1960 Airstream Ambassador Project!

Finally you can get the first 29 episodes of theVAP on CD.  These were mastered on MP3 CD’s in stereo.

Check out the details here.

We finally went on a two week trip with the Ambassador. Everything went great. We left Northern California for Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

We did have one overnight stay on the way. We found a $20 hookup site on the side of the freeway somewhere in Nevada. We arrived outside of Yellowstone about 5pm the second day. We did not have any plans on this trip. No reservations. The first campsite in West Yellowstone, MT was fully booked. They had turned away about 30 trailers before we got there. We had to settle for a site about seven miles from the park entrance.

Not a bad site. They had a stream nearby. I think the stream and weather brought the millions of misquotes though! Our site did have a low voltage problem. When we turned on the microwave the lights would dim. I confirmed with a voltmeter and found the voltage drop to 90vac. That will kill your A/C. We found another plug on the pedestal to use that worked a little better. This turned out to be a temporary fix though. On the third night we returned to a dead trailer. The park power at our site dropped to 4 volts! I had to use my 30 amp extension cord to borrow power from the next site over. Always be prepared!

Immediately after pulling into the park we were stopped by bison. I’m not sure the difference between bison and buffalo, but they always called them bison. They would pretty much stop traffic. That was an easy indicator of something to see. We also saw moose, elk, bald eagles, and even a black bear.

Of course the animals are not the only reason to go to Yellowstone. You have all the natural water features. The most famous is the geyser Old Faithful going off every 90 minutes. The family favorite were the many hot springs in the lower loop of the park.

There was also the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. I caught this rainbow in the falls.

From Yellowstone we headed toward Seattle, WA to check out the Space Needle. Here is one of many typical rest stops for a driving break.

The Seattle campground was the most expensive, probably due to its location. This site actually had the sewer connection in front of the trailer! I had to use my 45 feet of sewer hose for the first time. Luckily I had it!

We picked up a city pass for $44/person that allowed for five events. These included the zoo, aquarium, boat tour, and a couple of museums. It was a good deal. The pass is good for 9 days, but we crammed it into two!

A couple of things it seems like everyone has is an iMax theater and a butterfly house. We kinda got tired of the iMax. In Yellowstone the free movies at the visitor centers were actually more informative.

After Seattle we made our way to McMinnivile, OR to the Evergreen Aviation Museum to see the Howard Hughes Flying Boat. Better known as the Spruce Goose. They had a nice parking lot we used for the midday stop.


Evergreen is a really nice museum if you are into planes. They also just opened a space museum, but we did not go in it.

We headed down the coast through the California Redwoods and wound up in Fort Bragg. A really nice drive. Although the curvy road from Oregon on hwy 1 to Crescent City was pretty interesting. Fort Bragg is a great place to check out the Botanical Gardens.

I’m happy to say that the truck and trailer did great. We had gas mileage as high as 13.9 and as low as 10. All in all it was better than I thought it would be.

Only one small annoyance in the trailer was a slow tub drain. I’ll have to look into that one. It worked fine this spring when we used the trailer.

Fifteen nights in the 28 foot trailer with five people was a little bit of a challenge. But we got through it.

One thing we would do different is only pay for one night at a time. Some campgrounds were not as nice as advertised and others were better. We made the mistake of staying at a less than desirable campground for two nights just so we could have a catch up day on laundry and shopping. The campground advertised new laundry facilities which was nothing more that a new washer and dryer in the bathroom. We ended up going to a local laundry mat. Next time we’d continue on down the road to a better campground with proper facilities.

So thats the trip, not too shabby. Everyone enjoyed themselves and the kids handled the long driving days pretty well. Funny on non-camping trips its nice to get home. On camping trips, everyone always wants to stay longer.

Sorry no pictures. Tonight I added a second 100aH AGM Lifeline battery in the Ambassador.

Before I put the belllypan back on I ran two #6 wires to the street side closet. I put another battery box and got it wired up. I simply wired the batteries in parallel and put a 50 amp DC auto reseting breaker within 18″ from the positive terminal on each battery. This is important incase of a wire failure to protect each battery.

Next I increased the Tri-Metric amp-hour setting to 200 so it can track the % of battery left.

I purchased the battery from www.bestconverter.com. Best place online for power stuff for your trailer. Ask for Randy and tell him theVAP sent you!

Going to give the system a good test soon. I’ll report back then.

A few weeks ago when I was working in the Ambassador I stepped on the shower curtain and pulled three of the curtain tabs loose.

So today I took a few minutes to sew the tabs back on. You can get these tabs from Vintage Trailer Supply.

Here is a shot of the tabs I sewed on the curtain.

Here is the final product.

Since I had the needle and thread out, I went ahead and fixed the room divider. It has metal rods that help form the curtain and they were all loose because the thread holding it together are missing.

There were lots of bad spots on this divider. This took forever to fix by hand. We have one of those portable handheld sowing machines but I have no idea how to use it…. bad for me. At least its done and holding together.

Ya, its ugly,,, but done.

Last little job was the door stop. There was a dried up rubber door stop to keep the door handle from contacting the trailer skin. I had purchased a rubber plug and made a replacement but it did not last.

I happened to run across a rubber foot from an old piece of electronic equipment. It looked perfect for the job.

