Modifications To Your Airstream You Wish You NEVER DID!

[vintageracer]

Tell us all about the Modifications You Made to Your Airstream or Argosy Trailer/Motorhome or Aftermarket Products You Installed on Your Airstream or Argosy Trailer/Motorhome That You Wish You NEVER DID and want everyone to LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES OR LAUGH AT YOU for doing it in the First Place!

It's never too late for all of us to learn from "Your" Mistakes!

[overlander63]

Originally Posted by vintageracer

Tell us all about the Modifications You Made to Your Airstream or Argosy Trailer/Motorhome or Aftermarket Products You Installed on Your Airstream or Argosy Trailer/Motorhome That You Wish You NEVER DID and want everyone to LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES OR LAUGH AT YOU for doing it in the First Place!

It's never too late for all of us to learn from "Your" Mistakes!

You go first...

[vintageracer]

Sitting around the beer keg one in my shop day last year my "friends" and I decided we wanted to see what a 1957 Avion T20 trailer looked like "Donked" out out with some 20's.

Had a set laying around from a Chevy truck and on they went. Between the Beer and the 20's we could not stop laughing.

I guess that's was a bunch of guys, beer and access to "Parts" can do one day when you have nothin better to do!

What a complete waste of beer, effort and an afternoon. Yes we took pictures however between my phone and Photobucket I can't seem to find em.

It was a HOOT!

[Kevin245]

Originally Posted by vintageracer

Sitting around the beer keg one in my shop day last year my "friends" and I decided we wanted to see what a 1957 Avion T20 trailer looked like "Donked" out out with some 20's.

Had a set laying around from a Chevy truck and on they went. Between the Beer and the 20's we could not stop laughing.

I guess that's was a bunch of guys, beer and access to "Parts" can do one day when you have nothin better to do!

What a complete waste of beer, effort and an afternoon. Yes we took pictures however between my phone and Photobucket I can't seem to find em.

It was a HOOT!

No extra credit points given without photos! #PimpMyAvion

[SteveSueMac]

Well - c'mon now vintage - we've all got beer keg stories - those are easy. Tell us about a real mod you did that makes you silently scream "AHHHHHH!" in your head when it comes to mind [emoji23]

I don't have one nearly that bad but I'll give you a kindergarten example.....

I replaced my smoke alarm with a combined smoke/CO2 alarm with a 10-year battery. Removed the old one, took the new one out of the pack and reused one of the existing screwholes in the wall for the new mounting plate - and drilled a second pilot hole in the proper location for the new mount's second screw. Pulled the new screws out of the package, mounted the plate slipped on the alarm, tested it - got requisite beeps and felt like a pro!

Until I went in to the bathroom and realized the new screws were about 1/16th inch longer than the wall they were screwed in to - so now I had two sharp, pointy screw tips on my bathroom wall.

I felt like an idiot. Rightly so. Measure twice, cut once and all.

So DW and I found a great metal plate picture of a scene from Maine which now happily makes the bathroom wall look like it was meant to have the Maine photo - which just so happens to cover the protruding screws. [emoji3]

Not beer induced - just a little stupid.

Small scale - simple fix. Not what you're really looking for - but neither is your beer infused sneaker swap [emoji3]

So - out with it man! [emoji3]

PS - pics of the Avion would actually be pretty cool!

[Kevin245]

Speaking of beer kegs. We did make up a new man cave table last week.

Label covered to protect the innocent.

[streaminwild]

Something never to do is, take a straight razor to the tinted windows to scrap the bug scat off. The tint is on the glass, not in it. Left minor scratches on two windows. Purchased Michelin LTX tires with no E rating... I hope your laughing with me

[ROBERTSUNRUS]

Hi, in my blog I show step by step process of my Generator inlet modification. Everything worked great. Until I got home and was backing my trailer into it's tight parking space. I have a backup camera on my trailer so I can see where it's going. At the same time, I have several mirrors on my truck, to see where I'm going. I also have a factory backup camera on my truck and use it to make sure that I don't jack knife too much. Well my truck camera looks down, and while backing up, while watching for the jack knife I heard a loud crunching noise. My left tail light assembly hit my generator inlet and broke. I had to buy a new tail light and re-locate my generator inlet box. Luckily, the box was mounted to my trailer with 3M two sided tape.

