Exterior work

Awning

Over the last few days, Dad has been working on the awning. After having seeing how is was attached to the coach, I wonder why it didn't fall off the motorhome during travel. It was attached with huge screws (wood screw kind) directly on the fiberglass shell, through some wood pieces, without any reinforcment in the back, sometimes with metal brackets that were simply metal strips hammered into shape. The screws were barely long enough to thread completely through the fiberglass.

Another issue was this awning is a regular RV awning with straight aluminium posts, just like on most RVs. As you know, the sides of a Travco motorhome are curved, and usually the awning posts on a Travco should have a curve in them to fit the coach body. I guess there are curved awning posts made specifically for Travcos, kind of like the Airstream trailers have. As you may see on this picture, straight posts on a curved RV don't look too good.



The vinyl canvas itself, altough not new, is in good shape.

So Dad removed to old lousy brackets, and re-attached the posts to new stainless steel brackets he made himself. Here's a picture of the old lower rear bracket, and then the new stainless steel bracket.




The following photos shows the upper brackets Dad made, still using stainless steel (caulking not yet cleaned around the rear one):




Instead of replacing the straight posts with overpriced ones made for Travcos, Dad simply bent the lower section of the his straight posts. This is enough for the posts to follow more closely the contour of the Travco's side, and it looks pretty good.

In order to bend these aluminium posts, Dad made a partial cut where he wanted the posts to bend. Once bent at the appropriate angle, Dad now had to reinforce the posts where he made the cuts. He used a combination of stainless steel plates and fiberglass compound. The rafters that slide inside the posts had to be shortened a bit, and the handles and locking mechanisms had to be repositioned along the posts. Here's how it looks:




Seats

Driver and passenger seats were in pretty bad shape. Broken armrests, worn, faded and dirty fabric, color that doesn't match anything.



At a local car junkyard (they are called 'car recyclers' nowadays) Dad found two nice seats from a scrapped minivan (a Dodge, of course!) for a good price. They will make nice and comfortable replacement seats for the Travco:



Of course they don't fit right in, so Dad had to modify the old seat brackets to make them work with the new seats. Here there are, freshly painted after some steel cutting and welding:




Range hood vent

This was another botched job done by the previous owners. Dad made another one, again using stainless steel (as you may guess, Dad loves to use stainless steel!).



Bike rack

Dad made his own bike rack, Travco style (nice, tough, and heavy). He used some chrome tubes from and old chair. Bolted on the hitch at the rear of the motorhome, his rack is actually very functional, solid and safe, and it can be locked. I guess the thing is strong enough to carry a Harley. Now that I think about it, maybe that's what he intends to do: get a Harley! (Dad owned one when he was younger, and an Indian motorcycle too). I guess I should speak to Mom about this!



Electrical repairs

The rear stoplights on this motorhome are not the originals. At some point, they have been replaced with some "universal" stoplights, and the original backup lights have been painted over when the coach was repainted (just like the rear window).



Dad scraped the paint off these, and they are actually working well. There is still some paint to clean off and it already looks better this way:



Stoplights and signals were not really bright. Dad suspected a bad ground or something like that, so he looked at the wiring. Thw wiring already had been messed with in the past, probably when they installed those new stoplights. What a lousy job they did: one wire, in a lenght of maybe 15 inches, had four joints. Wires simply twisted together with some electrical tape. One wire got burning hot when the lights were on. Dad redid the wiring correctly, and the stoplights are working normally now.

Dad also replaced all marker lights on the top of the motorhome. The old lights were corroded, broken, or were leaking water. This was a lot of work, due to rusted screws, corroded wires that had to be spliced, and new lights that had to be adjusted to the roof's curvature.

Now all lights, from headlights to markers and turn signals are in good working order.

Then Dad installed a pair of good convex mirrors, mounted above the regular mirrors (yes, the mounting brackets are stainless steel!). Dad installed additional truck marker lights/turn signal below the mirrors for added safety.



Now if everything goes according to plans, my next post should be about the new propane fridge installation. Stay tuned!