Today I decided to work on a few odds and ends. And ended up putting in about 7 hours…

One of the items was sink covers. You never have enough counter space in a trailer and sink covers help out. I had saved the peice of countertop when I made the cut out for the sink so I could use it for the sink covers.

I cut them to size. The hard part was cutting the edges out so it could drop into the sink. Since I don’t have table saw I used my skill saw once again. I cut 1/8″ strips along the edges with the blade depth set to leave around an 1/8″ material on the top. Then I used my wood chisel to knock out the peices. It’s not perfect but it got the job done. Staining and poly coating was next.

I actually did the cutting and staining a while ago.

Here they are in place.

Next up was to hide some wiring that runs along the top of the fridge shelf. These wires are for the TV’s and stereo, etc…

I just used some left over oak and cut it fit and trimmed it out.

On our last couple of trips I noticed that the plywood under the trailer at the tub drain was wet. So I decided to pull the drain and seal it up again with more putty and then I found I did not used teflon tape on the part the screws into the trap. This always holds water since its below the floor line so thats probably where it was leaking.

Now that the drain was fixed it was time to start putting the belly pan back. First thing was to put some insulation in place.

Next it was time to unpack the aluminum. This was from www.airpartsinc.com, a Vintage Airstream Podcast contributor. The aluminum comes rolled up in four foot widths. Note the rope. You need to tie the rope around the roll before you cut the tape to control its expansion.

After laying it in place, I decided to just put it up in one peice and cut and trim as I went.

Its kind of hard to make these out since the aluminum is so reflective. I’m very happy with the results. I still have a few trim peices to do and a whole lot more rivets to keep it in place.

How’s that for an update? I didn’t expect to get so much done, but sometimes you get lucky.

See ya down the road…

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August 2nd we were invited to see Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours at the San Francisco Great American Music Hall. The opening song on theVAP called Living in Aluminum is sung by Antsy and the Trailer Park Troubadours.

I inteviewed Antsy last Christmas about his music and his Chirstmas in the Trailer Park CD. It was a great show, available here.

The concert at the music hall was great. Very entertaining. If the Troubs are ever in your area you need to check them out.

Here is a shot of me, my lovely wife Debra, and Antsy after the show.

Of course I had to get an autographed shirt!

Thanks to Antsy and his pal David for setting us up with the tickets!

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There have been no updates because we’ve been camping! I decided to entertain you with some photos of our trips to Santa Cruz and South Lake Tahoe.

Here’s the campsite in Santa Cruz….

And the standard beach shot from the Boardwalk…

The next week we headed up to Lake Tahoe and got a nice campsite there. It had a nice stream that we backed up to and could hear it running all night.

Tram ride up Squaw Valley…

And the most photographed place in the country… Emerald Bay!

This will have to do for now until I can get back to work!

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When I purchased the trailer just over a year ago now, the coupler was old and the original jack was busted. So while in Ohio I stopped at the Mothership, Airstream, and had a new coupler put on.

At the time I also needed a jack so I picked the cheapest manual jack for $25. Always intended to replace it with an electric model. I had it on my ’71 Safari after all…

Barker Manufacturing decided to become an Ambassador Contributor by donating a Super Jack. Its the same model Airstream has been putting on for years. The model is a 12806 3500lb jack with light. The nice thing is the color matches the trailer nicely.

So that was my job today, replace the jack. Here is my manual one. Its nice, but hey, its manual labor.

So I put a jack stand under the A frame and removed the jack. That was the easy part.

Now, fitting the new jack in, well I ran into a problem. I figured it would fit perfectly since I had the Airstream factory put on the new coupler. Well, it turns out the coupler is only on the top part you see. On the bottom there is a plate welded to the A frame with another hole to accept the jack tube. That hole was too small for some reason.

So, out came the dremal. The only grinding tool I have. Fourty-five minutes and two bits later, the hole was just big enough. I slid the jack in place and bolted it back in nicely. I had already pre-wired 12vdc to the area knowing I’d be getting a power jack.

Well, there ya have it. Another job completed. And not nearly as tough as the ones I’ve been doing lately.

Looks good too.

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Dexter disc brakes and a Tekonsha P3 brake controller is stopping me. Finally.

What a job. Everything I read about putting disc brakes on your trailer says its worth the trouble. I sure hope so. It was a lot of work.

I started around 9am and the first thing I did was install the P3. It was releatively easy as they supplied the OEM cable. It was a simple matter of mounting and plugging it in.

I replaced my Tekonsha Voyager brake controller. I don’t know if it would work the the Electric/Hydraulic Actuator or not. I do know the P3 does as it has a setting for it in the menu.

