We've continued to make progress on the Avion over the last few months, and now are consistently making time to work on it. I finished the structural repairs to the wings in the area where the truck tie-downs and front brackets are. Now the camper can finally stand securely on 4 jacks. I like how the new brackets worked out, and they help to clean-up the look of the camper as well. I am using the original jacks with the new brackets and some extension plates that I had fabricated to help get a little more height. The custom extension brackets allowed the jack brackets to be mounted in the same holes as the old ones on one side, with this mounting position the jack brackets don’t stick out past the sides of camper when the jacks are removed. On the exterior in this same area I fabricated my fist patch for the aluminum skin. I used Olympic rivets which you can install like a blind pop-rivet, but they have heads that appear solid without a hole like a typical pop rivet. I just used a file and some fine sandpaper to “shave” the heads of these rivets instead of buying the $250.- tool, this worked out well for the dozen or so rivets that I needed to use but if you need to do a lot of them seeking out a proper shaving tool will make the job much faster.
I’ve carefully removed some of the interior to allow access to the water tank. The water tank is a very cool looking aluminum cylinder that looked to be in great shape, my first thought once I uncovered it was that it should be “featured” and not hidden away, one Avion on m mounted theirs on the outside under one of the wings. However it’s a really good thing that I never put water in the tank to test it out while it was still in the camper, once I had it out I found that the bottom seam had failed and was split open. We’re now planning to use a new plastic tank and pump instead of a pressure-based system like it was set-up originally. I think the concept of the old pressure systems is super cool, but I think using a modern pump based system will be easier to maintain and put less stress on the whole plumbing system.
Once the water tank was out I pulled up all the floor tiles to inspect the floor, luckily the tiles came up easily. As a bonus these old tiles from the ‘65 Avion are exact matches to the tiles in our ‘63 Shasta, so we now have a stack of replacements that I may use to swap in for a few bad ones a few areas. On the Avion I had been hoping that I could just repair the floor where’s it bad near the door and the corner under the propane cabinet. I also found that the area in the front under the water tank is pretty soft and will need to need to be replaced. Most of the floor seems to be in pretty good shape, but given that both front and back ends are bad I’m thinking that replacing the entire thing is what we’ll likely do. I also found that I can see light through a gap between the floor and the bottom edge of one of the wings, so some serious attention to the overall integrity of the floor is definitely in order.
My wife has made a ton of progress stripping the old finish off the cabinet doors and has started refinishing them. After a lot of testing a bunch of stain options are going with a darker colored stain and they are turning out great. She’s also cleaned, painted, and rebuilt all the upper cabinet latches which also are looking really good with the now darker wood tone. I’m really thankfull that she’s making progress on these parts because seeing them look so great helps motivate me to get through the structural stuff. She’s also cleaned up the original kitchen sink which now looks great and done some work on the vent hood for over the cooktop.
We’ve also been making decisions on a lot of the appliances and for the most part have figured out what we’ll use for the all the major items. We went to two local RV shoes over the winter to try and see specific appliances person, and have purchased a new a propane cooktop and a new toilet. We expect to go ahead and pick up a water heater and a new fridge soon.The bathroom is still mostly in the cardboard mock-up stage but mostly figured out. We are getting excited about possibly starting to get the Avion on the road in the Fall or next Spring and are hoping to make a lot of progress over the next few months!
