future. It was 65 today and I saw some red breasted robins on a hike, so spring is soon here!

[SonOfAnder]

We had beautiful weather all week. But of course real world work took over most of it. Today I rented a tow behind trailer air compressor. Big diesel engine air pump that they use for running jack hammers. The guys at my father-in-laws old hardware/rental store insisted to use the biggest compressor they had to sandblast. I certainly never ran out of air! Started out with my little craiglist bought blaster and it was going pretty well I thought. Kind of slow, but I managed to get the trailer tongue pretty well cleaned up after about an hour and a bag of sand... Then the cheap nozzle tip started spraying sideways. It had worn out already... So I went back to the store and picked up their commercial sandblaster. Wow. That made a huge difference!!! This thing peeled the paint and rust off in just one pass. With the two hours left of daylight, I managed to finish the hole curb side half of the frame!

I was covered in sand. Everywhere! My driveway is now a beach... A note to anyone who tries their own blasting. Cover up completely! Even a tiny patch of uncovered skin on your face will get a very good. exfoliation. The hardest thing is in the whole process is trying to see what you are doing. Its dusty. Goggles fog up. Then the blaster basically sand blasts your goggles, so by the end of the day you can't see out of them at all...

Back at it first thing tomorrow morning! Will post some pics.

[SonOfAnder]

Before and After of the frame sand blasting! Such a huge difference! It only took 900 lbs of sand :/ but all in it cost me under $200 for the compressor, blaster, and nine bags of sand. I was quoted over $600 to have I done. So I say the dusty mess was worth it.