1977 Safari restoration

[HiHoAgRV]

Originally Posted by Zeppelinium

... and effective compound curve, it looks like it's working. I won't be able to fit it to the Safari until Wednesday.

Attachment 55095

The technique is to put your full weight on the roller and move it rapidly (maybe speed has nothing to do with it) back and forth along the lines shown in the photo. ...Zep

I believe the term for Kips tool is now a "Colorado" Wheel. Great work, I kinda like the two piece idea you have.

[2333]

I like the 2-piece idea and when all the panels are shined-up, or have the same level of patina, it'll hide the fact that it's a patch a bit better.

[Royce]

I think the one piece looks better. The one piece is like the ghost of the window now gone and holds the design together. The two piece looks like a patch to me. or rather two patches.

[Zeppelinium]

I'm going to attempt the two piece window patch. But let's get back to that later in the week.

Today is "Dome Day." Maybe I should say "Dome Eternity." The objective is to replace the plastic forward dome with 11 aluminum panels. The dome should use solid rivets, except for the edges when it is installed to the interior skin and ribs. This requires the dome to be fitted, drilled, clecoed, unclecoed, removed, clecoed, riveted, the installed. (others have done this in a simpler fashion but, true to Andy's comments elsewhere, I am willing to take extreme measures to achieve modest results see axle thread for proof of that!)

First step is to get some trial templates. Luckily, I could use the dome over the rear bedroom of a Sovereign, so I had some thing stiff and of the right shape to lay the paper against.

Stiff paper seems like a good idea but the first conceptual error was that I could draw one edge per piece of paper, take them down, then transfer the other edge from the adjoining piece back to the first piece--I mean, once they're out flat you can measure, right? Wrong. Well, not in theory, but if you want to drive yourself nuts, try it. You got to draw both edges on the same piece. Then make sure you lay up the next piece and copy the now underlying join line onto the next piece, plus it's other side, etc.

But the paper just didn't feel adequate (a better craftsman can get away with it, but I needed something stiffer). A sheet of thin plastic seemed the right answer ($20). Wow, much better, but the plastic still had the tendency to form a slight trough shape along the long axis. This doesn't seem like a big deal until you see how much the join edges move with slight changes in how tight the template is to the dome.



After a lot of thought, I decided that panel #5 should have a horizontal lower edge, so all templates were shifted and re-cut to obtain a pattern where #5 meets the corner of the window and has zero width at that end.

I finally got the courage to cut some metal panels. They went up fine, but whoops, the overlap wasn't sufficient. This could have been easily corrected by bringing the curve out from the shell just 3/8", but I wanted to maintain the 1-5/8" shell depth and dome shape as closely as possible. You can see the pink foam shims that I used to maintain spacing. These shims also provide sufficient support so that the panels don't flex when drilled.



The next step is riveting the the dome together. I don't like depending on the clecos to pull the dome into the proper shape. I'd hate to get this thing together and then not be able to fit it to the shell. You can see some ripples in the edge of the panels, which tells me I also want to flange them slightly and then shrink the flanges to make the proper curve in each panel. Thanks to AEROWOOD, this may be practical.





In order to ensure a fit, I'm going to make a dome form from 3/8" plywood to duplicate the perimeter and center of the dome. The following two details are posted to aid phone discussion with the expert...



Every day with a cleco is a good day.
Zep

[Zeppelinium]

Spent the yesterday getting templates for the form and today making the durn thing. Turned out OK. All the layouts fit in both dimensions within 1/8", so I'm pretty confident this form is very close and will really help in when I [solid] rivet the panels together outside the trailer.

Getting the form shape turned out to be easy, but time consuming. I've done a lot of interior woodwork fitting and always took 50 trips back and forth from the bandaw and belt sander. This time I used narrow (like 10") strips of luan that spanned about half the desired curve, then clamped them together when the shape got close. Took about three tries. Marvelous! Why didn't this occur to me 9 years ago when I was younger and had consumed less Two-Buck Chuck?



Here's the finished form. It can be disassembled and reassembled inverted to provide a form for the the other side of the dome.



