Airstream von Soich

The wife My wonderful, loving wife and I stopped by Lowe’s today to pick up some 1/2″ plywood for repairing the floor behind the streetside wheel well.

When I got to the Airstream, I took a quick look at the water pump to determine what exactly was disconnected (there are at least 2 copper pipes disconnected, and a pump-saver filter is just sitting under the sink.)

So, I looked closer at the pump, and saw that, aside from the fact that it wasn’t bolted down at all, just sitting on a little shelf, there were two flexible rubber lines connected to it. I followed the black line down to the fresh water tank, and the other line to a fitting that attached it to the copper pipes. That’s strange, because in the past, whenever I turned on the water pump, nothing happened, despite getting a reading from the fresh water tank of half-full.

OK, so then, why is the pump not working? I turn it back on, (it’s very noisy and clattery, but that may be from having the access hatch open, and the sink panel missing) and turn on the kitchen faucet. I hear some gurgling in the lines somewhere, but nothing… SPUT! some water spurts out of the faucet, followed by another, and another. I was getting possibly 2/3 air, and 1/3 water.

I go to the bathroom and check the toilet, and sure enough, I was getting water. Yay! One less thing to fix! Of course, the fresh tank seems to have antifreeze in it too, so I’ll have to figure out how to drain and rinse that tank (and I guess, re-flush the lines, too.)

Anyway, that probably took less time to do than it took you to read it, so I’ll move on.

There is a patch of flooring that needs to be replaced behind the streetside wheel well. The first step to getting to this area was to remove the old “aftermarket” bed frame.

The old bed frame won’t be used anymore anyway, since bunks will be going in this space. I also unscrewed the inside wheel well covering from the floor to be able to lift it up out of the way. (A lot of the rivets have pulled out of the cover, and the screws weren’t original, either, I think.)

This let me get to the bad patch of the floor, shown here with a screwdriver inserted for dramatic effect:

The Airstream service manual says that for repairing sections of flooring, to save the old section to use as a template. That wasn’t going to happen here, since, well, I was pulling chunks of it up with my hands.

I did that, then used the jigsaw to square up the section (shown partially completed here, because I ran out of room on our camera:)

Some highlights of this image:

• The debris resting on the belly pan, aside from the rotten wood, was mud, pebbles, and a couple of acorns.
• The yellow item in the top center of the picture is the wheel chock in place behind the wheel. Of course, the black thing above it is the rear streetside wheel.
• When it rained, water dripped down the outer skin, cam in the wheel well opening, and ran in a little stream on the inside of the belly pan. (The belly pan being the shiny thing under the muck.)
• The raggedy edge of the belly pan is the remains of the outrigger, which apparently rusted out from road muck spraying onto it, after the piece of aluminum protecting it disappeared. (Well, not entirely disappeared; I still have tiny bits of it around the screws I removed from the edge of the wheel well frame.)

I have yet to glue/screw the support blocks in the hole, or to even cut the patch out. I’m wondering if I should attach a piece of flashing to the inside of that hole before I cover it up, at least until I can get the outrigger repaired.

Other observations: I really need to get the entire fusebox replaced. I plugged in the univolt and at first, when I tried the 12V circuit stuff, nothing happened, until I poked the main 50A fuses.

After the floor is done, the new bunks will go in (after I redesign the standard plans I have to fit in the airstream.)

I still don’t think it will be ready for going on vacation, starting the 11th of July, but yet, I haven’t canceled the reservations…

Tags: floor, fuses, pump, univolt, water

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 7:45 am and is filed under Repair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.