The Right Tool For The Job

The good news is that there has been more work than there has been blogging. I enjoy both, but one is more important than the other, so there you have it. To make it up to you, here is a really really long post with lots and lots of exposition.

My Dad has always told me that you'll save yourself a lot of wasted time and effort and potential damage to your project, your tools, and yourself, if you'll just use the right tool for the job. My Dad is usually right, and this sound advice was certainly correct in this instance. After wasting more time than I should have, and breaking one of my tools, trying to get those rusty bolts out of the holes in the brass casting on the bottom of my black tank, I turned to my Dad once again for advice, and he gave me the name of a quality machine shop to take care of my half-accomplished task of clearing the back tank for a new valve. In this case, the right tool was to hire a professional, and they took care of the problem beautifully, for much less money than the cost of a new tank.


The threaded holes are all shiny and like new now.


Glad that's done, now it's on to more projects!

In the interest of coming clean and being completely honest with myself and my blog readers (all both of you!), I must confess that I wanted to take a shortcut. I very nearly gave in to temptation. I had intended to only replace the center section of the bellypan, and leave the exterior 18" or so in place. On later models these would be called "banana wraps" and my plan was to create some psuedo-banana-wraps, in order to save myself the hassle of cutting the curved end-pieces on the belly skin. But as I took off the rear rub-rail trim piece, I found a lot of corrosion to the curved sections of my faux banana wraps. So much corrosion that in places, the aluminum belly skin was completed deteriorated and missing, which exposed the edges of my brand new plywood subfloor. I wanted to ignore it. I wanted to clean up the rub rail, apply some vulkem, and push ahead. I wanted to cut some corners or, more specifically, SKIP the cutting of corners.

But, I couldn't live with myself if I did that.

So, out came the drill, and I began to drill out the rivets that held that last 18" of bellypan to the outer shell and j-channel. And that's when I discovered the little surprise that the builders in Jackson Center had left for me. Not exactly "blind" rivets, but certainly, "hidden rivets." You see, when they built my trailer presumably sometime in 1962 for the 1963 model year, the workers at the Airstream factory in Ohio attached the bellypan to the subfloor and j-channel first. They had the luxury of placing the frame on a rotisserie, spinning it upside down, and riveting the bellypan to the frame and floor at their leisure (I bet their backs didn't ache all the time fromy lying on the ground working upside down, which sure would be nice!) Then, when they were ready to put the outer shell on, they just flipped the frame back over, and riveted the outer shell onto the frame/floor/bellypan assembly.

What this all means is that there are some rivets holding the bellypan to the j-channel, that you can't access from outside the trailer, unless you lift the whole shell off. Lots of people do this during their renovations of Airstreams, but I just don't have the facilities, so this means that I can't drill out those rivets from the outside. I could see them through the j-channel from the inside, but the angles aren't right to drill them out, and rivets don't drill out very well from the backside, and anyway even if they did, I'd risk putting extra holes all the way through the exterior shell where there were not holes before. And, since ALL Airstreams leak, I'd like to minimize the number of holes through that outer shell whenever possible.

So, on the advice of my trusty Airstream buddies Frank and John, I knew I had to sheer those rivets off from the inside, using a putty knife. But here's where we get back to the theme of the post. I spent a couple of hours using various putty knives I had on-hand, and busted them up pretty good.


The problem with these is that they are all plastic, which absorbs a lot of the energy of a hammer blow, and they also eventually cracked. I spent a couple of hours, and got maybe 15% of the rivets out.

So I called Frank, who patiently explained to me that there are putty knives in the dry-wall section, rather than the paint section, that have metal ends. I purchased one of these and proceeded to get down and dirty on the remaining semi-blind rivets.


The remaining rivets came out in a matter of a few minutes. The right tool for the job.

With the rivets out, I very carefully pried out the remaining bellypan aluminum, and prepared to use it as a template to cut out the replacement belly wrap.


I flattened it out and then traced it onto the new .025 5052 H32 aluminum that came from Airparts. Then I used the electric shears and the tin snips to cut out the shape, and the relief cuts around the curve.

This was the result:


I was cruising along pretty well at this point, but then I tried to install it. I worked it in from the curved end at the back, and started to come forward. All of the relief cuts/overlapped portions slid in just fine, but as I came forward, I just couldn't get it to slide in. I pulled it out, trimmed away a portion that was binding, tried again, but it just wouldn't go. I repeated the process once again, hours and hours flew into the trashcan, and I had to stop to have another beer and think for a few minutes. After a stroke of inspiration hit me, I decided to try to work it from the straight side, and things went much better. Once I got to the curved section, it required a little extra work than before, but once again, use of the "Right Tool For The Job" made it much easier.

And in this case, this was the right tool:


And, after hours and hours of adjustment, and more than a few cuts and scrapes on the hands, this is what I have:


It's held in place with a few clecos, and friction, right now. There are still a few dents and ripples that I need to work out of the metal, and the rub-rail trim piece will hide some of that as well, but overall I'm pretty pleased with it. I am hopeful that the curbside piece will go a bit quicker due to my lessons learned.

Adios!