Re-imagining a 1948 Boles Aero Trailer

  Flooring is done The job of actually installing the flooring was easy. Getting prepared to do it took a long time. I used a vinyl composite tile (VCT) from Armstrong. VCT is not "peel and stick" tile, rather you towel on some special VCT adhesive, let it dry to a tacky surface, lay down the tile, and use a heavy roller to make sure it seats into the adhesive. Where you need less than a full tile or a cut out you use a utility knife to score the tile and then it'll break along the score. It's all easy. Most of the time was spent letting the adhesive dry to a tacky surface. Watching glue dry They make a lot, and I mean a lot, of different colors. There are only a few "patterns" though. Home Depot and Lowes only stock a few different tiles (black, white, grey, and tan). I decided to special order a color I thought would complement the wall panels I'll be installing. That ended up being a fail.  UPS declared the first shipment "lost" after a few ...

  Under Bed Compartment Door Installed My '48 Boles will have a double bed in the rear with a platform that's roughly 18" off the floor. Some of the trailer mechanicals will go under the bed (e.g. water/grey tank, pump, furnace) but there will be room available for storage of camping stuff, etc. Most of the Boles I've seen in pictures had exterior compartment doors to access this space. Only a few of the pictures I've seen don't. I'm guessing it has to do with whether there was a sofa day bed or fixed bed originally installed, but I'm not sure. Picture of a Compartment Door in 1949 Boles 12 Compartment Door in 1954 Boles Miramar In any case I plan to have a fixed bed and I wanted external access to the area under the bed. I think it would be a great place to put an easy-up, chairs and assorted other stuff that is only occasionally needed. People on the Boles Aero Facebook pages were kind enough to share pictures of their compartment doors so I could get...

This post should be subtitled "Be Patient" or maybe "This One's for You Ken". I knew I'd be taking some time off during the Christmas season so I'd hoped to make some significant headway on the Boles renovation. Well I've taken the time off but most of my materials are taking a long time to get here and I'm afraid I'll be making little headway. My next major steps are: flooring, insulation, rough wiring (where the wiring needs to go in the walls), wall panel installation, ceiling panel installation. A couple week of productive vacation time, right? After all Becky is working through the holidays including a weekend inpatient shift and my Icon pass is blacked-out for skiing during Christmas, so there would be few distractions. First I knew there would be significant lead time for the wood paneling I planned to use. Becky doesn't like the look of the original Birch wood so I ordered some alternative samples a while back from Columbia Forest...

S&M Lighting No 303   A picture of the center tail light was what first caught my eye on the Boles. For some reason I just thought it looked cool. I've spent a lot of time sorting out the exterior lights on my '48 Boles. Over the years there's been a mishmash of new lights installed and some of the "more recent" choices were falling apart, not to mention they were just not very pleasant to look at. And the original lights needed some TLC as they were rusted and the wiring had rotted away. In addition to the center-mounted S&M Lighting No 303 brake light, the Boles had four side marker lights. They are Pell-Lite No 300 "beehive" type marker lights. Only the front amber lights still had the original glass lenses. The rear red lenses were some sort of plastic when I purchased the Boles. Pell-Light No 300 Original Pell-Lite Amber Glass Lens Finding an old Pell-Lite is pretty darn difficult, and finding replacement glass was just impossible so I found...

  The Floor Sandwich The flooring system I'm installing (not quite done yet) is a sandwich of materials. The bottom or outside layer is 0.025" 5052H32 sheet aluminum. This sits directly on the steel trailer frame which is coated with POR15 which I'm counting on to moderate any galvanic corrosion between the steel and aluminum. The 5052H32 is fastened to the frame with 1/8" stainless steel closed-end pop rivets spaced around the outside edge about every 12".  The closed-end rivet will prevent water from entering through the typical mandrel hole in the pop rivet. There are three 48" wide aluminum sheets laid "east-west" (north being forward) and they overlap by about 3". Where they overlap I used a double bead of Sikaflex 221 sealant-adhesive, then I fastened the sheets together with 1/8" closed-end pop rivets. Above each frame, on top of the aluminum, I laid down 1 1/8"tall  x 1.5" wide kiln dried fir (ripped from 2x4 lumber). Th...

  Installed 0.025" 5052H32 Aluminum Outer Flooring Layer For review, when I removed the old flooring I found: an outer layer of roofing felt paper; 1" wood cross members on top of the steel frame; and 1/2" plywood floor. Sandwiched in between the roofing felt and the plywood was (nasty) Kimsul cellulose insulation. I'd need to replace the whole thing. I read a bunch and saw what lots of other people and manufacturers did and do today. In the end I've come up with something that's a bit unconventional, i.e. I haven't seen anyone else do something precisely the same. Plywood is still the standard. Airstream just transitioned to a composite product for the 2021 model year.  For insulation I've seen everything from nothing to insulation with blown in insulation, batting type product, or rigid foam products. Some people just lay down plywood. I'd say this is actually the approach of 80% of trailer renovations. It's cheap and easy and the lack of in...