WILLY'S FACE LIFT - INSTALLMENT 1

When you do as much traveling and camping as we do -  12,000 miles in 2014 and 124 days camping - taking care of your equipment must take top priority.  Willy's Face Lift is going to be a blog series where you can watch as we give our camper trailer a redo.

Many of you know that Pamela and I travel the country in 16 foot vintage camper trailer we call Willy.  We bought Willy in January 2014 and worked through the spring on the interior since we scheduled for Glacier National Park on May 9th. I did do some "patch" work with bubble gum and duct tape on the exterior to be sure it didn't leak, but the idea all along was to get him into a garage in the fall of 2014 and give him a major face lift.  Well we didn't make it last fall because we kept going camping or taking trips.  Two weeks ago Pamela made a contract with the retired owner of Madisonville, KY Chevy dealership to use a garage he owns that is just across the highway from Pamela's home.

Yesterday was the big move-in day.  We uncovered Willy and hooked him to the Truck - which I call Mighty Moe because it's a big  2013 Ram 1500 4x4 with a 5.7L Hemi engine. Moe - the big M - pulled Willy over the Continental Divide three times without us realizing that the trailer brakes had been broken by underbrush when we were camping at a primitive site in Lewis and Clark National Forest. But finally Willy was headed to the shop. The weather was so beautiful that Pamela didn't want to cross the highway to the garage. She wanted to go camping. After quite a bit of crying and renting of garments I got the truck and Willy across the highway and backing toward the garage door. Alas we had miscalculated. Willy was going to be about 3-4" too tall.

This morning (Sat. 1/17/2015) I removed the air conditioning unit from the roof.  To get at the unit I ended up removing a television antenna, which we were planning to remove anyway, so that I could work on the AC unit. Once removed Willy fit nicely into the garage work bay.

Cutting the seal.

Working on the roof unit. 

Looking up at roof unit from inside Willy after it had been removed. 

The roof unit sitting next to the hole into which it fits. 

The top picture shows my helper, Troy Smith, cutting the AC seal from the inside.  Some people do it from the roof, but this really did seem to work better.  As one person said on a forum 'you're going to have to replace the seal anyway.'   Actually removing the seal was the hardest part of the job. The roof unit is held to the body of the trailer by the seal and four bolts. On this particular unit, those bolts were easily removed once I removed the inside cover. 

For our first day we thought we would accomplish no more than perhaps measure vents, remove some vent covers and clean corners. We soon realized that the easiest way to remove all of the horrible silicone that someone had smeared all over Willy's corners, around windows, etc.was to remove the molding. 

Willy in the work bay awaiting his face-lift 

Before I tell you about removing the molding from the corners, I need to tell people unfamiliar with vintage trailers (or any travel trailer for that matter) that you DO NOT use silicone. It doesn't work. There is a special material called butyl tape that is put under moldings, window frames, etc. It lasts for 25-30 years and the proper thing to do is to remove the molding or window and replace the butyl. Many people think they're taking a short-cut and smear everything with silicone and then wonder why they have leaks. Last spring I didn't really use bubble gum and duct tape. I went around the edges with butyl tape. That's why we have been able to live in Willy for a year without leaks. Nevertheless, I knew that I needed to totally remove the molding and replace the butyl tape underneath. That's the big job facing us.

Our landlord, at the garage, JD Drennan, is really a good man. JD gave us access to a great many tools including a brand new impact driver. I was waiting for the impact drive I wanted to arrive at Home Depot so he saved me the cost and I had all the tools I needed. JD collects and restores cars.

We started by removing the rock guard - the awning that drops down over the front window to protect the window from road stones. We're not sure that we're going to replace it. The newer trailers no longer have these and we were wondering if that is because our tow vehicles are less likely to throw stones now days. In any case, that opened the front to work.  We actually think it looks nicer. 

The molding that was on Willy had a plastic cover that hid the screws. We're not going to replace it with that type, but that's for another installment. Since we were not going to save it we simply put a screwdriver underneath and ran it up the track. The plastic either broke or popped out exposing the screws. Pamela went ahead of me removing the plastic. I came along with the impact driver and pulled the screws. After I removed the molding and much of the silicone and butyl, Pamela then followed me and removed staples and more silicone. We removed all the molding up to the roof. 

I had to remove some other screws and staples to allow us to pull back the skin to inspect the wood underneath.   That was the scary part. 

Inspecting behind the skin. 

Actually we didn't find as much bad wood as we were prepared to find. Above you can see how the skin is pulled back to see inside.  After doing this all the way around, we were really pleased to find how little wood we're going to have to replace.  I am going to have to expose Willy's superstructure a lot more to replace the wood, but I'm going to wait until I have Troy, who has worked on trailer restoration before, to help me. He only helped me get the AC off today. He was very understanding when I told him that I didn't really want to pay him to do something so mundane as remove screws. 

Actually the worst corner. There's no wood behind that metal! 

Pamela actually noted that Willy looked better with the molding and silicone gone even if the skin did gap a bit. She is right.  The skin actually goes back together like it's supposed to do. 

As I said, I got rid of the television antenna that was mounted on the roof. When I was working on corners I decided that we should remove the awning. We took it completely off and actually think Willy looks nicer. The spring and some of the mechanism is broken in the awning, which is why we always had to roll it up manually. The awning also puts a lot of weight on the unit and stress on the structure, so we're pretty sure it's not going back.  Check out the picture below. Don't his lines look neater and cleaner?  

Willy without the awning. 

It was a hard days work.  We both worked pretty steady for about 6.5 hours, but we're a lot more excited about the project and very pleased with what we got done.  Both of us admitted that we had a lot of worries last night - was the AC going to cause a lot of problems? - were we going to find that so much wood was gone that we would have to either rebuild Willy's superstructure or scrap him?  -were the metal edges going to fit back together or were we going to have a horrible gap to fill?  In truth, we were both terrified!!  

Now that we've spent an entire day working on Willy our confidence level is much higher and we realize not only that we can do the job but that Willy appears to be headed toward a clean and strong body. 

Tomorrow it's going to be mostly working on the roof.  I have two vents that I need to either replace the covers or the entire unit.  A new cover costs $15.  A new unit costs $75-100.  There are also some small round vents.  One is the stink pipe for the toilet (even RV toilets need a stink pipe). I have no idea what the other protects. Nevertheless, both need either new covers or new units.  And last, but most problematic, I need to remove the hardware for the antenna. The hardware passes clear through to a crank on the ceiling inside. I'm going to have to clean it up really well so that I can make a water-tight patch. 

I hope you enjoy following our project as much as we are enjoying it.  Time and time again we have heard other vintage trailer buffs talking about the great feeling they get from having done their own trailer. We're beginning to know how they feel.  I was so tired when we left the garage that I didn't want to cook. We went to Denny's for dinner. But despite both being exhausted and arthritis hurting like you know what, we were both hyped.

Thank you for following along.  If you're near Madisonville, KY,  let us know and we'll give you a tour. We're proud of our Willy.