Vent

With all the windows and the top vent the surface aluminum is cleaned and pained to allow for a clean seal and to make it easier to plastic off the vent and windows when it comes paint time and still make it

The weather seal goes on same as with the j channel and windows

The old vent was so damaged that a new style one is put in its place.  We stuck with the metal one to keep with the vintage feel. 

 look clean.

Pain staking windows

The major set back was the realization that polishing every window and trim piece of the trailer was pure torture.  Going threw several buffers and hand grinder(some caught on fire) we decided to make a bench polisher out of a 1 HP 110v motor that we fastened some polishing wheels to and got to work.  The new polisher works well but the aluminum on the windows has a form of calcium deposit on them almost like white rust.  The process most often entails disassembling every window and sanding the calcium off with 600 to 1200 grit wet sand paper.  Only then does the polishing begin.

Hand drilling all the old rusty rivets

Plastic helps contain some of the black mess that comes off during the polishing

Old fire fighting gloves make the high heat transmitted through the aluminum bearable and are more forgiving when a small piece of metal gets ripped out of your hand at 500 mph

I feel like a coal miner after each session at the polisher.  If you can tolerate it a face shield, respiratory mask, safety glasses ect, might safe you some misery and clean up.

The trim that goes over the windows is also polished up

 Each window start to finish can take 3-4 hrs on average to polish.  Reassembling them is a snap and the new aluminum rivets combined with clean glass and new stainless screws make the windows look awesome.

Each window has a trim border on on the inside that polishes up nicely

Trim

The J-channel goes back on

100,000,000 stainless screws or so later and the trim is on. 

Some body work left to do before paint goes on

Back in business

After sitting wrapped up in tarps for all of 2011 at our old house we moved into a new home where the trailer sat wrapped up for most of 2012.  Work resumed in the fall of 2012 when a wind storm ripped the tarps to shreds.  This made us face the fact that we either winterize it again or put it in the garage and hope that having to wake up to a snow covered truck outside would motivate us to get the trailer done and out of the garage.