Zep

[Aerowood]

This is so cool, you are going to save me a bunch of time

[Zeppelinium]

here's the form in action. These are "trial" panels that are pictured in a previous post with the "wrinkles" on the back side flange. Now that they are in the form and the right shape, the wrinkles are essentially gone.



Zep

[AirstreamGypsy]

This is excellent!

I always enjoy the detail you bring to these post's.

Thanks!

[Zeppelinium]

It's been several days of trial fittings, flanging edges, shrinking the flanges to get the right curve, then more trial fitting and finally hole drilling. Yea! After all the problems fitting the curb side, the street side went quickly. The dome shape allowed all panels to be stable with only clecos in the window frame and the shell ends of the panels.



Here's the final fit and drilling of the curb side. Rivet spacing is 2" in the center panel and 1-1/4" in all the others. I think it's been over 2,000 cleco in-outs so far in getting the panels fitted, so my grip is getting better...



(no, that's not a large HD TV under the dome!)

It turns out the metal dome is a slightly different shape from the plastic dome--the plastic dome only came down to the top of the wing windows and to the main window box top rib above the center window, but not to the center window. That's about two inches difference. So the last (lower) panel's lower edge starts off from the wall on the horizontal (at the same place the plastic dome met the wall), but then slopes down as it turns, to meet the top corner of the window. This panel actually comes to a point right at the corner of the window frame.

Also, the inner metal dome is nearly a constant 1-5/8" from the outside dome (as constant as I could make it). I think the plastic dome had more space in many places between it and the outside shell. I surmise this from the poor fit of the templates that were made against the dome in the rear bedroom of the Sovereign.

With only half the dome installed it is unbelievably stiff. What a great improvement over the plastic dome. Now I'll take it down, put it back on the form, do the final hole drilling, and rivet the five curb side panels together.

I have to admit to a late epiphany today. I know why the older Airstream domes are interleaved the opposite direction, eg, the upper edge of the panels are on the inside, versus mine where the lower edges are inside--with the Airstream design you don't have to flange and shrink the hidden mating edge. This would have saved me at least half the hours I've spent so far. But esthetically, I like my interleaving better.

Speaking of flanges, here's the tool (another AEROWOOD special) that does it. I had no clue about this tool until Kip showed it to me--now I see a number of different varieties of the same tool in most sheet metal tools web pages!



Zep

[Zeppelinium]

Remember post #58 above? Well, here's the final wing window conversion. Looks tacky as hell, maybe polishing the shell will help. But the rivet line is perfect.



In order to put the patch under the dome skin, the edge had to be trimmed to get rid of the ragged edge and the window frame rivet holes. So there' s no going back to the window shaped single patch panel.

This patch, even though it is in two pieces, still had to be rolled to get a slight compound curve.

Zep

[Aerowood]

Something just occured to me. More work off course, but if you made a flush type skin splice on the top and outside of the new wing window skins and then flush riveted it together, those two seams would be alot less dominating, making it look like those two skins were a continuation of the two segment skins. Just something to think about.

Kip

[Zeppelinium]

Not a bad idea! always looking for a challenge...

I think most of the appearance issue is due to the drastic difference in skin color/corrosion. Once I get the shell polished a little, we'll see if the shell alclad and the new bare 2024 contrast that much.

I'm thinking about the crappy rivet holes in the shell from where the window frame was installed--to do flush rivets would require a trim of the skin, making the patch at least 1/4" wider. And getting the center diagonal joint flush would be a real trial. I thin that would have to mimic the overlap of the existing shell diagonal line.

I do have one problem, either way--the bottom edge has a significant gap (on the order of 1/8"), due to the camber change. The window frame was thick material and pulled the shell up tight. I was wondering if I can slightly roll that edge, despite it's curve?

