Empty Shell

Well over the last few weeks I have been busy removing everything down to the bare shell. It has been a very messy job but I’m glad it’s done and now I can get a real sense of what kinds of previous repairs and damage have been done to this old travel trailer. My initial thought was to try to replace the floor with the shell on but after reading many of the Airstream forums I decided to do a complete shell-off restoration. This Sovereign trailer is nearly 40 years old and was not very well taken care of. It only made sense to tear it down and build it back up again instead of trying to do a patch job that I would regret later.

The remains of the interior cabinets, carpet, and trash on its way to the dump!

Everything out but the sewer piping! Now to inspect the floor!

I cut away a section of the floor up by the front and discovered that the frame was OK.  I will know more when I can get the belly pan off.

I took off all the remaining window trim and anything else that would prevent the interior skins from coming off then I began drilling rivets. I spent $50 on a rivet removal tool that goes into a drill chuck but had better success using my Dewalt impact screw gun with a drill bit to get the rivets out. I broke a couple bits but other than that it went fairly quick.

Nearly there! Lots of mouse debris and roaches fell from the ceiling as the panels came off. Yuk! I had my sons help me carry the long pieces of aluminum skin out the door as they were too unwieldy to handle myself.

By the end of the day I had it down to this. Quite a mess!

My wife and younger son surprised me by pulling out all the insulation and bagging it up for me! Thanks! My wife accidentally stepped onto the belly skin exposed by the open hole I made and snapped off a portion of it. It had to come off anyway.

Just a bunch of wire hanging everywhere.

I pulled the wiring out. I’ll save the 12V wire and try to see if any of it is salvageable. The 110V wires were burned in several places and went straight into the trash!

It took nine bags total to hold all the insulation!

All cleaned out and ready for the next step! The plan is to get the shell off between Christmas and New Years. I’ll have to take all the attaching bolts and rivets out and try to get the belly pan off.

It was weird seeing the trailer like this. It did show where previous repairs were made and will give me the opportunity to make changes to the layout. The floor is shot and the shell sags in a few locations. So far the trailer does not smell much better. The stink must also be in the wood sub floor. I did locate some corrosion of the shell at the floor where the radio used to be next to the door.

Let the Gutting Begin!

So the plan for this weekend was to gut the trailer out and get rid of all the interior components that could not be salvaged. My friend John and I started drilling, unscrewing and beating out all the walls and cabinets to really open things up and get a better assessment of the condition. My hopes are that the frame and shell of the trailer are good or at least repairable and that I can start from scratch and build the trailer back up into something I would be happy to live in.

After working till we could not see this evening I called it quits then the next day I went back and finished taking everything else out down to the bathroom.

One funny thing that happened was that John was pulling out a tambour door and as he unrolled it cockroaches came pouring out! He freaked and dropped the housing, not realizing that the door itself was also covered until he turned it around and shrieked then I grabbed it and threw it outside. All the bits and pieces will be trashed or burned to get rid of it.

I’ll do another update when we start replacing the subfloor and removing the belly pan