Next up. Hydraulic brake line installation. As you know I already had the E/H Actuator installed and stubbed out the hydraulic line under the trailer. So I needed to run the lines to the brake calipers. I ordered a tandom torsion brake line kit from BluDot. It has a lot of pre-determined brake lines lengths, tees, brackets etc…

I had to jack up the trailer to take the wheels off to get access to the wheel well. Mounting the 3/16 steel lines to the brackets that transition to a rubber line to the caliper was just a matter of laying it out and bending the lines with a tubing bender as needed. Of course since I was not flairing my own ends, I had to work with the lengths provided. This ment a lot of coils tucked under the trailer.

Here are some shots of the steel lines and rubber line transitions.

Care must be taken to not have too sharp a bend on the rubber lines. Although I must confess to a couple of U’s in my installation. If I was able to cut and flair my own hard lines that would have helped a lot. Of course I’ve never done this before either so thats a good excuse :-).

After all the lines were installed and secured. The next step was bleeding the lines. I had to enlist the help of my dad again.

The bleeder screws on the calipers are so hard to get to, you have to actually remove the wheel to get to it. So imagine, jacking up the trailer on one side, remove one wheel, apply the brake, and bleed the caliper. Put the wheel back on and remove the next one, add more fluid to the actuator, and bleed the caliper. Put that wheel back on and move to the other side and start the process all over.

When you’re finally done, you have to do it all over again. New installs require a minimum of two bleeds of the entire system…. very labor intensive.

Happy to say that its all done. Everything works. I have not done a test tow yet, but everything checks out.

So that was 11 hours on the trailer today. If I could have found someone at $60 an hour to do this, it would have cost $660 labor only for todays work.

If you have a vintage trailer, you’d better roll up you’re sleeves!

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I fully expected to install more brake lines. However, the parts did not arrive until noon, and by then I had other plans. So, hopefully back on the brakes tomorrow.

I purchased a table leg and wall bracket to build a table around. The wall bracket has a groove that fits the table piece. It allows the table to be positioned anywhere along the track.

I ended up building the table with the 3/4″ oak left over from the bunk bed project. Glad I didn’t through it out. Turned out OK so far. I need to finish staining it and put a polly acrylic coating on the top. Its supposed to turn into a hard protective coating. Let me know if you have used it.

Here is a shot of the wall bracket and the table in a stored position.

This next shot shows a dinning position. Two on the couch and two in chairs.

The nice thing of this design idea is the table can slide forward and become a computer desk. While still having access to the couch.

There is still plenty of room to get by when the table is out. Also I’m pretty sure the table can stay in this spot with the bed out.

I’m going to add a wall mount bracket to the end of the counter so I can put the table against the wall if I want.

We’ll thats what I got done today. Tomorrow… we’ll see…

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I thought I was done with plumbing. But alas, I am not.

Not only do I need to plumb the hydrolic lines for the brakes, but I needed to *plumb* some brake wires to the e/h actuator.

Turns out, lacking my proper instruction, my welder pulled the original brake wire out of the belly pan when he put on the new axles. Basicaly the bellypan fell down and he pulled the wires out before screwing the pan back.

So, I needed to string a new brake control wire and the seperate emergency brake away wire to the e/h actuator. Since I’m putting the actuator under the streetside bed, that means stringing the wire from the hitch to the middle of the axles. So I ran some grey plastic conduit.

That got my wires where I needed them. I mounted the actuator and wired it up. I also plumbed the hydrolic line to a tee under the belly pan. Now I have to wait for the rest of my plumbing kit from BluDot.

He is a shot from under the trailer. You can see the conduit going up with the wires and the side of the tee. The shot after is a bad one but shows the pipe coming out of the belly pan and into the tee.

Thats about all I could do with the brakes for now. I need the plumbing parts still. Should be here tomorrow.

This is not fun anymore….

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I picked up the couple of fittings I needed today to hook up the regulator.

I’m a little disappointed as I purchased a new propane rack and a new regulator as well. You would think the regulator bracket and modern regulator would line up and mount nicely. Not! I had to drill mounting holes in the bracket and get self tapping #6 screws for the regulator as the holes in it weren’t even threaded. No big deal, just more trips to the hardware store and more time.

Like my new tank? I don’t have propane in my new Worthingtons so I used my BBQ grill tank as a supply. I shut off the valves leading to the appliances and turned on the gas armed with my leak detecton solution.

Back on my back again, under the trailer spraying each connection. You have to spray it really good and wait for 5 – 10 seconds, looking for bubbles. Don’t skip this step. I thought I had them all as tight as I could, but ended up with four small leaks on the flair nuts. They just needed to be tightened even more. ALWAYS use two wrenches! One to tighten the nut and the other to hold the part you’re tightening into.