[McDave]

Originally Posted by SteveSueMac

I felt like an idiot. Rightly so. Measure twice, cut once and all.

Tried that once; didn't work. Cut it twice and it was STILL too short!

[jimfa440]

Measure once, cut thrice.

[SuzyHomemakr]

Where do I start?

External wi-fi antenna: I went to a couple of campsites, and noticed that they had free wi-fi! The Airstream is kinda of a Faraday Cage, so I bought this fancy ($$$) wi-fi antenna and router, installed it parked outside my house (right outside of the house's router), and It Worked Great! I could stream movies into the Airstream with my Amazon Fire Stick! The first camping trip I realized that the wi-fi is only at the office, and goes about 100 ft. I've never had a usable signal when camping. Waste of money.

Glue-down bamboo floor: Did everything by the book to install the floor, including leaving in the trailer with the boxes open so that it could acclimate. Oddly enough, trailers have far bigger temperature swings than house do. My once-tight floor now has lots of gaps between boards. Most folks would never notice, but to me they look like you could lose a Volkswagen in there!

Wimpy electric trailer jack: Hey, the tongue weight is under 1000 pounds, so that should do for a jack, right? Replacing that creaky, groaning thing with a Husky Brute later this week.

Settee faces flush to cushion front, at right angles to floor: I have nifty slide-out drawers under the settees, using the maximum area for the maximum storage. Turns out that I really didn't need all that much storage there, and I get lots of heel marks on the drawer faces, and it's more difficult to stand up. So I should have set them back like 3+", or even better, slanted them back.

[GatorDave]

Is the Husky Brite flush with the jack tube so it won’t interfere with the LP tank covers?

[ROBERT CROSS]

Zantrex 3 stage 'upgrade' that failed 48hrs after install.👎

Bob
🇱🇷

[Thalweg]

Polish the trailer. I wish I hadn't done that. There are spots that I seem to have gone through the Alclad that won't polish up nicely. But the worst thing is that now I've got to re-polish every couple of years. What a pain.

[Minno]

Wanted a heftier lock on the trailer door than just the regular trailer lock, so we bought a deadbolt. Directions had us putting it on the trailer side and bolt sliding into door. Chris didn't like that, so he put it on the door, sliding into the frame (like a house one would be). Problem is, he didn't think where on the screen door it would fall, so now we have a dead bolt that's only lockable from the outside. Inside, the lock mechanism is behind a solid panel on the screen door, so we can't use it.
He also used too long screws when he installed it, so for awhile our deadbolt had 2 "bumps" in it. I joked it needed a bra... That's been replaced now. So lesson learned: pay attention to WHY they tell you to place things in a certain place. There's usually a reason for it!

Kay

[apollo11]

Unless you own a BAMBY , don't remove the clear coat from your trailer! It's a BIG mistake .You will have a 40 hour polishing job every year instead of enjoying a vacation. The factory put the clear coat on for a reason. That's why these trailers are still around after 50
years.

[Freebird73]

I have a 1973 Trade Wind. The vinyl was stained and I thought it would be nice to have bare aluminum walls. I stripped and polished them while they were outside the trailer. It was a definite PITA and cost me a lot of money in Goof Off and Stripper. Then I discovered the new panels scratch very easily and gets fingerprints of you even look at it funny. I wish I had just painted the walls instead.

[wulfraat]

Installed a Wifi-Ranger wifi signal booster. No longer in today's world of LTE mobile data.

[Northerngirl]

Not something I personally did but while shopping for a used trailer I saw a couple of trailers that would have put offers on had the previous owners not decided to remove either the toilet &/or showers because they did not use them and wanted to increase storage. One owner admitted that in hindsight he had eliminated a larger segment of the buying population than he realized in doing so.