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S1E6: WHAT’S IN THE BOX

S1E6: WHAT’S IN THE BOX

by | Feb 20, 2018 | Airstream Renovation, Vlog Notes

Overview and Notes

All week we’ve have Spring-like weather so we thought we would wash the trailer this week. And this morning we work up to a winter storm. So quick switch of plans… we have a bunch of stuff in the garage and we don’t know what we have. So we are going to go through and see what’s in all these boxes.

Our original plan was to wash the trailer and get it all ready to take down to the workshop to have our electrical done. Our weekends are really the only time we have to do stuff on the trailer. But this weekend we had a little “turn right here, left!”

We have decided to go into the garage and look through the things we have be collecting over the years. Honestly, I have no idea what we have, let’s go find out!

Let’s play a game… WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

 

BOX ONE:

Let’s start small. This box is not labeled so it’s a mystery.

These are the original light fixtures from our trailer. They are in really good shape. We used Penetrol and they cleaned up great. We will rewire and use LED light bulbs and they will look and work great.

They also make snappy fezzes!

BOX TWO:

We have no idea what some of that stuff it in this tub. It looks like we have the original light fixture to our bathroom and some safety glasses. (Steve was tempted to wear them for the rest of the day!)

BOX THREE:

We have the original frames that go around the ceiling vents. We want to use them with the new Fantastic Fan (if possible.) The ceiling vent screens were also in the box with the original crank knobs. So pretty much a big box holding a few important things we plan to keep and utilize in the renovation… and it weighs only 8oz.

BTW: Don’t talk through a screen… it can strain your voice! (Dad joke of the day!)

BOX FOUR:

This box was labeled “Airstream Electric” and it does have a lot of electrical things in there. Lots of wires and connectors, but we will be installing all new wiring so most of the will be going away. The old fuse box was really old and made out of ceramic. We are not using these, but they are cool to look at.

One thing that is great about waiting so long to renovate our trailer, a lot of replica pieces and parts are available now. We thought we would have to try to repair and restore the old parts, but then Vintage Trailer Supply started selling replica parts and seriously… they are way better than the old originals. Another thing we have found is that RVs use similar systems as boats, and marine grade parts are far better than the RV options. The quality and craftsmanship are outstanding and usually not made from plastic like a lot of RV supplies. So yeah, we are using marine grade parts whenever possible.

BOX FIVE:

If only this post had scratch and sniff technology! It was pretty easy to guess just from the smell that box had all the trailer polishing supplies and gear. It smelled like chemicals… the polish is Nushine made by Nuvite.

When you have a vintage Airstream, you pretty much need to shine it up. It’s part of your responsibility a vintage Airstream owner to polish your trailer. Some people don’t polish their vintage trailers… and we won’t judge you… promise. But these old trailers look amazing with the mirror shine.

BOX SIX:

This one is heavy… two mystery accessories were siting on top of this box. We are going to tell you what they are. Watch the video and comment below if you know what these are.

The rest of the box held all of our riveting stuff. Lots and lots of rivets.

  • Pop rivets: usually used on the belly pan or reattach the inside walls.
  • Olympic rivets: use these if you are on the outside and done have access to the inside.

Our Airstream has a lot of rivets. We have to drill out a lot of rivets to remove the inside skin and then we have to replace them. It’s a 13- Panel so more seams means more rivet!

BOX SEVEN:

This box is labeled Hitch and Propane, but that’s not what was in it. To my surprise we have the original curtains from our Airstream. We are not sure if they are the original from 1956, but they were the ones in it when we got the Airstream.

We are too thrilled about using old fabric in our renovation. The stains and odors are just a bit too much, but the designs are great. We will definitely use these as inspiration as we get into the decorating phase of the renovation. And at the very least we have the exact sizes if we need to use them as patterns when making new curtains.

We also had the new door handle in the box. The door on our trailer has the Bardman H20.. 220… something like that… door handle. They are really cool and look like a refrigerator handle. To open the door you lift up an turn the handle and the one our our trailer is broken. Most of the original handles like these have broken over time and we’ve seen many unique DIY fixes over the years. Vintage Trailer Supply offers these really nice replacements. They are sand casted and really light weight. This is exactly what we need to replace the broken handle on our door. And we think they are pretty awesome.

Right now we have a regular doorknob on our trailer. Our plan is to remove that and replace it with a deadbolt lock. So the door will look great and work good too.

BOX EIGHT:

We are pretty long winded in the Vlog, but we had a lot to go through. So… on the LAST BOX!

This one is labeled Airstream Windows… and that’s exactly what’s in it. The whole box was really stinky. The Butel Tape is to blame. There was lots of little things in the box:

  • Silicone window seals
  • New window cranks (we were quite entertain with these)
  • Aluminum duct tape (also very entertaining!)
  • Random rivets
  • Latch to hold the door open

Now we know where everything is… and you know more than you even need to know about the stuff we store in our garage!

The most important thing from today is that we are making progress. No snow storm is going to keep us from getting something done on this project!

S1E5: Getting Tired

S1E5: Getting Tired

by | Feb 12, 2018 | Airstream Renovation, Vlog Notes

Overview and Notes

Steve is out of town for work this week. Before he left he said that he was expecting some packages and in the mail, and gave specific instructions not to open them. I’m thinking that next week is my birthday, so maybe he was talking about birthday presents for me. Today this was sitting on my doorstep when I got home. It looks like it could be the wheel for our spare tire, and I want to open it. I won’t! I will wait for Steve to get back so we can open it together. But it’s going to kill… it’s absolutely going to kill me.

