Repairing the drip rail and new rims

At some point some genius cut out a small section of drip rail in front of and behind the rear door. The reason for this appears to have been for some type of wooden porch. It looks like they cut it away to get the porch flush with the side of the camper.

Whatever the reason it ended up royally screwing up the camper. water poured down from the hole in the drip rail directly on to the door hinge and seam, from there it went directly in to the camper. Its no wonder the floor was completely gone in this area.

The optimal thing to do would be to remove the complete section of affected drip rail and replace it with a new one. Since I am not made of money I decided to put in a patch at both spots.

I cut two small pieces of aluminum and bent them into shape, drilled the rivets out of the affected area, and hammered the patches into place. I used butyl tape on the seams. Now they dont leak at all.

The other thing I did was to find a set of aluminum rims to replace the steel ones that came on the camper. The rims are 15x7 with a bolt pattern of 5x5.5. The steel rims were rusted to the point that it was started to affect the structural integrity.

The rims I found are Amreican Racing rims. they were $100 for a set of four in Craigslist. That leaves another set of two for another camper!

I think I'm close to sealing all the leaks...

Window Screens Pt 1

Yesterday I began working on the window screens. The screws that hold them in place are completely rusted and have stained the aluminum.

First I removed the screen frame from the trailer.

Then I took it apart. The frame is nothing more than some flat pieces of aluminum screwed to a tubular piece of aluminum. The screen is sandwiched in between them.

I took the flat pieces and sanded them with 220 grit sandpaper, then 800 grit, then some #1 steel wool. Then I cut out a new piece of aluminum screen and put everything back together.

 


I discovered a Fastenal store not far from my house and I love it! They have every nut, bolt, or screw you could ever need.

I bought 150 #4x1/4" stainless pan head sheet metal screws for less than $5.

These are the screws I used in the picture of the completed screen above. Being stainless they will never rust like the original ones did.

I then installed the screen on the camper. Here is a quick before & after.

Before

 

After

 

Now I need to get the rest of the camper polished so the screens dont look so out of place!

 

Rivets

I've completed most of the metal/rivet work on the camper.

I installed the last of the banana wraps and riveted them in place.

Before

 

During repair

 

 

 After

 

I talked before about using Olympic rivets and not wanting to splurge on the rivet shaver. I used a dremel with a cut-off wheel to shape the rivet head and they came out fine. It's shinier than the rest of the rivet but once i polish the camper you shouldn't be able to tell the difference.

roof patch

 

I thought I had all the leaks sealed until that huge storm we had the other day found a few more for me to seal. I will hopefully have those taken care of by this weekend then I can move on to more interesting stuff.

 

 

Repairing the door openings

The door openings were in really bad shape. Every piece of wood in both door openings was rotted and some of the aluminum in the rear door opening was corroded and falling apart.

I started on the rear door. Not sure why but the rear part of this door frame is built differently than the rest. Their is an added curved piece of 3/4" wood that makes up the part of the frame instead of just an aluminum piece of framing like the rest are.

Here is the curved piece of wood. You can see how rotted it was, I'm using it as a template.

The new piece of 3/4" is pressure treated. Here is the piece installed.

With the framing installed I turned my attention to the 1" plywood strips that make up the door stop. Here is one of them after I cut it to fit.

The next thing I had to do was repair the corroded aluminum at the bottom of the door frame.

You can see the new pressure treated framing piece and the 1" strip of 1/2" plywood behind it.

First I cut the old piece just above where the corrosion ended.

I was able to make somewhat of a template out of the corroded piece I cut away. Then I bent the new piece into shape. This took quite a while. I had to go back and refit it into place then take it out to make adjustments.

Once I had the piece shaped properly I riveted it into place.

Once it's cleaned and polished it shouldn't be noticeable.

 Then I nailed the aluminum skin to the plywood strip. The plywood strip is nailed to the piece of 3/4" wood.

Next I worked on the front door. I replaced all of the plywood strips and secured the aluminum skin to them like on the back door but I didn't get any pictures of this.

The next thing I did was install the new door handle on the front door.

First I used my template to trace out where the hole will be cut.

Then I cut the hole and installed the new lock.

