Colin snapped this picture (That is him in the reflection) of the refurbished emblems and the fantastic new shine:
Received some new pictures from Colin today – the insulation is going in:
Received an email from Colin today. In the process of refurbishing the light fixtures (paint was flaking off) Colin noticed that they were made of Aluminum – he had one of his employees strip and polish it. Asked my opinion – I selected the non-painted aluminum. What do you think?
Aluminum (stripped and polished): |
Painted: |
Side by Side: |
Colin sent some photos of some additional damage on a rear panel on the trailer. Apparently the patch that was on the back of the trailer was covering damage from an accedent:
Colin and his team did a great job of raplacing this panel:
Wow!
Everything I have read and heard about vintage Airstreams is that virtually all of them will have some floor / frame damage. The floor is a key part of the monoquoke trailers integrity. Our floor was soft in many places which was indicative of floor rot / frame damage.
Colin sent me some photos today of the frame damage to our trailer:
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The GSM team did a real nice job of repairing the frame and replacing the floor:
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New floor in and looking good:
Recieved some new photos from Colin at GSM today. Trailer is gutted, the bellypan removed and the frame is exposed:
After examining and working on the Airstream for a few months I quickly realized the work neccessary was beyond my abilities. In particular the floor had many soft spots and would need to be replaced and the majority of the systems (plumbing, furnace, etc) did not work.
Having listend to all of the the Vintage Airstream Podcast (VAP) episodes I was pretty impressed with Colin Hyde,one of the restoration experts on the show. Colin owns GSM Vehicles, one of the best known Airstream Restorers in the country. Remarkably, GSM is located in Plattsburg NY and is only about 5 hours from Rochester. Made a call to Colin and we spoke about for about an hour; I was convinced GSM was the outfit to restore this trailer. I mailed Colin a $1,000 deposit to secure a spot in his work queue. 3 months later Colin informed me that the time had come to deliver the trailer.
Coincidentally Airstream Life Magazine had been running a promotion looking for and individual that wanted to hire GSM vehicles to restore their trailer while they documented the restoration. The ad stated that this would be an all-out full scale restoration and estimated that the restoration would cost $70K. Interesting but *way* out of our range. Luckily for them, it was not out of range of actor Mathew McConaughey. Our trailer and Mathew’s will be restored side-by-side.
Loaded up the trailer and filled it with all of the parts and made the trek to GSM. Met Colin and his wife/business partner Susan; both were very personable and we felt that our trailer was in very good hands. One of the best parts of going to GSM was seeing the huge (about 25 trailers of various vintages) number of Airstreams (and some other brands; know an SOBs by Airstreamers).
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Colin Hyde at GSM Vehicles |
Colin gave us a tour of many of these trailers including Mathew McConaughey’s 1958 trailer (directly behind Colin in the photo above) which was in extremely bad shape. Basically it was completely gutted and the frame was totally rotted out (parts of the frame had actually been scabbed together with wood 2 * 4’s). There were mouse and snake stains on virtually every panel on the inside of the trailer. Colin explained that the trailed was virtually a self contained eco-system where the snakes ate the mice.
Read one too many Airstream books with pictures of super shined trailers; bought a buffer and Nuvite and got an immediate education on how hard and dirty this job is. But it looks so much better! Very addictive; could not wait to break out the buffer on the weekends.
My dad, father-in-law and I drove to Bat Cave North Carolina to Purchase 1963 Airstream Tradewind form Richard Tedesco (known as RichardT in the Airstream Community).
Richard is is the owner of Moonshine Junction and quite a character. He has 14 Airstream Trailers in his driveway.
After a long snowy trip back to Rochester I had a chance to really look this trailer over. It was a little bit rougher that I had led to believe. In particular the floor will definitely have to be replaced (as the do on most older Airstreams).
Here are some pictures:
As you can see this trailer was very well traveled:
