1986 Sovereign 31' Renovation - Eloise

[Bubba L]

Nothing like doing it right. The only way to go. As the reno goes along, you’ll get moments of satisfaction and accomplishments. Textbook work. Keep us posted.

[2ndbottle]

Thanks Bubba!

It actually went really well all things considered. I got the rest of the subfloor off and stashed away to make templates for the new floor. The back end was cut out earlier when this project wasn't a shell off yet, so I've left the rear C channel in place to let me make a template before the frame heads to the welders.

The frame around the axle mounting plates is rough in several spots, so I'll have to see what ideas some welders have for repair. I'd like to avoid a new frame if possible just to keep costs down. Although at this point.....why stop spending??

[2ndbottle]

Forgot to add the visual aid!

I'll take another photo in daylight, but it looks to me like the whole frame has a slight down slope when you move away from the axles.

[dbj216]

Greetings 2ndbottle: You have been hard at it. Tie that body shell down so if a thunderstorm and wind come up it won't end up in the neighbor's yard on its roof.

Airstream frames are built to flex. Our long trailers flex more than the shorter ones. As they say here, the frame holds the body up, and the body holds the frame up. Semi monocoque they call it. What we did before we did any frame repair welding, was to level the frame rails to our shop floor the best we could, and checked both left and right side heights from the floor to make them as equal as we could at every outrigger. We had about 3" of rear end sag in the frame rails before we started the leveling process. After we were satisfied with the way the trailer sat on the jack stands and screw jacks, we went ahead an welded new metal where we felt it was needed due to rust

When we were done welding we were disappointed to see about an inch of sag in the rear after we removed the screw jacks. So we releveled the frame rails and then attached the body to the rear cross member and subfloor with the bolts, and riveted it to the rear body mount. Now when we released the screw jacks, no sag was detected.

You may have a rather floppy frame until you reattach the body to the outriggers and body channels (straight sides F and curved end cap C channels). Then I bet your trailer will be level and stay level.

David

[2ndbottle]

Hi David,

I hope your camping trip was a success!

You're right about the frame just being flexible. That's a substantial length of metal that's only supported at the axles and tongue. It makes sense that the shell also stiffens up the frame as its all part of one assembly.

We've finally managed to find a fabricator here that will take on the repairs to the frame. After looking closely, we can salvage the front part of the existing frame to just aft of the step. Everything after that will be made new. The main rails will be spliced on a 45 and then reinforced inside and out with plate. The frame was delivered the other day to their shop to make measurements for the new axle plate and things like that. Once the rest of my ordered outriggers arrive, we should have the new and improved frame back in a couple of weeks. This will also line up nicely with the new axles arriving.

This will be a big Turing point in the project for us as a lot of the work will change to 'putting together' instead of 'taking apart'.

On the less flashy side of things, we've picked up all the new plywood subfloor and I templated them with the old pieces before getting rid of them. For our frame the layout that worked best with 4x8 sheets was to have the first three sheets span the width of the trailer and then the next 4 go along the long axis. Every seam lands on an existing cross member this way and should make for a solid floor.

We've also been wanting to clean up and paint the Hensly hitch that came on the trailer, so it's been a good time to tear that apart. Once disassembled I found that water had been getting into the lower bearings, some of which were mostly seized and all of which were rusty. The top side bearings were still ok, but since I have it all apart it's a good time to replace everything. The bearings, races and seals were all sourced locally and the rest was ordered from Hensley. There was a broken weld on the bracket that holds the two WD bar tubes together and they replaced this part under warranty. They've been really good to deal with any time I've called. I will say that this hitch is a tank. 8 bearings and very heavy duty steel parts... It will definitely last another 30 years once I'm done with it.

We've also been getting the shell prepped for resealing from the inside. Ours has a black tar like coating applied to all of the inside seams, and in several places you could see where water had been getting in as the coating begins to dry and crumble there. We scraped away all of the old coating and applied Captain Tolleys to the seams. It leaked through to the outside in many spots and after about three trips around the shell, it seams to be water tight on the seams. Next up will be sikaflex over that and the inside seams are done.

I have a question about the clear coat on these 80's models... Is it possible to remove the clearcoat, and then not polish to a bright shine? I don't mind the somewhat brushed finish the original panels have, but the splotchy clearcoat is going to make me sad after putting together what is going to be essentially a brand new airstream! Even if the brushed finish can be maintained with waxing, that would be a good solution.

Thanks for reading!

Jason and Lori.

[dbj216]

Hello from Colorado: Our 3 week Airstream was a success. Lake Tahoe was beautiful, and so was Sequoia National Park. Nature's skyscrapers. The big trees are amazing to me. See photos below. We had some rough mountain roads and some lousy campgrounds, but that is part of Airstream traveling.

Hensley makes a great hitch. The trailer will not sway with it. You are wise to rebuild it as new ones are quite expensive. I pull our Limited 34' with a Pro Pride. It is a Hensley copycat, but it sure works good. I do have trouble hitching up when the trailer and truck are not on the same level. I'm a bit out of practice.

I stripped the old, faded clear coat off the Limited and it did make the trailer look better. I'm told "Sharkskin" which is a good polamer wax can help prevent corrosion. Our Limited was polished and looking pretty good until I pulled it through a snowstorm in the high mountains. The deicer on the roads corroded the heck out of the finish. Now I have to start all over again. Maybe next winter. Airstream used to ship trailers with no clear coat back in the 50s. It was aircraft Alclad with that pure aluminum bonded to the surface. I wonder if customers complained about spots and corrosion and thus Airstream started with the clear coat.

Assembling, or building your Airstream is the best part. It takes a long time to put it all back together. Some say maybe 10x longer than taking it apart. But you will have a "new" Airstream when done. The axles are one of the last things to go on in my projects as I mount tanks, do the belly pan, seal up the wheel wells and that kind of thing first. But each Airstream build is different. I know the factory mounts the axles as a first step, and then they flip over the frame and attach the body.

Keep on work'in

David

[2ndbottle]

Hello Forums.
We have completed Eloise and have been camping gleefully for the last two months....

Just kidding.

We have been working away. Since I'm the writer of this duo, I'm going to try to keep this post updated! (Lori) I'll write the overall recap, and Jason will add the details since I'll likely be focused on the pain and emotional journey and not the nuts and bolts.

First up there was a Massive delay. Our frame was ready the first week of July, however... our axles were MIA. We rented a SOB and took our four kids camping and learned some very important facts.

1. 6 people and a fur baby in one trailer produces a lot of words... also a lot of condensation. We've decided on a permanent humidifier.
2. Air conditioning. It's been HOT in Ontario. Like stupid hot. I've begged for the option of a second air conditioner. The SOB was like an ice cave and I loved it.
3. We have always thought our two oldest would sleep in a tent on our site. But we learned that the campground we booked next year won't allow a tent on the site. Hmm.... Also, while camping - it had rained a ton and our site resembled a mud wrestling pit, so unless the kids were tenting on a raft, it would have been a disaster. Soooo.... We are thinking about bunks in the back... We have wraparound windows... It's in our thinking pile - so we'll see what we come up with. Or the kids don't come camping and we just send them selfies of all our adventures...

Back to Eloise... While waiting for the axles, we painted and repaired everything we could find. I painted all the inside cabinets and skins. I know I'll have to touch up the interior after installation, but it my future self is going to love the fact that it's done.

Jason got the hitch all sorted out and worked on repairing the endcaps. It wasn't until last week when the axels finally arrived and we got the frame back.

We were so ready to dig in. We both took a few days off work and got right to work, just as a heat wave hit Ontario.

Jason will post a bunch of pics later - but we plowed through the hot days. Subfloor epoxy'd and bolted down, flipped the frame, tank and pans... insulation. The heat almost killed both of us.

There were a few HOLY **** moments - like the rain (we own many tarps now) or when we couldn't get the tank pan to fit. I wasn't super keen on flipping the frame - but we did with a rain cloud chasing us down, so it was super quick and I didn't have time to worry about the gantry snapping in two.

Jason is amazing. He figures it out. It's been amazing to work with him on this - I've learned many new skills that I never knew I'd need- and he's patient when I don't have a clue what I'm doing. They say a couples challenge is assembling Ikea, or putting up wallpaper. But I say tackle an airstream! In a pandemic. That's super-bonding. These forums have been such an amazing resource. While Jason finds the answers to the current challenge, I find the stories... And there are so many that strive to get their silver babies back to glory. I'm a fan of so many rebuild threads. It's inspiring. I'm already started to outline a screenplay based on this experience.

Next up - shell on. Which has proved to be difficult. We'll report back when it's on. We have another thread going on helping us get the shell on, calling on the masters for help. Stay tuned.

[Bubba L]

Glad to hear about the progress. You are correct. An Airstream renovation is a learning experience. Good luck on putting the lid back on.

[coloradoup]

Looking forward to your progress!

[2ndbottle]

Hi all,

Well it's been quite the flurry of activity around here since we got our axles and then the frame back.

The fabricator did a great job on the rebuilt frame. He got axle plates made up that were identical to the old ones and also had some part roll formed that weren't available for purchase anywhere. The whole frame rear of the door is new. All of the outriggers are also new. Eloise's new bones were looking good.

