Thursday, October 9, 2008

Call Me "Patches"

I went down to Lowes today to pick up some more Reflectix. Seems like whenever I buy something, I never buy enough. Frustrating. Then I over compensate and buy way too much. Oh well, at least now I'll have enough Reflectix for when I do the front of the trailer.
Left side panels in place. The forward panel was a piece of cake, and it lulled me into thinking the rest would be easy. Yeah, right. The curved panel was a pain right in the butt. When I rebuilt the frame, I must have raised the back end a fraction of an inch. Not much, but enough to make it impossible to reinstall the curved panel without it getting bound up on the floor. So, I drilled out the few rivets that I had installed, took the panel into the shop, got out the power shears, and proceeded to cut off way more than I should have. Enough to leave a half-inch gap between the panel and the floor. Ugh. Back into the shop I went, got out the shears again, and I cut out a 1 and 1/2 inch trim strip to cover the gap and give me a way to rivet to the c-channel. You can see it in the above picture.
Here's the patch I used to splice the long panel back together. If I didn't cut it when I was taking things apart, I wouldn't have been able to get back to the wheel wells without taking the front of the trailer apart. It is one l-o-n-g sheet of aluminum.
Here's a close up of the patch I used to cover my screw up when trimming the curved panel. I could have left it with the 1/2 inch gap showing, seeing as how this section will be hidden behind the vanity, shower, and closet, but I want to make things right for my trailer.

1 comment:

utee94 said...

Looking great John! I'm getting fired up about ripping into mine. One more trip in November, and then it's work time!

-Marcus