"New" Vintage TT

[swilly]

Hi guys, just bought a 1968 Holiday Vacationer to restore. I have a Keystone Passport 2590BH for our normal family camping, but this is mine to play with and make my own.



It is pretty rough and needs work because the wood frame has tons of rot. I have completely gutted the interior. Will most likely take it down to the frame and rebuild.

I have seen a few posts by some on here about old Holiday campers and had one question in particular:

Can someone tell me what the screw head is on these campers?? I thought it might be a clutch bit head but I bought some and that doesn't quite fit.

[Wagonqueen_Truc]

Wow... I sympathize. The more you tear into these, the more rot appears. At times I wondered how the camper didn't fall apart in transport home. Regardless, hard work and swart will eventually get you a really nice rig. I love the look of it.

[swilly]

Color - if stripping continues to go well and look good I may leave silver. Plan was to go with black on bottom and white on top not really this but something similar.



Skin coming off because wall framing rotted, so is part of floor. Plus I really just want to take it completely apart and start back with the frame and go up from there.

Except for the frame (which will be inspected, cleaned, etc) and the skins and windows, everything in the camper will be new.

This will probably take me most of this year.

[Caveman_Charlie]

2012Coleman wrote:
Can I ask a silly question? What is the point of removing all the walls? Do the walls stay intact after removal?

I think his walls were rotten and he wanted to replace them.

[2012Coleman]

Can I ask a silly question? What is the point of removing all the walls? Do the walls stay intact after removal?

[westend]

Have you thought about the colors yet? Stock, modified, or creative? I wanted to make mine to look like weathered boards but realized it would be too much work.

[swilly]

Most of stripping done, it's almost all silver.

[69_Avion]

Keep up the good progress. I can't wait to see it when you are down to the frame.

[pasusan]

Hi swilly - just wanted to give you a thumbs up and echo westend's hopes for your continuing saga to be reported here.

Some of us are nuts about rebuilds!


Thanks for sharing!

[westend]

Attaboy, hard at it!

For that unprotected seam and for around windows and doors I used protect-a-wrap, a 6" wide self-sticking window wrap. It is waterproof and offers some protection to the frame in those areas. I also used small cut pieces under the marker lights, just made a small hole to lead the wires.

You should end up with a nice paint job if you're stripping all the siding. I just had a couple areas of bare metal but I primed all of the siding. I used Sherwin-Williams DTM Industrial Primer. It is a real good primer for aluminum. I chose to use conventional siding paint as I have a lot of experience with it and it is very durable. Of course, if you want something that ends up like a show car, a guy can use auto body paint but I couldn't justify the cost. I applied all of the body paint with a Graco airless sprayer and a fairly small tip. I'm real happy with the paint and get a lot of compliments.

Keep the pictures and commentary coming, we all like to see how it's done.

[swilly]

Oh, and unfortunately (but also good) my cheap Ryobi 12v cordless is working so well I can't yet justify the cordless impact driver, but there's still time.

[swilly]

Got a few more hours in. Took out a couple hundred screws and got all of the windows and trim pieces off.





I also stripped some of the paint off with Citristrip (pretty amazing stuff)



After stripping, I will be removing the skin, walls and flooring down to the frame.

[swilly]

Did a little work on the camper today, not much but I got in a couple hours. I got windows out of one side and started taking off some of the other trim pieces.



Doesn’t seem like the best build design. There is simply a piece of aluminum that fits between the AL under the rear window and the part that goes down to the bottom. There is a lip somewhat "protecting" the seam, but mostly relying on caulk. I will come up with something different as I build it back. No wonder, the wood was so rotted in the back.





Took these pieces off. The side seams are much better than the one under the rear window, the top piece overlaps the bottom and that seam is hidden under these trim pieces.



This is what's left of what I am assuming 45 years ago was wood, as I pulled the piece (pictured above) out some, the chips all fell out. There was no wood left, just mud.



Pretty much all I got done today, I may take a vacation day sometime in the next couple weeks and just take that day to get the skin off.

[swilly]

Not really, but I'd like to be. I do want to learn to weld sometime. Hopefully don't need it for this project, but in my future plans.

[westend]

OK, I see you're a tool guy, too. Seems to make sense, to take on a project like this.
Yes, those vibrating multi-tools are really handy to have, I bought one that works with my Ridgid set. The reason I went with Ridgid is that they have a lifetime warranty on everything, tools, batteries, and chargers. I'm tired of trying to replace the batteries and chargers for otherwise working tools.

For the demolition work I did, a sawzall and small right hand grinder were valuable. There were a lot of pieces that were nailed and stapled where pulling the fastener wasn't possible.

I have a compressor and different nail guns that I use for my work so was lucky there. Almost all of my framing repairs were done with the joints glued with construction adhesive and either nailed or screwed.

Another nice tool to have is an electric stapler. I have two of them, one that shoots a narrow crown staple (used for siding and carpet installs) and one that shoots standard wide crown staples (used for attaching poly vapor barriers and stuff like that).

I'm always of the opinion that a guy can't have too many tools, lol. Hope you get your tool bench filled with your project.:)