[VACList] Question about 1948 Airstream -pretty long message

["Tuna" <rctowns@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey, Liz -

Shortly after acquiring my trailer in June of 2000, i travelled (without the
trailer) up to Bismarck for the International Rally, and spent an
informative and inspiring half-hour or so with Bud Cooper in his renovated
trailer, looking at his scrapbook of engineering drawings, hand-written
notes, and photos of the process.

Here's a little history: Wally Byam shut down Airstream for the duration of
WWII, and went to work for Curtiss-Wright. After the war, he and the
principals at C-W manufactured some trailers using Byam's Airstream design,
but I guess the partnership didn't work out... in '47, he re-established
Airstream with factories in southern California and Ohio. Curtiss-Wright
also continued making the Byam-designed trailers. The immediate-postwar
Airstreams are of the 'Pipe-frame' design: a 4" diameter steel pipe runs the
length of the trailer like a 'keel', terminating in a hitch-coupler at the
forward end. The 'frame' is nothing more than the pipe itself,  with
'outriggers' or cross-members made of sheet-aluminum folded into 'I-beams'
and attached to the center pipe with sheet-aluminum L-tabs... the outriggers
are screwed into the sub-floor (5/8" plywood) and the belly pan skin is
riveted to the undersides of the outriggers. The belly-pan and upper shell
overlap at sub-floor height, and the upper shell is attached to the floor
with a sheet-aluminum 'U'-channel attached to the plywood. The structural
integrity of the whole trailer depends on *all* of the components being
intact... if the plywood rots or delaminates, or the outriggers separate
from the pipe, or from the plywood sub floor, the whole thing will flex
until it pretty much disintegrates... By the way... those floor tiles are
asbestos, if they're original.

This was designed to be extremely lightweight, to be pulled by the typically
low-horsepower family car of the post-war years, at the normal pre-national
highway system speeds of 35 - 50mph. I doubt that - even when brand-new -
the pipe-frame Airstreams would have survived more than a year or three of
modern highway towing. In the early '50's, Airstream changed to the modern
'ladder-frame' design, and by the '60's had switched from the leaf-spring
suspension to the Henschen 'dura-torque' axle - torsion arms at each end of
the axle, connected through the axle tube with a big fat rubber band, and a
couple of coil springs to absorb some of the bumps.... modern trailers
typically ride on steel-belted radial light-truck tires, which ride much
more smoothly than the bias-ply nylon tires of yesteryear.

I bought my 'Trailwind' in North Hollywood, and to be on the safe side,
towed it home to Reno on top of a flatbed trailer... I'd flown down to
Burbank a week or so before i bought it to check it out, and found that
there was a significant amount of 'play' in the pipe/trailer hitch
coupler... the whole pipe rotated about 30 degrees clockwise and
counter-clockwise... i didn't find out until i got it home and pulled off
the belly-pan that all of the outriggers had separated from the pipe - only
the remainders of the sheet-metal tabs were preventing the pipe from sliding
right through the outriggers; had i attempted to tow the trailer, i would
have pulled the pipe out from under the trailer long before getting it home.
I shudder to think of the havoc this might have wrought on a california
interstate.

If you plan on using your '48 as a guest house, or a stationary
lawn-ornament, that's one thing... but if you're seriously considering
towing it more than fifteen feet in any direction, i would highly recommend
completely rebuilding the frame and 'truck' (axle/suspension/frame
mounting), and using modern electric trailer brakes.

If you really can't wait to get out there and start trailering with a
vintage airstream, you certainly wouldn't be the first aluminitis-sufferer
who bought a second, road-worthy airstream to feed the fever... a late '60's
twin-axle 'Overlander' is my pick for the best-designed/engineered
Airstream - perhaps the last of the true Wally Byam-designed trailers.

With one thing and another, progress on my Trailwind halted around september
of last year, and the shell - up on sawhorses - is only just now about to be
moved into position so that i can get to work on the new frame... i've been
promising to get my trailwind website together so that you all can watch me
stumble through the rest of the restornovation...

And unlike some of the other restoration groups to which i belong, Airstream
'restorers' are not so fixated on 'keeping it original' - the Byam
philosophy has more to do with making improvements, fixing it up the way
*you* want it, and getting out on the open road.

Tuna
Reno, NV