That should do it. Nice to be down to such small repairs

There were of course no keys that came with the Ambassador when I bought it almost 2 years ago. I have since gotten all the keys working by buying new lock cylinders or have the local locksmith make a key when I brought him the lock.

I had one key still missing to the storage compartment toward the back on the curb side. It is installed such a way as you cannot remove it easily. Colin had suspected that the key to his access door on his ‘59 Ambassador would work. I had since been bugging him for over a year to get a copy to try. At the CBR he brought a copy of his key, and I found anyone with a similar hatch and borrowed their keys to make copies. I tried from a ‘58 - ‘61. Spent about $11 on keys.

When I returned home to California, one of the first things I tried was the hatch keys. Not one of them worked! I was bummed.

After polishing the trailer since it was all hooked up, I decided to tow it to the locksmith and see if he could make a key from a 50 year old lock. He had a small scope much like the doctor uses to check your ears. He looked in the lock for a couple of minutes and came back with a key, after a couple of tries, it worked! He fine tuned the key and for $21 and fifteen minutes, I had a perfect key…. finally.

Todays project was another long awaited one. I have been carrying the spare tire in the bed of the truck. There is a spare tire carrier on the trailer. Its pretty much rusted to the rear bumper, they are one now. A lot of people are scared to put a tire on the rear and if they don’t know their floor and frame are solid they are probably should be. Since I repaired my rear floor and the rear frame, I decided to go ahead and use it. I have seen a lot of photos and videos of these old trailers carrying even two spare tires on the rear bumper on those around the World caravans, so I’m not too worried.

I was missing the parts to secure the rim to the mount. I ended up re-purposing a floor flange used in electrical plumbing parts. Here are some photos.

Here is a close up of how its secured to the carrier. Since the wheel is aluminum I cut a piece of cork to help keep the metal from marring the wheel.

Some more close ups of the mount. The bottom bracket is actually supporting the tire weight. The nut is just keeping it from coming of the mount.

This last shot shows the rear view. There are two holes in the mount. I’m going to run a cable lock through them and the wheel to keep it secure.

The moment you’ve been waiting for. I waxed half of the trailer with Nu Finish. I should be able to complete that tomorrow.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the job. But I do see the flaws. Check this close up and notice the compounding swirls. This is after compounding with C, cycloing with F7 then again with S.

I think it will just take more cycloing with F7. Perhaps as much as 4 - 5 times. Maybe I’ll try again next year.

Here are some other photos. Street side close up.

That’s it for now. I’ll move the trailer back to its place on the side of the house in the next couple of days.

I put in three hours a day the last three days. That puts me at a total of 90 hours, or 20 hours for my polishing update.

I looked closed at the curbside and noted that even though I cyclo’d with F7 then again with S, there are still lots of compounding swirls. Like I said earlier I think you have to cyclo with F7 until the swirls are gone. I’m out of polishing steam…

On the street side I just cyclo’d once with F7 and left it at that. Its comparable to the curbside. So my advice is to not waste the S polish until you have the swirls gone from earlier work.

Anyway, I finished up the front of the trailer, including a quickie job on the propane tanks. So I’m done for the year.

Next is to hand polish a coat of Nu Finish on it. Then I’m done. I’ll take some decent photos then. I do have this one photo from my phone I took….

Enjoy.

I put four more hours in today. Basically I now have the curb side finished save the wax.

I tried an experiment. On the rear end cap after compounding with C, I went straight to cycloing with S. Turned out pretty well. One thing is at night with headlights shinning on it you can still see the swirls from the compounding.

So the test was I did the rest of the side in two steps. I cyclo’d with F7 then again with S. Although I have not shinned a headlamp on it, the verdict….. direct to S is fine for me.

There are still swirls after the two steps. Basically its because you probably need to do the F7 cyclo about 3 - 4 times and only do a two-square foot area at a time and move the wrap cloth more often. I am not about to put that much time into it on a 28 foot trailer!

So the street side will get direct to cycloing with S after the compounding with C. Your mileage may very.

So as I type this I have a grand total of 81 hours into the polish job with an estimate of another 10 - 12 to complete this touch up. I need to compound the street side and front of the trailer and do the two propane tanks.

Here are some photos. Note, taking photos of polished trailers at dusk is cheating… they all look better that way.

This last one is the street side and can be used as a before photo on the curb side..

Thats it for now…. Compounding continues tomorrow….

No photos today. Photos and black polish oxidation don’t go well together.

Since the last post I put another 5 hours into the compounding. I’m just going to add to my original polish count and call it 77 hours.

I have the curbside finished with the compounding. I’m going to start with the cyclo next before I start on the street side….

I see that Frank is polishing his Airstream Overlander. Poor chap. I can’t let him go through this alone. So I decided to give my trailer a once over again.

I pulled it out of the side yard yesterday, nearly ripping the street side off. Now there’s a story….

It was about a year ago I did my first round of 70 hours of polishing. The temperatures got too high, 85-90 degrees around June. So I decided this time to get a head start. I figure I got a month before I can’t polish anymore.

Only this time I’m just going over once. I’m compounding with C and will follow up with cycloing with S. For those who use tool box polish, those letters refer to polishing grades of aircraft polish called Nuvite. Check it out at Perfect Polish and tell Tom, theVAP sent you.

Men at work….

Sitting down on the job…

Got two hours in today. About 2/3’s of the curbside compounded.