2,4,6,8 Who Do I Apreciate?

Wayne, that's who I appreciate. I am very fortunate to have such a talented employee as Wayne.

I briefly, mentioned to him how I wanted to see if we could resurrect this continental cover at some point. It looked rather hopeless to me at first glance.

It had been backed into, mashed down and treated like a red headed step child. My first thought was it would be heading to the scrap yard. When I set Wayne upon cleaning up the Buddha Baby (that is this trailers very fitting name) he had remembered me saying something about resurrection.

Wayne got out some PB Blaster and soaked the retaining nut while he went about cleaning out the interior and exterior. He made short work of the cleaning and some how found a few moments to surprise me.

I was astounded when he showed me this. He asked if maybe he might have an other 15 minutes with a sand bag and a rubber mallet at some point. Once again, Wayne has astounded me. He took the task at hand seriously, went the extra mile, and exceeded my expectations once again. Thank you Wayne for being such an outstanding employee.

Very Full House (you dent em, we fix em)

Currently, FTW is crushed with work. The yard is completely full of trailers waiting their turn at being fixed. Fortunately I have additional storage not too far away. A few of these trailers will also be heading out in the very near future. One that should be heading out soon is this 1954 Cruiser.

The 1954 Airstreams all have a serious design issue; short tongue syndrome. This causes one to dent the lower panels up front when jacking it too tight into a space. When these were towed by cars of the time, the issue was even worse due to the gigantic bumpers of the period. Sometimes the skin gets ripped also.

This Cruiser got it on both sides. She turned the other cheek and got a slap there too.

The only way this repair can be done properly is by removing the interior skins in that area. The original panel was removed and copied onto new Alclad. Just a little note of caution; if you measure the panel from seam to seam it is exactly 12 foot long. This would lead most, with sticker shock over Alclad prices, to order the minimum length of 12 foot. However the panel is longer due to the fact that it goes behind the side panels. A 13 foot piece is needed. A professional knows these things.

It is also worth the $2 extra per foot to have it wrapped in film. Though it does not guarantee a scratch free finished surface, it sure helps to minimize it.

One also needs a large number of cleckos to hold the panel before riveting. I own 750 1/8th" and 1000 5/32" cleckos. Every 5/32" was used today and a few more could have been handy. Next order to Air Parts Inc will include a request for 500 more.

The finished results are stunning.