It's supposed to rain some this afternoon. I hope it rains a lot because this should be my final test for leaks (I hope).

If all goes well I should be able to start installing the floor soon!

Fixing Leaks

It's been a while since I've been able to work on the Spartan but I finally got a chance the other day.

It's been raining a lot so I really needed to finish sealing all the leaks. I went around the inside of the camper and caulked all the seams that I had marked when it was raining with Dicor.

The next thing I did was to install some foam weatherstripping all around the back window, it was leaking through the window really bad.

I also needed to make the patch for the roof where the heater vent was.

A few months back I removed the homemade vent stack. They sure weren't stingy with the roofing tar. My original plan was to just put a small circular cap over the round hole but then I realized two things, one, the hole has a lip, and two, the plate is metal, not aluminum.

I decided to go ahead and remove the plate and make a new one out of aluminum.

I cut the new piece out, drilled all of the holes and then riveted it into place. I used Butyl tape around the edges and lots of Dicor inside of that.

I then trimmed the excess butyl tape off.

I'm using Olympic rivets but I dont have a rivet head shaver. I'm going to try my hand with a dremel first. If that doesnt work I'll look at possibly getting one.

Here is the inside of the patch.

It rained three days straight after I installed this and no leaks!

The next thing I did was drill the holes for the window drain tubes.

I will be replacing the hoses soon.

The last thing to do with leaks are the two doors, I have a lot of work to do on the door frames to stop the leaks there. Hopefully I can do that this weekend.

Pressure Washing, Window Felts, and Banana Wraps

I finally got around to pressure washing the exterior yesterday.

The two above pictures really give you an idea of how dirty it was.

I installed the window felts and cleaned the windows also. I was really surprised at how easy it was to replace the window felts.

Here is the window channel without the felts in it.

The old felts were so rotted they fell apart and about the only thing left was the bead.

It was just a matter of removing the four screws that hold the top felt in and removing the window. then I cut the new felt to size and popped it into the track.

The windows are now weather-tite.

Here is a before and after of one of the windows.

It's amazing how well the windows cleaned up, aside from a small scratch here and there and a little bit of bubbling at the edges in the laminate they look brand new.



I also worked on the last of the banana wraps. First I took measurements and cut the aluminum to size, then I bent the bottom 5/8" over for the lip. To do this I made a homemade brake out of some plywood strips, a 2x4, and some hand clamps.

I then bent the piece by hand to give it it's curve.

I then made a smaller one for the part under the door.

Here is the section before installing the wraps.

Here is the section with the two pieces in place.

I still have to get the curved piece back into place then rivet everything together.

Air Conditioner opening

Today I worked on the opening for the air conditioner. I used the center vent opening. This worked out well because the center vent cover wasn't original, it was galvanized metal, rusted, and broken.

I drilled out all the rivits holding the vent frame in.

The opening is 14x16 but the air conditioner boot is made for a 14x14 opening so I needed to close it in by 2". I cleaned up the opening and cut two strips of aluminum. Then I riveted the strips down, one on the front, one on the back. I used Dicor under the strips to seal them. Then I put Dicor liberally on every rivet and seam.

I test fitted the air conditioner on the opening and it fits perfect.

Metal Work

I spent the day doing miscellaneous work on the camper. There are a lot of small things left to do before I can put the flooring in and the walls up.

The first thing I worked on was the U channel near the rear of the camper under the roll down windows. They were completely disintegrated from corrosion.

I was able to make some U channel out of the aluminum countertop. It had already been hacked up so I wasn't going to be re-using it anyways.

With that done I was able work on the banana wraps in the same area on the outside of the camper. These were completely corroded too.

I cut the new piece from the countertop as well and installed it.

Next I installed the thresholds in both doorways.

The last thing I had time to do was one of the roll down windows.

You can see how gunked up the mechanism is. I pressure washed everything, dried it, and greased all the gears and the sliders.

Here is the window ready to be reinstalled.

Here is the window installed.

The window crank works much better now.

I didn't get a chance to work on what I really wanted to work on today.

The flooring is Engineered  wood, it's called Natural Cherry. I will get it installed sometime this week.