1960 Airstream Ambassador Project!

The DMV registration showed up already. I thought this would take six to eight weeks!

I couldn’t wait to install my 1960 plate. The DMV sent two aluminum tabs for the stickers. Very nice. Since this plate was so hard to come by and expensive, I decided to install it with security screws. Just to make it a little harder for the bad guys.

I decided to turn on the headlights to get a photo of the plate all lit up. I turned them on and only the two front amber lights came on. Nothing on the rear. The brake/blinker lights work, but not the parking lights. What is odd is the front ambers work. So must not be a fuse.

I checked all of this after I moved the license plate light and it was ok….. Uggg…

Not much to add. Had some unusually cool weather and three hours to kill.

I was able to get the front compounded with F7 then C. Hope my new platform ladder will arrive this week to finish the top. Then cyclo.

Total refresh polish time 33.

Finished the cyclo passes on the street side today at least from the tops of the windows down. I’m waiting for my new ladder to go any higher.

I opted to do one more quick compounding using C at the “eye level” locations to try and get the deep cuts out left by the F7. Worked pretty well for the most part. It could be that I need multiple cyclo passes of F7 to really knock them down. As it stands I hit everything once with the cyclo F7 followed by S.

I quickly followed that up with my wax of choice NuFinish. It’s easy to apply. Says once a year polish on it, but you have to reapply in 30 days. Go figure.

It was 4 more hours of polishing bringing me to 30 on the refresh. 120 overall. It started getting too hot to polish so I decided to install my Wally Byam Caravan sign I purchased to hide the hole left by my original license plate light location. I also installed a new license plate bracket. Still waiting for the state to allow my use of my 1960 YOM plate.

Hope to finish next weekend. It’s going to be tough with these high temps!

Got four more hours in today. Brings this refresh to 26. The heat got to 81 before I had to stop. The polish just starts turning into powder.

I was able to get the street side compounded. Mostly with F7. I may go over some areas again with C. The water spots are just terrible.

I’ll be back at it I’m the morning. I’ll only be able to do about four hours again as the temps will hit the 90′s.

I’ve decided to order a step ladder to get me up higher. I found this 6 foot Little Giant Flip-N-Lite. I had to order one. Could have used it for tomorrow, but I hope to at least have it for next week.

I purchased a YOM, Year Of Manufacture license plate for my Ambassador. I’m still waiting for the registration to come through before I can mount it.

A past owner moved the license plate mount from the center to the street tail light, but they didn’t move the light. They moved it because of the spare tire mount. The mount is pretty much rusted to the rear bummer, so it’s not going anywhere.

I decided to move the light today so my new plate will have a better home.

I removed the tail light to see how far down I could feed a wire. It wasn’t to far since there is a cross beam. It was just far enough. Of course I had to polish it a little.

I drilled a small hole and fed the wire up to the tail lamp above. I soldered my connections.

Last step was to drill and mount the light. I used butyl tape behind it. The original license plate mount was modified and rusty. VTS sells them new. I have one on the way.

I also ordered a Wally Byam Caravan reproduction sign to cover the old mount location. I could have just cut a piece of alclad, but wanted a little more style. Being an actual pre-62 Byam trailer, it’s possible and appropriate. But not likely….

Today was all about the back the of the trailer. In 6 hours I was able to do all three passes. Total 22. I figure I’m just over half way done.

This photo shows the street side, which is not finished, to give you an idea of the change.

Six more hours. This time I cyclo’d the curbside between end caps. I went over it twice, the first time with F7, then again with Nuvite S.

Looks pretty good, but my arms are tired!

It’s been five years since I’ve fired up the cyclo.

I decided to start at the top. I just like to give it a good compounding with F7 so it looks ok from above.

The rest of the trailer requires more work. After five years I have a lot of water spotting and stains from the birdies little gift packages. Because of this I need to be a little more aggressive.

I have decided to compound the whole trailer with F7 and then cyclo with F7 then again with S. Hopefully this will give me a decent shine. I have about 10 hours in the last two days.

I have the top compounded and the curbside between end caps. Next week I’ll start with the cyclo on the curbside. I actually prefer the compounding. The cyclo is heavy and can be somewhat temperamental. Alas, it must be done.

I took care of some loose ends on the trailer today. I tested the water heater to see how the electric would help in heating. From a cold tank to heated with gas only it took 29 minutes. With gas and electric it took about 15 minutes. So thats a nice improvement.

I had a helper most of the day.

Here is another shot of the water heater.

Water heater

I cleaned up the brackets and holes left from the last water heater. Here’s a final shot.

Outside picture

If you remember on the show, I mentioned that we got stuck in a field on our big trip this summer. After trying to turn around we damaged the gas line to the refrigerator. I decided to go ahead and change it out.

Gas line under trailer for fridge

Here is the kink in the line. It wasn’t too bad after I pulled it off.

Kink in line

I stil had some copper left from the work I did before. So I gathered my tools and went to work.

Gas line tools

Here is the new line installed.

New gas line installed

Checked for gas leaks of course!

Gas leak solution

The last thing was to tighten up my black and grey tank handles. The gray one fell off during our trip! I picked up some lock tight and it was dried out. Even though it was new! Ugh.

I painted the black tank handle black. Seemed to make sense.

Black and gray valve handles.

Trailer should be road ready again!

The Atwood water heater I’m installing is a dual heat unit. It heats from propane and also with a 110 VAC heating element. Atwood provides a dual panel switch that also includes a pilot out indicator lamp. The dual switches allow you to turn on gas heating, electric heating, or both. The nice thing about being able to use both heat sources is that the hot water recovery time is greatly increased.

Here is the switch that Atwood provides.

Atwood Dual Switch

Since I’m replacing a water heater and not putting one in from scratch, I decided to reuse the switch panels that I had already in my trailer. The tank level gauge that I have is a SeeLevel by RV Gauge. The SeeLevel has switches built in for a water pump, and water heater.

SeeLevel

The panel is mounted on the opposite side of the trailer from the water heater. Since its a long wire run, I used a relay to power the water heater which is controlled by the panel switch. A relay is basically a remotely controlled switch. Doing it this way allows relatively small control wire from the switch to power a heavier duty appliance like the water heater.

The SeeLevel only has one switch for the gas heater so I had to add a second switch for the electric function that the Atwood panel provided.

New Switch

Control relays. Left controls the gas function. Right controls the electric.

The other nice thing about the SeeLevel panel is that it provides for a Pilot Out lamp. This will light up if the water heater fails to ignite the pilot after three tries, like if you run out of propane. This way you know something went wrong and you can check it out.

There does seem to be some kind of bug, or maybe its the way they meant it to work. If both the gas and electric switches are on and the heater fails to light, the Pilot Out Lamp will not turn on. It will only turn on if the electric switch is off.

I tested this by leaving the gas off and turning on the heater.

Pilot Out Indicator

So after dressing the wires a bit more, I needed to add some more bed support. Here is a photo of the end result.

Completed installation

Interesting side note. If you look closely you can see two pipes leaving the back of the water heater. The way I understand it is that if this was installed in a motorhome, you could plumb the coolant through these which would keep the water heated while driving to you next spot. Kinda cool.