(Wait 3 days…)

Today, we’re not talking about wheels. We’re not talking about axels. We’re talking about tires. As soon as Steve got home we got that wheel unboxed, painted and ready for tires. We had ordered the tires and we needed to get all the wheels down to the tire place to get them installed.

We thought about powder coating the wheels, but decided to just spray paint them. We chose a red spray paint to match the original wheels. And we do have on order our baby moon hubcaps and beauty rings. Once we get them all together, we think it’s going to look fantastic on our vintage Airstream.

We covered our old where in our last post (here) and we got a lot of response on finding out how old those tires really were. One of our viewers wrote in and said that judging by the numbers it looked like the wheels were produced during the first week of 1978. The last three number 7801… meaning the year (78) and the week (01). It could mean 1968!

These tires are pretty old. There are cracks down the middle, on the sides, and there is no tread left on them. The person we bought the trailer from said it sat behind a Kentucky Fried Chicken down on Arizona on Route 66 for years (and years and years).

We also found out that it is really wise to replace your tires every five years, whether you are using them or not. It might have decent tread and look good, but the trouble is that rubber will begin to deteriorate when it gets old… especially if it has been out in the sun. UV light will mess up the tires, and if they get any older than five years the tire guys won’t mess with them. There is danger involved in re-inflating them.

The New Tire Specs:

Good Year Endurance
T225/75R15 4317

That means it was manufactured in the 43rd week of 2017. Which makes them pretty new.

We hope they fit in the wheel well nicely. They look a little bit wider and shorter than the older tires, but when we put them next to the old tire they look exactly the same size. It may be an optical illusion. Once we have the beauty ring installed to separate the wheel for the tire, we hope that visually they will have the same appearance as the old ones. From a spec point of view they are the same size as the old ones. The new tires have a better ply (8-ply instead of 6-ply). These should work really well for our single axel, two-tired trailer. (No, there is not joke in this time.)

The Good Year Endurance get pretty high ratings in the reviews. There are other (less expensive options), but we would be very sad if we got a blow out and pieces of the tire chewed up the under belly of the trailer. (Cue: snappy banjo or sappy county music.)

That’s about all we have here… we’re just too tired to say anymore. But… wait there’s one more thing…

We’ve been following a lot of full-time RVers on YouTube and we think that is such a great lifestyle. It is something we may aspire to some day, but for now we are focusing on more-timing over the next five years. Once we get this trailer up and running, we will be taking longer and longer trips. We still won’t be full-timing, but we will be more-timing… and we are kind of liking that. So… #moretiming… that’s where you will find us.

Hopefully we will be out #moretiming soon!

 

Thank you for all the comments and encouragement. We are making good progress and need you to keep pushing us. Please subscribe and get notifications so you don't miss a single moment of our crazy adventures.

Find more of our adventures at: #moretiming #turihele

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S1E4: The Widow Maker

S1E4: The Widow Maker

by | Feb 3, 2018 | Airstream Renovation, Vlog Notes

Overview and Notes

Today we’re gonna talk about wheels, and why we don’t want these… These are The Widow Maker!

What we have on the trailer is really old wheels. I’m sure this wheel is from 1956… and possibly the tire is from 1956 as well. This thing is really old! There’s cracks and ZERO tread. They are horrible, yet it holds air and we actually towed the trailer to our house on these wheel.

The wheels actually don’t look too bad. With a little wire brushing and elbow grease they would clean up pretty good. But… there is a problem with these wheels… they are split rim wheels.

We asked Haley’s dad (who has been in the automotive biz for years) about these. We told him we had these weird wheel that were split rim, and that we didn’t think we would be able to get anyone to put new tires on them. He said, “Oh, your have yourself a widow maker!”

 

Of course we had no idea what he was talking about, but these are really dangerous. Apparently, the split rim wheel has the reputation of blowing up and killing people. We really don’t want to deal with that, so these wheels are going away… altogether. We are not saving these wheels. The potential to kill us is a major factor in replacing these, but we also don’t know if we could get anyone to fix our tire if we had a problem out on the road. Your neighborhood tire shop won’t touch them.

After doing some research there are some specialty shops that will work on them, but there aren’t that many and you have to put them in a cage to work on them. It’s very specialized. They put them in a cage for your own protection… like a wild animal… so we are playing it safe and get new wheels.

Not only are we getting new wheels for the trailer, we are also getting an extra wheel for our spare. This is great because sometime down the road if we get a flat tire we can pop on the spare and it will look and work great. And a big plus is that we won’t be stranded since our trailer has a single axel and if we have one tire that is not working, we won’t be stuck.

So, we need to get rid of these split rims and ridiculously old tires! We contacted the gang down at Vintage Trailer Supply and ordered new wheels. The new wheels are 15 inches wide, 6 lugs, and pretty much exactly like the old ones… EXCEPT… the new wheels won’t kill us!

So… with new wheels we are now thinking about tires… hmmm… decisions, decisions.

 

BONUS: Why does our Airstream have such a sad social life?

Because it’s single and two (too) tired!

Thank you for all the comments and encouragement. We are making good progress and need you to keep pushing us. Please subscribe and get notifications so you don't miss a single moment of our crazy adventures.

Find more of our adventures at: #moretiming #turihele

Here's how to connect with us and follow our misadventures: