Stay Tuned!

Just a quick note to let you know to stay tuned to this Blog, as work should soon begin again on May! We lost our winter home we had last year, but we should be signing a new 6 month lease at a new location in the next week. The plan for this winter is to finish the exterior and tackle the floor and frame. I can't wait!

Exterior and Interior Work

I have not been spending as much time on May, at the same time that I have been buck riveting on weekends on Buddy Brad's Holly. This has actually been a blessing, as I have much going on in my life right now, so it has been great to just "show up and buck!" You can see the incredible work Brad has been doing by following his "I found the leak" posting here. Brad made sure I gave May her due this past Sunday, and we made some progress on the interior. Before I cover that, the picture above shows the new Airstream Nameplate, and the new Running Lights with the custom bezels are now bucked and fully installed on the rear. I am working on the front and it will also get all new running lights and new nameplate.

This past Sunday Brad and I dropped the interior ceiling aluminum, and then I removed the old insulation. Note the insulation is still in this picture just before removal.

The ceiling all taped and removed from the trailer. We took out the front window, and pulled out the ceiling. In this manner I can now have the ceiling stored underneath the trailer.

I shot looking rearward; ceiling is out, insulation is removed. Next up for removal is the front end cap, and the lower interior panels. I will soon have all of the old mice infested insulation out of the trailer! Then on the wiring, and new insulation. The main reason for getting the entire interior out is so I can buck rivet all the new items and fixes that I am doing to the exterior.

Repeat; another shot of the exterior rear that is completed.

Me testing new running lights.

Rear view of the lights test before we bucked them in.

Buddy Brad's Holly. He built 11 brand new segments, and the lower panel was 12' long, wrapping both sides of the front. He is doing incredible work. Bucking these in place has been a blast. You can tell he is in the Trades, look at the great scaffolding he had all set-up for me to work from. Turns out I run the bucking gun, Brad runs the bucking bar. We have a pretty good communications system worked out, and 98% of the rivets look great. We won't talk about the other 2%!

Holly (Left) and May in the shop we are renting this winter. Obviously this is before he refit Holly with new end cap segments. It gives yo a true sense of how much work Brad has done, and great work at that.

A shot of the front window and the mess I have to work with before it looks like the pictures of the rear end cap above.

Rear cleco'd but not yet bucked.

The PO messy window leak fix. We will fix it right this time, with no drip cap, and without the slag of Vulkem.

Note the drip cap ran right through the old nameplate. You can tell which half was in the sun and which half was not.

Until next time!

Installing Exterior Lights, Home Made Bezels & Window Gears

Finally back to getting some work done including this past Saturday and a couple of hours today. Can you guess which light above is 46 years old vs. which is brand new?





Below one of the side lights is Cleco'd in place. I am going to pull out the cleco's and polish around it before it gets buck riveted.

Below are the rear end cap lights, sitting on their home made bezels, ready for final buck riveting. I did order new Airstream Nameplates yesterday from Vintage Trailer Supply. I just do not like all the numerous holes in the old name plates after one of the former P. O.'s installed a drip cap across the old nameplate. May deserves better.

I also put in the new gears on the rear window. There is one on each side, and now the rear window works for the first time for me. It really is too much window (too big and heavy) for the gear design. As long as I am the only person that ever opens or shuts the windows on this trailer, the gears will last a long time. The first person to over crank a gear will break said gear. It is nice to see the rear window all complete and working, albeit a poor 1964 design.

I hope to get more work done outside of the actual holiday days. I want to get the new name plate in place, and then the rear is ready for buck riveting. Until next time!

-Tim

Rear End Cap Out!

Work is under way on May at her new winter home. She has been there all of November, but this coming weekend will be the first weekend that I get to work on her. All work to date has been done over a few week day nights. I convalesced from oral surgery one weekend, we had an 11" snowstorm the next weekend, and last weekend I was in New York City with my son. Even so, the picture above shows the rear end cap has been dropped. Underneath the insulation and mouse droppings were nasty! Yuk! Also found a surprise, one end cap panel has been replaced. I had no idea, but now that I look at the rivets from the outside, I can tell they are not buck rivets.

The rivets on the replaced panel appear to be pop rivets. They are shaved on the outside (no picture). Of course they are leaking. I will of course buck these.

I want to get all the buck riveting for the running lights and the replacement panel completed. Then I will insulate, and put the end cap back up. Buddy Brad is going to Europe for 10 days, so I will work on some other projects while he is gone, ready to start bucking upon his return. It sure is nice to be making progress again! Until next time!

2 1/2 Days Journey - A trip to P&S Trailer in Ohio

This is not about May, this is about a journey to drop off our 1990 34' Excella for winters work at P&S Trailer Service in Ohio. Thanks to buddy Brad for joining me on this trip, and all the planning we did on May and his '57 named Holly. Both these fine Vintage trailers will be side by side in a shop that Brad and I rented starting this coming November 1st. We spent our many hours on the way to and from P&S planning, sharing, changing, and planning again what we are going to do with and to our trailers. Brad had some significant changes that he brainstormed for his plans for Holly, and I look forward to seeing his updated drawings. A '57 front bedroom? It sounds great to me!

The above picture is just after we arrived and dropped the Excella off the hitch. P&S is also a working farm, so yes, it looks like a farm house in the background. The 2500 Duramax/Allison Chevy was flawless as always.

A shot from the road looking at the farm. Check out all the shinning aluminum! There were also another 4 trailers in the buildings under going work at present.

A closer view of trailers and one of the "barns". Steve at P&S could not have been more hospitable to us when we arrived. Thanks to him for taking about an hour to show us around; ON SATURDAY no less!

More trailers awaiting various repairs, or possible sale. P&S also sells pre-owned Airstreams.

I of course have a soft spot for these old Shasta's. Readers of this blog will note my earlier coverage of the first trailer I camped in about 1964; you guessed it, a '59 Shasta.

1578 miles (round trip), 2.5 days, 6 states (should have been 5, but Michigan got thrown in for good measure, by accident), 13.4 MPG with the trailer on the way to Ohio, and 18.4 MPG without the trailer on the way back to Minnesota, and we managed to talk, plan and laugh the whole time. Thanks again to Brad for joining me on this trip. As for the Excella, I can't wait to see her again next Spring, with new clear coat, awnings, Fantastic Fans, new power supply, new tires, and a extensive but minor list of other items.

So May will move into her 6 month "winter" shop on November 1st. I am way pumped up and ready to get to work! Until next time.....

Work on May will soon begin again!

Please wonder no longer as to what May has been doing all summer. She has been on vacation! About the only thing that I worked on all summer was the few minutes it took to remove this flag box from underneath her. Note the box was open to the front, and you can see all the dirt and squirrel nuts that accumulated towards the back of the box. I am not saving this box as it really has no historical significance for me, and I will use retractable flag poles when I get that far along, so no pole box required.

I was very lucky in one regard this summer. I decided that I did not like working on May while I am at the Airstream Park, so I brought her home around June 1st. Since she had to sit on the front, south facing, black top driveway, I found very few days that were conducive to actually working on her. It was just plain too hot. I tried working on some rivets on the back tail lights, but decided the only right way to finish that project is to buck rivet. So there she sat in the driveway, with me feeling slightly guilty for not getting any work done. And then August 13th came along. The Airstream Park was hit by a MAJOR, and I mean major, hail storm! Many, many trailers were totalled. Our '90 sustained $18,800 in damage! I know of one trailer that sustained over $35,000 in damage! But were was May? She was safe in my driveway at home, no hail dents. Watch this blog for some pictures and text from a soon upcoming trip to P&S in Ohio.

I have decided working on any trailer in the outdoor elements is just about impossible for me. I have no Sun shade, and no way to duck the elements. My hats off to all the people that have restored Airstreams while being 100% out of doors. Again this year, I have rented a shop to work on May, this time for 6 months starting on November 1st. It is a very nice shop, only 12 miles from my house. And this year I will have company! Buddy Brad is joining me in the shop rental, and Holly, his 1957 Overlander will be working side by side with May! I am very jazzed! I covered Brad's acquisition from Doug (Tinman54) this past February. You can find Holly's thread on the Airforums here. We will be out of the Minnesota Winter elements, heated, with plenty of space.

I am off for now, but will soon have road trip pictures on the way to and from P&S in Ohio, and May restoration pictures once I get under cover again in a little more than 2 weeks! Until then....

Back to the outside

I moved May outside again on the second to last day of March. After leaving the winter location that I had been renting since December ('09), she spent a couple of nights at our house, and I was able to give her a much needed bath. On April 2nd she was back at her summer home outdoors.



I have not been able to get too much work done since the move outside, but last weekend I did manage to take on the final stages of fabrication for the rear running lights. I am installing the tear drop lights that would have been the factory option in '64. I could not just install the lights, as a PO had installed oblong running lights, and this left screw holes wider than what the tear drop light could cover. Airstream installed the wiring even when the lights were not originally installed at the factory, and that is what happened with May, with the PO installing oblong running lights (my guess in the 70's). My solution is the aluminum "bezel" that I custom cut to match the shape of the teardrops. You can see what the pre-rivet completion looks like above. Thanks to buddy Dave who helped me fabricate and sand the edges on his belt sander.



I also tackled the mess under the rear drip cap that I removed. Please note that a heat gun, Acetone and Mineral Spirits are your friends. The drip cap was not original to the trailer, and the PO had drilled right through the Airstream nameplate. I had to contend with really thick Vulkem underneath the cap, clear coat that had not been removed, and then I polished it all. I also realized that I did not have the correct sized pop rivets for the nameplate, so they are now ordered, and on their way from Vintage Trailer supply. I will also plug the holes from the drip cap with stainless pop rivets (see below).



The below picture is taking a stepped back wider view of what I am working with. All three rear running lights will have bezels around them, and I will also do same on May's front. The aluminum tape covered the holes through the winter. Although the name plate is missing from this picture, it is ready to be installed again, just waiting for the aforementioned rivets.

We have a cold front that came in last evening, and we actually had snow just north of here. The sun is out, and the temps today will be in the 50's, so I am going to spend some hours polishing. Until next time!