Escape Pod

An Airstream renovation project

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Just going to fix this one little spot on the floor

One of the things that sold me on this particular Airstream was that it didn't have any leaks. Um. Yeah. Not exactly true. I pulled up the carpet (which almost required a hazmat team) and discovered the floor had rotted in several places due to moisture getting in. No problem. Just replace the floor and fix the leak, right? Well, funny thing. Those Airstream people built the entire shell of the trailer on top of the floor. So, to remove the floor sections, you have to un-bolt it from the trailer. It still sounds fairly easy, but it ain't!! With the floor removed, the chassis of the trailer is exposed. It's not made of aluminum, so when it gets wet, it rusts. Bad. I could've just worked on the floor sections I opened up, but then my curiosity about the chassis condition took over. I had to know if this was a bigger rust issue. If it was, it could potentially kill this whole project. So, I decided to open up the belly on the whole trailer. This was amazing. The front was full of 2 inches of beach sand. The rear had the leftovers of a campfire, complete with ash and charcoal. What the? Once I cleaned it all out, I sanded down all the rusted chassis sections I had access to with a metal grinding wheel, coated those areas with rust neutralizer then primed and painted them...Just going to fix this one little spot.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Christina said...

Love your blog...thanks for sharing the journey. It looks like a wonderful trailer and you won't be sorry to have invested in the Airstream. Have you been to the Airstream factory yet in OHIO. Those folks are great! Take care and good luck...Christina

www.christinaschronicles.blogspot.com

March 6, 2010 at 6:15 AM  

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