We spent a couple of days wire wheeling, degreasing, etching and then POR-15ing the entire frame. Two coats later and the finish is really quite amazing... Especially on the new steel. I'll have to top coat the A frame and the rear as well with something that isn't UV sensitive, but it's a great product. The 31' frame used two quarts of POR along with a quart of degreaser and two quarts of metal etch. I have a 3rd can that I'll use for parts of the Hensley that's also mostly rebuilt.

We've been picking up all kinds of parts while waiting for the frame, so all of the new plywood had been marked up and was ready to cut. I had also previously gotten a sheet metal friend to make us new tank pans as well as new inner wheel wells out of galvanized. We had also cleaned out all three tanks which are in good enough shape to resuse on the new trailer. The fresh tank had a small crack on a top corner, but I was able to seal it using a poly welding stick. All the fittings were resealed, water tested and new dump valves and piping were fitted to the black and gray tanks. This was a really eventful time as we got to see if all the things we had made were going to fit!

The new wheel wells were sealed and screwed to the frame and then the plywood was cut to size and screwed to the frame as well. We went with 5/8" exterior sheathing as it was readily available and our floor was originally 5/8" OSB. The edges of the ply and about a 2" strip top and bottom got several coats of Abatron wood repair, which makes it take on a plastic texture and seams the wood against moisture. Everything else got 3 coats of floor polyurethane. We used a 5/16" self threading, spline drive screw to hold the floor down and just needed to predrill the steel. The C channel followed and lined up well to the outriggers using some references from the old frame. Or so I thought. I would suggest to anyone doing this type of restoration to take the time to level the frame before attaching the floor, belly pan or shell. More on that later.

This is a good time to let you know that this is a long post. You may want to stretch, walk the dog or put the wash into the dryer before reading on.

We got to repurpose the two 12' tall gantries that have been rather conspicuous in our drive way for many months. The frame was very easy to flip an as others have mentioned it makes working on the underside of the frame sooooo much easier. We chose to use 1.5" rigid foam insulation on the underside of the floor. It's foil lined and will give us roughly the same R value as the Roxul that we'll be putting in the walls later on. Spacers were made up from scrap bits of subfloor and used to leave an airspace between the floor and insulation.

Like many of the other parts that we have lying around making our garage dangerous to navigate for even a mountain goat, we had 3 rolls of 4'x12' 0.032 5052 for the belly pan. This was bought from Aircraft spruce as they are just down the road from us and saved a lot on shipping. The sheet was cut and riveted into place, except for the edges of the main frame rails. We left these with only clecos so that we can slip the side wrap in later on. The whole process went really well and we were able to flip the frame right side up.... Just ahead of some rain. As Lori mentioned earlier, we now own several large tarps. It took a few days more waiting for a few days of dry weather to attempt putting the shell on.

After having done this and gone through all of the steps to get to this point, I'd strongly suggest that anyone taking one of these projects on documents all of the parts that you take out as well as marking where things went. You will not remember where most things came from 8 months after starting this project. We've been writing on the backs of everything with a sharpie and its been invaluable. I'd also recommend that you take measurements of everything you can and write it all down in a book that you can use through out the renovation. We had a lot of floor rot and couldn't template all of the plywood curves from the original floor... If you can then do it! It will save time and effort when you put the shell back on.

I'll post photos of all of this below. We'll update again tomorrow with our shell on adventures from yesterday and today.

This has been an adventure from the start and I can't wait to get out and use our Airstream. Lori has been great through all of this and has been the one keeping me from setting the trailer on fire and walking away some days. The Airstream blues are real! The vision of the two of us off on our own adventures is what keeps me moving forward no matter what the struggle of the day is. We may even bring the kids. Maybe.

Also, a big thank you to everyone that replied to our post about getting the last corner of the shell to fit on the C channel. We managed it using a combination of all your suggestions, and they salvaged what was a really frustrating couple of days!



Jason.

[dbj216]

The long post reflects lots of progress. You are certainly going at it the right way. Building a new 1986 Airstream 31' is no easy task.

I sure hope the body fits on the new frame and subfloor okay. Marrying these two parts is always a bit dicey. I'm sure you will make them fit, but just be ready for some adjustments. Maybe the body moves a bit when lifted and needs some push and pull to get it to square up on the new frame.

Keep going and soon you will be traveling in your new Airstream.

David

[2ndbottle]

We had some challenges getting the shell back on for sure, but the really short version is that the shell is back on and buck riveted in place! Check.

The slightly longer version is that we had a lot of trouble at the front corners. After some retrospective analysis, I think the shape of the curves was off a little. After a failed attempt at getting them both to drop over the C channel, we raised the front up again and changed to contour of the front piece of plywood. This gave us just enough to get the shell to slip I've the channel.

Levelling the frame was also important in getting things to line up properly. On the next one (haha) I would level the frame at each step... Putting the subfloor on, attaching the belly pan and most definitely to put the shell on.

