You’ve heard of interpretive dance? This is an interpretive repair. Colin suggested I reinforce the dome due to the minor cracking at the rivet holes before I rehang it. He also mentioned automotive tape for applying letters/plaques to the exterior in a different convo. I merged the two ideas and used automotive tape to apply a strip of aluminum to the edge of the dome. I drilled and cleco’d the aluminum with the plastic’s original holes until it gets hung up. The final rivets will secure it nicely, I think. We’ll see…

Crack in front dome, one of 3-4 small cracks near rivet holes.

Tape applied to edge of front dome.

Adding the aluminum strip over the tape.

My recent trip to Plattsburgh to visit Mr. Airstream, Colin Hyde, was fraught with inaccurate weather forecasts.  The hills of Schoharie hate me.  The good news is I was able to make the trip safely while towing the trailer.  Gives me experience and more confidence if I get stuck driving in bad weather in the future.

I am annoyed with myself that I didn’t take any photos at Colin’s shop, but you can see a few pics from Reinergirl’s blog post (sans snow piles). I need to tell Shelly that I saw Moonraker waiting patiently.  I went to the shop for a leak test and to get a custom VTS dead bolt installed.  Colin is adapting the deadbolt Steve sells so it works with trailers like mine.  See the new dead bolt on the body of the trailer below the handle by the door.  I think he’s going to send photos of the install to Steve, so I’ll link to those when they are available.  He also fixed my door lock while he was at it.  What a man!

His crew (Reed, Dave, and Anthony) also bucked more rivets to secure Rosie’s rear end (no comments from the peanut gallery please) and reinforced the cracked and separating wheel well black plastic.

The best part of my trip was getting to see Malcolm after he got out of school.  I really enjoy talking with that young man.

Then that night, I again missed a photo op of my truck and trailer parallel parked on a downtown Albany street in front of daughter and sil’s house.  C&N were very helpful directing my poor backup attempts in the freezing rain late at night. I felt much better knowing it was locked up, but they let me sleep in the front bedroom where I could peak at the trailer during the night.

I pulled the front dome out of the basement disrupting the spider festival going on down there.  It cleaned up nice.

Dome = molded plastic piece that fits inside the endcap.  What do you officially call the inner skin of the endcap?

1. Top view of front dome

2. The area it goes in over the window

3. Front view of front dome with opening for the console and storage underneath.

And to answer a question I got about the control console… It actually only controls it’s own back light and the water pump. Otherwise, it’s a tank and battery monitor.  I have a Trimetric battery meter set up with the converter and ran power from the converter  to the water pump forgetting it originally came from the console. I don’t have sensors on the new gray tank, so all I need is the fresh water and black tank connected.  The wires are run and sensors connected at the tanks.

I am very mixed on whether to reuse the original control panel, rebuild one, or just forget about it.  The circuit board is alot like an Arduino bread board.  I am capable of creating a new one.  I could also just replace the yellow faded plastic face cover that is falling off, but the clock and thermometer may not make it back either.  I could reinstall it as is and call it vintage seventies.

The professional fiberglass guy called me back, he won’t touch the ABS plastic repair of the shower seat, he said it won’t take.  I guess I was only guilty of ignorance, not incompetence that my repair efforts failed.  The other bad news is that I can’t find a used one anywhere online or via email.  I’ve tried VTS, RV Revive, InlandRV, Airforums classified, and of course a massive Google search.  I guess I’ll need to start going door-to-door.

I ran the speaker wires last week, so it seems I’ve decided to house the 12V car stereo in the cabinet over the frig, in the wall facing the office (note to self: upload a floor plan).  I did a little research on car stereos and of course I want all the bells and whistles.  If I were buying now which I am not, I would do something like this Pioneer or Clarion (4-5 stars, 6 channels, bluetooth, aux, remote control, etc).

Still trying to figure out the best way to do the 12V wall outlets.  I found some large wall plates that have an oversized phone jack round hole that may work to insert the smaller 12V sockets I bought.  The regular 12V wall sockets are too long for the space between the interior and exterior walls.  It’s too bad the plastic is broken on the original ones, but even then I would need more of them since I have more places than originally.  I’ll want to paint the wall plates to match the ivory/almond 110 plates.

I have AAA and thought it would be good to add RV Plus to my account before the rally season, but the first problem I found is that the cost gets added to all the primary and associate members. Secondly, in talking to the local AAA office, they said they won’t tow the trailer if I have a break down.  They’ll fix a tire on the trailer and tow the tow vehicle, but the trailer stays where it is.

In looking at the reviews, Coach-net sounded good.  I talked to them today and the gold plan will tow a trailer to a safe spot – campground or travel center, but they won’t cover trailers over 40 years old.  Rosie turns 40 next year so she would be covered until December 31st this year. Many of Rosie’s friends are much older than 40 so this would not be a good option for vintage trailers in general. Agists

Next up, Good Sam Club.  Their standard ERS covers all the vehicles you own and one RV which can be a trailer or a 5th wheel.  It is cheaper than Coach-net and AAA.  It also has a GPS-enabled mobile app for the iphone, android, and blackberry.

Good Sam Roadside Assistance includes the cost to tow both vehicles to the nearest professional service center that can repair your vehicle. If the repairs on your truck are serious enough that they will take several days to complete, Good Sam Roadside Assistance will pay to have your travel trailer taken to a safe location, such as the nearest campground while you wait.
http://www.goodsamers.com/benefits/faq.cfm#8

Note: Please verify policies before getting a membership as the info could change or I was given the wrong info.

I don’t know why I didn’t do this before – install the WordPress Mobile app.  I’m sitting in Rosie swyping this entry and uploading photos.  Maybe I’ll post more frequently with it, or maybe not.

I’m proud of the neatly organized wires running along the ceiling.

And the spaghetti monster is once again under control after putting in the middle wall near the converter in the back.

The skin on my fingers was not looking forward to cutting the 13′ long stretch of lower inner skin on the road side that needed to be trimmed around the new wheel well cover.  I made another template, but was more aggressive than when I cut the curb side skin as it will be under the twin bed and not exposed.  I got lucky and only made one major cut and one small trim.  No bleeding blisters and it doesn’t look too bad!

Having this skin in encouraged me to install some of the smaller pieces.  The front is coming along nicely.

I’ll post more pics as I move forward on the skins.  I should thank my big brother, Wayne, for letting me borrow his powerful power washer over the fall.  It worked really well on the vinyl-clad aluminum interior skins.  I like these skins.

I really want to install a dead-bolt and have some questions out about what model.  I’m also investigating new 12V receptacles and camera wire options.  And speaking of wire, I forgot to run the tank monitoring wires and need to decide on the stereo speaker locations.  I should take a photo of the wires running along the ceiling next time I venture out  with the camera.