Post by tristan on Sept 9, 2020 19:24:00 GMT -8
I picked this trailer up a few weeks back, first time trailer owner so I'm pretty new to all this and after reading up a bit I may have sprung into action a little too fast! The floor had boards screwed down over most of the middle and I could see water damage in the rear right corner so I knew I'd be getting into some work, but I consider myself somewhat handy so figured I had it covered, but the advice I keep seeing really seems to be on point where every time you start to fix something you find something else that needs to be redone too.
Here's when I first got it home, on an old hitch I found laying around, need to look into a weight distribution hitch for the future I think.
Things looked pretty ok to me, until I unscrewed the boards that were covering the floor.
Those boards were covering up all the frame under the floor, that was basically non existent. This picture was taken after I cleared it all out and used a saw to square up the sides and put a few 2x6 beams underneath to hold things up while I figured out what to do about the metal underbody. I decided to put a new floor frame together and use that to screw some aluminum flashing from underneath into to repair that torn metal.
And next came some plywood subflooring over it
Once done here, I decided to see what was hiding in the corner, and discovered it had gone through to the floor under the rear seat/pullout bed
At this point I decided best course was to just pull the whole rear wall off as I had to see what I was dealing with
About here is when I started clearing out rotted framing is when the rear wall almost fell off the trailer, it was apparently only help up by the aluminum siding as there was no frame underneath left. Like a professional, I propped it up with a board while I worked on other things.
Decided the only way I'd be able to get to this was to pull back the outside aluminum siding on the right side
Pulled all this rotted wood framing out, and attempted to rebuild a new frame, had to piece together the rear wall support with 2x4's to match what the original frame supported shape wise. I probably have some pictures but I had torn out the floor inside as well and did the same floor frame + subfloor work for the back half at this point.
Here I've added new framing pieces to the edges of the wood I removed. I made a new ceiling support frame using one the same curve as the other supports and butted it against the last one, and cut a few 2x4 beams to the shape of the curve for the rear ceiling slope.
Here I've buttoned the rear corner backup on the outside, and put a new bead of roofing sealant along the edge before screwing the rail back down. I started using 1 3/4 inch roofing screws to screw things back together from the outside, I'm not sure if this is technically correct but its holding things very solid with new wood to bite into, which helps make me feel better about it so far.
I do not think I want to use the original water heater i pulled out of this hole, It seems like it might work but I'm iffy on using a 55 year old water heater, I would like to look at redoing the electrical and may put a small electric one under the sink instead of feeding both hot and cold lines from the back, which could potentially open this up to a battery/solar charging solution down the road.
Please let me know what I did wrong so far, especially if its an easy fix I can do before going further. Next steps would be figuring out the electrical situation and getting the water tank and water delivery system back into place So I can hook up water and see how that situation works out.
Here's when I first got it home, on an old hitch I found laying around, need to look into a weight distribution hitch for the future I think.
Things looked pretty ok to me, until I unscrewed the boards that were covering the floor.
Those boards were covering up all the frame under the floor, that was basically non existent. This picture was taken after I cleared it all out and used a saw to square up the sides and put a few 2x6 beams underneath to hold things up while I figured out what to do about the metal underbody. I decided to put a new floor frame together and use that to screw some aluminum flashing from underneath into to repair that torn metal.
And next came some plywood subflooring over it
Once done here, I decided to see what was hiding in the corner, and discovered it had gone through to the floor under the rear seat/pullout bed
At this point I decided best course was to just pull the whole rear wall off as I had to see what I was dealing with
About here is when I started clearing out rotted framing is when the rear wall almost fell off the trailer, it was apparently only help up by the aluminum siding as there was no frame underneath left. Like a professional, I propped it up with a board while I worked on other things.
Decided the only way I'd be able to get to this was to pull back the outside aluminum siding on the right side
Pulled all this rotted wood framing out, and attempted to rebuild a new frame, had to piece together the rear wall support with 2x4's to match what the original frame supported shape wise. I probably have some pictures but I had torn out the floor inside as well and did the same floor frame + subfloor work for the back half at this point.
Here I've added new framing pieces to the edges of the wood I removed. I made a new ceiling support frame using one the same curve as the other supports and butted it against the last one, and cut a few 2x4 beams to the shape of the curve for the rear ceiling slope.
Here I've buttoned the rear corner backup on the outside, and put a new bead of roofing sealant along the edge before screwing the rail back down. I started using 1 3/4 inch roofing screws to screw things back together from the outside, I'm not sure if this is technically correct but its holding things very solid with new wood to bite into, which helps make me feel better about it so far.
I do not think I want to use the original water heater i pulled out of this hole, It seems like it might work but I'm iffy on using a 55 year old water heater, I would like to look at redoing the electrical and may put a small electric one under the sink instead of feeding both hot and cold lines from the back, which could potentially open this up to a battery/solar charging solution down the road.
Please let me know what I did wrong so far, especially if its an easy fix I can do before going further. Next steps would be figuring out the electrical situation and getting the water tank and water delivery system back into place So I can hook up water and see how that situation works out.
