AguaDream

As many of you know I turned 55 last weekend, as did my soon to be lovely 1956 shasta 1500. Figured I'd be working all weekend anyway, so decided to invite all my friends over to help me. Had a decent turnout (though I guess the idea of working on an old trailer isn't as appealing to all my friends as it is to me, lol) and got a fair bit of work done. Got the side frames fully completed and insulated. Used aluminum tape to seal the air gaps. Used JB Weld and scraps to repair tears in the aluminum. (Had 3M 8115 panel bond but couldn't justify paying $50 for an applicator gun) used Gremlin Guy's method...worked great. Picked up new front and back skins from moose metals in Concord CA (great folks). They had no prob with 6" brake. This is the front skin. It's .40.... and it's gonna be a b*&%h to trim and fit, but will be solid. She's not gonna be ready for the Memorial Day weekend trip, but I'm feeling confident we can be on the ...

I have taken to polishing aluminum at night and it is a tedious job, though just heard about another product to try from Napa called simply aluminum brightner. Will pick some up this weekend. Took the front and back to the sheet metal shop www.moosemetal.com today to have them fabricate new pieces the right size to overlap the sides. The woman who helped me said I was the first woman she had ever had as a customer who was doing a restoration (of any sort) herself. And she'd been there 20 yrs! And we're in California. I was a little surprised. I decided to have them do all the fabrication brakes, bends, and holes...even though it will cost. They can do everything in four hours plus the cost of materials (just one sheet of 48x96 .040 aluminum). I figure what they are doing would take me much longer and the risk of doing something wrong would be costly. $400 the priciest piece of this project so far. But way worth it. I made my punch list of what's left to do.....

With many helpful suggestions and consul from handy friends, I managed to jack up the trailer with a couple of bottle jacks and voila, I'm back on track. AS you might recall I was stumped a week or so back after finishing up most of the framing only to find that the skin didn't line up, due to sagging on the back of the street side. I'm betting this is a common problem with years of rot combined with removing the skin during a partial rebuild. I had a 1.5 inch difference between the floor height and the skin Borrowed a couple of bottle jacks from our local tool lending library (every community should have one!!and on the suggestion of a couple of VSTF members tried jacking up the back side of the trailer. First I screwed a 2x4 across the frame to hold it together and to give the jack something to push on. Then very easily lifted it 1.5 inches...no problem. Checked the fit with the skin.....perfect. Had to reframe the baggage compartment area to match, and ...