Once we had the two big trailer parts back together, it was a race against any rain in the forecast to get the shell as water proof as possible to keep our new subfloor dry. We installed 3 new fantastic fans and got those sealed up. All of them were modified to be variable speed and bidirectional. The grey and black vent stacks were removed and the old gaskets replaced with new cork rubber ones we cut out of spare material. The battery boxes went back in with butyl tape against the shell and then sikaflex 221 over the seams. The water was reinstalled similar to the battery boxes and we replaced so roof rivets that were leaking after I stomped on the roof to put the new fans in.

We've also had a roll of side wrap aluminum that we ordered from Airstream way back sitting in the garage. We used the old side wrap material to template the new ones and got everything cut to rough shape.

The old banana wraps were epoxied to fix any cracks around the rivet holes and painted to be as close a match to the Airstream aluminum as possible.

We've been making our way around the trailer getting the wheel wells trimmed and the belly wraps installed... There are only two sections to go! It's a real sense of accomplishment to hit this stage and have our Eloise looking like a trailer again. There's still loads to do, but this was definitely a milestone for the project.



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[2ndbottle]

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[dbj216]

You have certainly completed a lot of good work. You're renovation project is one of the biggest ones. Getting the frame, subfloor and body all "married" together again is a huge milestone. Yep, looks like an Airstream again. The pending rain will help you find leaks.

David

[2ndbottle]

Thanks David.

You are absolutely right about the rain helping out with leaks. We're out there everytime it rains checking for any water. We've knocked off a lot already and all the ones left are quite small. I can't even count how many tubes of sika we've used sealing everything up. Not to mention butyl tape, captain Tolleys and acryl-r.

[2ndbottle]

Well it's been a very long time since we've posted to our rebuild thread, but there has been lots of work going on.

We've rebuilt or reused all of the interior components including the bathroom, fridge side cabinetry and stove side cabinet.

The layout of the trailer is going to be the same as it was originally, so for the most part we've only been updating what was there and replacing any wood walls that were damaged. I was able to use a router and the old parts as a template to make identical new parts.

The front convertible dinette is completed and we also have our long awaited new cushions. They did a great job of making them and we were really excited to have them!

The end caps were removed months ago and were cleaned, had the cracks epoxied and fibreglass tape was adhered to all the edges with resin. Once the repairs were sanded, they were primed, painted and had new LED puck lights installed. We removed the CD player that was in the front end cap and that will be the new home of the See Level II display, the remote for the inverter as well as some new light switches.

Out in the trailer.... The 120V wiring has all been replaced and the main service is now 50A rather than the original 30A.

There has also been seam and rivet scraping..... Sooooooo much scraping! There were a couple of small leaks that were extremely difficult to track down and I had to pinpoint them by exposing all the seams in the rear endcaps. All of the interior and exterior seams have been sealed with Acryl-R. That stuff is really great for seams. It's thin enough to put down a small bead that partially wicks into the seam.

The drain line for the AC was replaced and a second one was installed to the rear vent in case there's ever a second AC added. It was painful to drill a hole into the new side wrap, but there will be more to come! Solar wires are now up on the roof and routed to where the charge controller will be. Once the weather gets better, we'll VHB the panels to the roof and connect everything.

There's a lot I'm likely forgetting to mention... As you all know there are 1000 steps to one of these projects and it's been challenging sometimes to keep moving. The fact that there's a slight camping panic setting in has motivated us to ramp up the work.

The trailer is mostly insulated now as well, which we've been chipping away at in down time. We bought 2x4 stud wall roxul and split the batts in half. They fit perfectly and with the right insulation knife they are also easy to cut.

As of this weekend, we hit another milestone when the front end cap went back into place. That...is a good feeling. We used 5/32 rivets to put the end cap back as they give a much wider head to spread out the clamping force. Hopefully this helps with future cracking.

Were going to try and update more often now that things are going back into place.

[2ndbottle]

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[2ndbottle]

New addition!

Since we've proven to be certifiably insane by taking on this renovation project in the first place... It may not be a surprise to know that this followed us home from Pennsylvania last month.

She's a yet to be named 1974 22' Argosy!

[Bubba L]

Congratulations on the Argosy. Those are so unique it would be fun to renovate one. Don’t know if your degree of insanity is any greater than mine. Maybe therapy would help us both. Good luck and have fun.

[2ndbottle]

Thanks Bubba!

I don't think I'd take on another 31' trailer. It really is a lot of work and everything is at a big scale. We like the look of the painted Argosy and since we've learned so much on the Airstream, the next one should be a gentler learning curve. That and I'd like to use up some of the 1000's of rivets i've aquired through this process. Ha! The interior is completely original and after i checked the bearings and put new wheels and tires on her, she towed home like a dream.

We've promised each other not to start on it until Eloise is done!