| Hi again....I'm back.....It's been a while and some folks missed my ramblings and are wondering if I've gotten anyfurther on my rebuild prodject. Well, I've gotten some more done, but not enough for a full blown ramble. I know some of you are really dismayed by the idea of bein' cheated out of some long useless babble,but I can't ramble all the time it would wear out my typing finger and make it too short to stir my morning coffee with. The rest of the folks are no doubt releived that I'm not going to go on about a buncha usless other stuff and actually get to the realy good technical stuff with out typing a War and Peace volume or two of other stuff before getting to the good stuff.(did that make sence?) Well ,anyhow...off to the fun stuff.... I finally cleaned out the barn garage and evicted the Blackwidows and their various freinds and aquaintences. the ol '53 is now nestled safely away from the evil Santa Ana winds where it will remain untill the body and floor and frame are reassembled into ond harmonious object of form and function. Rivets,rivets, rivets, I hate rivets, and I'm only a little over half way done. First I attacked all the inside pannels . Drilling out all those rivets. I removed the lower pannels only ,thus exposing the bottom channel where the body is attached to the floor and frame. I took some pics of the denuded interior before I removed the fiberglass insulation and THREW IT AWAY. (thanks to RJ , I now feel guilty about doing that) I can now remove all of the old 12 volt wires for the exterior lights and replace it all with new color coded wire. The 12v wires are plasitc insulated but not color coded they are all white. I bet that makes trouble shooting a short real fun. I've already rebuilt the marker lights so they can also double as turn signals,so now I don't have to worry about how I'm gona get the wires to them. I'm now wondering if the color coded wires and the marker/ turnsignal lights are m! ! y first steps towards defiling a classic and sliding down the dark and sorded path of building a hotrod? The 110 volt wires are a different story ... They are cloth covered and seem to junction in the ceiling down the center. I'm not too thrilled with the idea of removing the ceiling pannels, so I 'm thinkin of cutting off the wires as close as possible and running the new wiring along the walls then up to the ceiling where needed using a fish tape. The old style screw in glass fuses are quaint, but I'm putting in a modern breaker box. (more hot rod stuff ... hehehe) After removing all the inside pannels and insulation and most of the wires it's time to examine the lower channel and figgure out how this thing is put together. Reverse engineering is so much fun it's like mechanical forensics or sumpthin'. Through examining the U channellthat bolts the body to the floor I've come to the conclusion that Wally did not design travel trailers, he designed puzzles that LOOK like travel trailers. Wally did not intend for these things to be taken apart..EVER! This is the obvious way this thing was put together (some folks may have a trailer that was assembled a bit differently ...this is how mine was done) 1 fender wells set in place 2 insulation set on top of frame 3 plywood floor set in place 4 1 1/2"x 3/4" u channel made from same sheet metal as outer skin attached to outside parimeter of floor wth wood screws 5 carage bolts through the channels,plywood,wheel wells and frame hold it all together 6 the belly pan was then riveted to the channel (RJ mentioned to me that he saw a belly pan that was crimped around the channel and wanted to know if mine was assembled the same way. Thank God no) mine is just riveted to the channel 7 the frame struts where then attatched to the u channel 8 the outside skins where then added The bottom of the skins are attached to the belly skin and the u channel. This makes removing the belly pan a real interesting cunundrum (spelling the word cunundrum is a cunundrum) I had to remove the rivets from inside the u channel with a chisle. The belly pan attaching rivets seem to be harder than the rivets used to attach the skin. I messed up most of the u channel removing the rivets{{{>:o(> the remaining rivets I will cut with a dremmel. Most of the u channel was already badly corroded to dust , so I'm not too broken hearted about the messed up channel . I'll replace it with some extruded u channel and make the bottom stronger in the proccess. So far I've only removed the rivetds from the fender wells forward. I still need to do the back half. Happy,happy,joy,joy. After removing all those gazzilion rivets I figured I could start loosening the belly pan and remove it . HA HA HA! The outer! ! skin is GLUED AND RIVETED to the belly pan ! AAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!! Wally was insain! He wanted repairmen across the land to curse his name. Some people would call this insanity,genious . Yeah , right ...whatever. Break out the putty knife and start splittin seams. After prying the outer skin away from the belly pan I could pull the sides of the pan loose. after removing a few rivets here an there the belly pan droped right off. What a dusty mess ! When I remove the rear pan I WILL be wearing a mask. The front pan at the end between the A frame had to be cut away.... Note about front of trailer between A frame: Between the A frame members at the front there is a large peice of angle iron bolted to the frame under the floor then riveted a zillion times to the body. I didn't want to remove all those rivets so I cut the body pan away and left enough to attach the replacment pan to it. This large peice of iron with a zillion rivets attaching it to the body must have been to make sure there was a good ground. I've attached support stringers to the body frame struts so the lower part of the body won't collaps in when I cut the carage bolts loose. I've already removed all the wood screws from the channel. That's about where I'm at right now with my HOT ROD prodject. I still need to remove the rear belly pan and cut the bolts then it's time to lift the body. Most of this has gone pretty smoothly just tedious removal of rivets untill you dream about rivets chasing you around your house. My finger hurts and it's too short to stir my coffee now....Later..........Trike 5384 |