How do I take it down to the frame?

Hi Friends,

Below are the images to show my work on how I removed the walls. I am almost done.

 
Pix are below.  Here is the opening image for reference.

Then, over the past 4 weeks, I have made some progress as seen below. The plan was to dismantle and follow Greg’s suggestion of steps in post 2 of this thread:

“If you can lay the floor back on top of the frame that would help. Brace the walls to the sawhorse cross supports, remove the rest of the cabinets and ceiling panels, lay the walls down on top of the floor, pile everything on top of the walls, secure everything to the frame, cover with a tarp, secure the tarp and trailer it to your new home.”

I also had to figure out how I was going to transport the walls to the new home.  I figured out, the walls could e stacked one at a time on top of two long pallets I had.  The top pallet needed to be extended 2.5 feet front and back to fully support the walls and clear wheels.

pallets to move walls 2 

However, along the way, I made a last minute change. We even made a video of the dismantling, but I don't know if we will ever edit it.

Here is the body with the frame removed frome underneath.
Front image 1 

Rear view.  Upper kitchen cabinet had been removed. Upper dinette cabinet remains.
no bunk image from rear

Then, I removed the remaining roof panels and the upper dinette cabinet. The key panel with the roof vent is a gonner. Warped and water damaged. I was hoping to keep the front and rear upper radius panels. I had to be very careful removing the nails that held down the edges, which did come out easily. I love my Sharkgrip nail removal tool.
After removal of roof panels

At this point, I realized that I never marked the frame’s position as it related to the body before I raised the body. So, I decided to lower the walls (walls assembly) back down to the frame. New readers should know that all new outriggers were welded onto the frame, and the tongue sag was reduced by a welder.

I still have the original sill boards on the front half of the walls. The front half of the floor also still has the original floor joists on the sides. I moved the frame/floor underneath and vertically matched the holes in the sill boards to the holes in the side floor joists and used those holes as a guide for dropping the walls on the outriggers of the frame.

The lifting began. I used the scissor jack from my minivan to lift the front 2 x 4 crossmember in the middle and then removed the saw horses. The rear sawhorses were still in place.
front of walls lifted with scissor jack

Then... upon lowering, the jack gets stuck under the 2 x 4 crossmember.
front of walls down jack stuck

In order to remove the jack, I had to re-raise the front 2 x 4 crossmember and insert some scrap 1 x 3’s I had lying around. Next, I just lifted the end of the crossmember 2 x 4 by hand and my son removed one 1 x 3 one at a time moving from right to left each time until the 2 x 4 crossmember was lowered all the way down and the edge boards sat on the ends of the outriggers. We worked with the front crossmember first, and repeated the procedure with the rear one.
front of walls before lowering 

One of my mistakes was removing the screws too early that held the crossmember 2 x 4s in place. I had placement screws that screwed the walls to each crossmember 2 x 4 where the 2 x4 ran through each wall. The loss of those placement screws gave us a little side to side movement . Worsening this was that we shortened the 2 x 4’s just past the walls.  I reinserted screws again and adjusted the walls a little. Below you can see the lean on the curbside wall.

We had another unintended issue. The streetside rear wall has no sill board.  so badly It was rotted and fell apart when I raised the body. Since I had reinforced the walls with additional 1 x 2’s, I screwed a scrap piece of sill board to these for strength and a temporary band aide. It worked.
front and rear lowered to outriggers 

It was exciting to see those walls back on the frame.
walls lowered corner profile 

One outrigger was off by ¼” fore and aft.  I knew this because the impression on the old wood underneath did not match the placement of the new outrigger. Perhaps the original outrigger wasn’t square or may have even been bent. Otherwise, everything was really close to the original impressions where the outriggers supported the body. I was happy.

I remember my front outrigger being very low when I purchased the trailer. The water stain lines now don’t line up on the bottom of the walls because the new front outrigger is now were it is supposed to be.

Below are some images that show how far down the original front outrigger was. These pictures below show the gap between the bottom of the floor joist and the top of the outrigger end. Once the floor was leveled, this is what I saw. This has since been corrected as part of the welding work on the frame.

Gap.

Gap with inserted piece of wood.

I digress.

So, finally, at this point the walls look like this. you can see the doubling up of the studs in the walls and the plywood scabs we used for strengthening the wall especially the curbside(pictured).
Walls lowered profile 

walls lowered profile close up 

I have screwed the old sill boards back into the side floor joists every 8 inches along the side.  In preparation to move the Ole Andy, the diagonal cross members are screwed to the walls and the crossmember 2 x 4’s are screwed to the walls. It’s all set for it’s 1.5 low speed journey to it’s new home.

Cheers,

Rod