Next I turned on one valve at a time and checked the connection on the valve output and the appliance connections inside the trailer. After about 15 minutes of checking and tightening. No more leaks. I’m still buying a propane alarm for the trailer though…

Proof is in the pudding as they say. Here is the cooktop with all three burners running.

I switched the fridge to gas only and it lit up fine, same with the TwinTemp Jr. So after filling the new tanks, the propane system is done.

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Some days, it would be nice just to take the trailer somewhere and say finish it. All thats left is the propane lines, disc brake plumbing, and some bellypan. Lots and lots of little finishing stuff too. But those are the major items to get it useable.

Problem is there is no where to take it to. No where I’d trust anyway. So off I go this morning slugging away.

First thing I did was run two more #6 wires in the belly pan from the street closet to the curbside closet. This is in case I decide I need a second battery. Which I probably will. Expecially since I did all the work of running the wire.

Then was putting up a piece of belly pan over the grey water tank. As usual no small task. You don’t want to screw into the tank! But I needed this done before I ran the propane lines.

So here we go.

You can see I duct taped some of the bubble foil insulation on it first. I figured it couldn’t hurt. It’s just screwed into the crossmembers that surround the tank. I’ll add some rivets as well as soon as they come from Vintage Trailer Supply.

I still have some bellypan in the rear to do, but that will have to wait. We can use the trailer w/o it if needed.

Next up was plumbing the propane. I was going to go back with all new 3/8″ copper. However after talking with Precision Temp about the Jr., they felt 1/2″ would do better. So I ran a 1/2″ main and tee’d off with 3/8″.

Here is my setup. I borrowed a furniture dolly and taped a rolled up towel for a head rest and now I have an easier way to roll around under the trailer. I had my copper, flairing tool, bender, and fittings ready to go.

It’s amazing this stuff takes all day. It always does. And yes I forgot the polsih my new Worthington aluminum tanks. Oh well….

I already had the fridge, Jr., and stove top, stubbed out to the botton of the trailer using 3/8″ lines. So I just had to run the main and tee off as needed.

Usually on torsion axles, which I have now, the propane lines are nicely bent under each axle beam. With my cheap wire bender, I could not do it. I did have enough room to fit my 1/2″ line between the axle beam and the bellypan, with less than a 1/8″ to spare. I don’t think those beams will flex going do the road and smash my lines…. will they?

I’m just short a couple of adapters to the regulator. Perhaps if I have time tomorrow I can pick them up and check the system for leaks.

Here are some photos.

I forgot the mention that I did put shut off valves on everything under the bellypan. So I can turn each item off if needed.

One more thing. I removed all the original propane lines and folded them up and put the aside. Then I noticed some black goo pouring out of them. It was a deep black oily mess. Yuck! I’m glad I did not try and reuse them on my new appliances. Be warned….

Well, thats it… See ya next time….

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As promised here is the actual order information I used.

Dexter is very flexible on their axles. You can get a number of different sizes, weight ratings, spindles, brakes, mounts, everything. And their engineering department is nice to work with after you’ve educated yourself a bit.

Goto Dexter’s website and read up on axles and how to measure before you call so you have something to discuss. After you have your questions answered and you’re comfortable with the terminology then you can head to a Dexter dealer and ask for what you want.

Here is a nice Dexer resouce on axle measurement.

Here is the order form I used.

Here are my specs:

#10 Axle w/camber
Hubface: 75.38″
Hydrolic Disc brakes
“A” Spindle
EZ-Lube
6-5.50 hub
32 degree down trail
RC 3000lbs
Low Profile Reverse mounting brackets
OB 58.38″
Side mount hangers

#10 axle is their specification for the size. Normally their #10 axle comes with 5 bolt pattern hubs. Airstream uses 6 bolt hubs. So I specified the Type “A” spindle which increased the size of the brakes/spindle, and allowed for the 6 bolt hub.

Hubface is the distance between hub to hub where the tires bolt to.

6 on 5.5″ spacing is the wheel bolt pattern

32 degree down trail is the start angle on the torsion arm. Usually Airstream uses 22.5 but I wanted a little more height.

RC is the weight rating of the axle. After weighing my trailer, 4100lbs w/o the AC, couch, or water tank, I decided on a total capacity of 6000lbs.

Low profile reverse brackets. Dexters standard mounting bracket is exactly opposite of what Airstream used on their torsion installations. By specifying reverse mount, side mount, you can get the brackets that will be in the right spot to bolt to your axles. (not that the holes will line up though)

OB, Outside Bracket. This is the outside frame to outside frame measurement.

Keep in mind, this are MY measurements and specs. Yours WILL BE different. I just wanted to post this so that you can be armed with a little more information when you are working with your Dexter dealer.

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