Zep

[Zeppelinium]

Not much progress lately, but here's the next step on the fresh tank. Recall that I wanted a "sump" in order to get more out of the tank and a bigger dump opening. I decided that a glued-on sump box was too risky, so I opted to have The Metal Company (in Arvada, next to Denver) spin two fittings into the bottom of the tank. The Metal Company is great--thye spun the fittings in for $10 (fittings were about $2.50 each) and then they inflated the tank to make sure there were no leaks. They found a small leak in the weld I had done on the top to fix a small crack. They fixed that for no charge. Their tanks are inexpensive, too. I'm going to use two of theirs to replace my pittiful 11 gal gray tank--two 14 gal tanks with suitable fittings so they are interconnected and use the available space more effectively. This will cost about $150 total, including 7 custom fittings.

I used a few PEX fittings to concoct a "sump-like" set of pipes that will provide the big dump and access to all the water in the tank.



You can see here that I haven't swaged the bands on the PEX yet. Two fittings were required due to the channel that runs along the bottom of the tank--this allows access to the water in both sides. This channel was for the previous feed hose that ran from the fitting in the center of the tank.



The "sump" pipes will need a small box below the current tank box, about 3-1/2" deep. It'll be about half the size of a shoe box and not nearly as deep.



The other great thing about this is that I can drain the tank without having to remove the steel support plate in the middle of the tank box.

Zep

[Jim & Susan]

Genius, pure genius. Do you mind if I steal this idea? My '73 has no drain on the bottom. Why didn't I think of something like this BEFORE I reinstalled the tank. Arhgg!

[Zeppelinium]

Originally Posted by Jim & Susan

Genius, pure genius. Do you mind if I steal this idea? My '73 has no drain on the bottom. ...

Not really, but thanks. This is the best of the 50 ideas I had, but maybe 51 would have been even better...

You can spin your own fittings into your tank if you have a router. Making a tool to go in your router is easy if you have a wood lathe. You might even be able to make one using some concentric hole saws. If anyone is interested, I can post photos of the tool I made (and used for practice).

Zep

[Zeppelinium]

I'm back working on the Sarfari, so to do a good job on the vents I removed the ceiling skin. OMG, the installation of the air conditioner is horrible. Looks like the factory (or dealer) just scabbed on a skin doubler using Olympic rivets, grossly slathered on slicon on each rivet head, cut a jagged hole in the roof and squished the a/c on. The job is so bad the forward part of the roof skin collapsed, putting the a/c at a "jaunty" angle. It was definitely a "factory" job, since the Olympics are sealed on the inside with a slathering of that hateful white goo...

After crawling around sorta "on" the roof, I've come to the conclusion that the 1977 Safari was an experiment if "making it as light as possible." I haven't mic'ed the skin, but I swear it's 0.020 on the roof, not the usual 0.032. This goes along with the crappy 1/2" plywood fly, rather than the typical 3/4". Anyone know for sure if this was the real objective?

OK, enough "venting," now to get to the new vent installation...

Zep

[Zeppelinium]

Here's the original layout of this Safari, with three vents:



As I've said previously, I removed and patched over the forward vent, bought one of the new low profile aluminum vents from VTS for the old middle vent position, and a Fantastic Fan for the rear vent. I've always oriented my new vents so that they "faced" aft when open, just in case I took off down the highway without checking if they were open. Further, since all but the Caravel have three (or had three) vents, I didn't rely on the vents for cross ventilization--I figured with that many vents, even if the fans weren't on the windows would provide sufficient air flow.

Now that I think about it, what if I didn't want the windows open? If the vents were faced opposite directions, they would naturally capture any breeze. So the question is, should both of them face aft or should the middle vent face forward?

Zep

[Aerowood]

I would not be comfortable with one facing forward. I think the potential of ripping it off, even if it was closed, would be to high.

[azflycaster]

I agree, I would stick with the original configuration.

[Zeppelinium]

Geeze, I ought to read my posts before I "submit" them. "Fly" above is really "floor." Where the hell did that come from?

Regarding the direction of the vent, I smell a 120 kt wind tunnel test coming up... Kip, can you sneak one on your C-130? You could watch out the window and see when it rips off...right about rotation, I'm thinking.

Actually, I agree with you guys, just thought I'd see if anyone had experience facing a vent the other way. BTW, I have no idea what the "original" direction was. I know most of them are facing aft, but I've taken so many off that once I get them off, I have no clue which way it was facing.

Zep