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

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.

This is for all our listeners at The Vintage Airstream Podcast to celebrate our 2nd year anniversary of the show. Enjoy!

Today I decided to work on a few odds and ends. And ended up putting in about 7 hours…

One of the items was sink covers. You never have enough counter space in a trailer and sink covers help out. I had saved the peice of countertop when I made the cut out for the sink so I could use it for the sink covers.

I cut them to size. The hard part was cutting the edges out so it could drop into the sink. Since I don’t have table saw I used my skill saw once again. I cut 1/8″ strips along the edges with the blade depth set to leave around an 1/8″ material on the top. Then I used my wood chisel to knock out the peices. It’s not perfect but it got the job done. Staining and poly coating was next.

I actually did the cutting and staining a while ago.

Here they are in place.

Next up was to hide some wiring that runs along the top of the fridge shelf. These wires are for the TV’s and stereo, etc…

I just used some left over oak and cut it fit and trimmed it out.

On our last couple of trips I noticed that the plywood under the trailer at the tub drain was wet. So I decided to pull the drain and seal it up again with more putty and then I found I did not used teflon tape on the part the screws into the trap. This always holds water since its below the floor line so thats probably where it was leaking.

Now that the drain was fixed it was time to start putting the belly pan back. First thing was to put some insulation in place.

Next it was time to unpack the aluminum. This was from www.airpartsinc.com, a Vintage Airstream Podcast contributor. The aluminum comes rolled up in four foot widths. Note the rope. You need to tie the rope around the roll before you cut the tape to control its expansion.

After laying it in place, I decided to just put it up in one peice and cut and trim as I went.

Its kind of hard to make these out since the aluminum is so reflective. I’m very happy with the results. I still have a few trim peices to do and a whole lot more rivets to keep it in place.

How’s that for an update? I didn’t expect to get so much done, but sometimes you get lucky.

See ya down the road…

August 2nd we were invited to see Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours at the San Francisco Great American Music Hall. The opening song on theVAP called Living in Aluminum is sung by Antsy and the Trailer Park Troubadours.

I inteviewed Antsy last Christmas about his music and his Chirstmas in the Trailer Park CD. It was a great show, available here.

The concert at the music hall was great. Very entertaining. If the Troubs are ever in your area you need to check them out.

Here is a shot of me, my lovely wife Debra, and Antsy after the show.

Of course I had to get an autographed shirt!

Thanks to Antsy and his pal David for setting us up with the tickets!