Broken Roof Vent

 Note: do not drive off with your roof vent open. I came home to this:

The crank has come loose and I have had to screw it back in before, but this is different.  I could not get the vent to close no matter what I did. Something obviously broke inside the plastic housing.

I unscrewed the the 12 screws surrounding the vent to take the frame off. 

From there, two more screws on either side of the interior housing needed to come out (you can see the groove for the screwdriver in the above photo).

Disconnect the two wires (it’s a simple blade connector) and the housing will come off. Along with a rain of dead bugs.

And here’s the problem - the unit that the crank handle attaches to has fallen out of position and was hanging loose. Luckily, the two screws that came out were still inside the plastic housing.

Everything screwed back into place now.  The only thing left to do is put the plastic housing and crank back on and I’m back in business.

Replacing the Window Shades - Part 2

 Moving on to the shade on the door...I didn’t bother to remove the side rails, just the top.

There was an odd piece of metal shoved down one of the side rails. I have no idea where it came from, but it looks (a) broken and (b) not part of the shades.

Whatever. Repeating the same procedure as before, I removed the side, keeping my finger on it so the spring loading didn’t send it flying. And this time, a torx driver was needed. The sheer variety of different screw heads in this trailer is staggering.

Again, same drill...hold down the axle and let the spring loading gradually wind out, remove the old shade material, and keep the plastic beads that lock the fabric in place.

So more detail on how to get the new fabric in. Shove it in the slot with a credit card.

Feed the plastic bead in the same width as the card to get things started.

Repeat the process, working your way down the length of the roller.

Do the same for the pull-down handle, and put the roller back in the housing, minus the plastic slot that the axle fits into. Screw the side back on.

Now, put the white plastic slot on the end of the axle and wind it around about six times. It really helps to have a second person hold the housing for you. Pop the white plastic slot back in the housing while keeping tension on the axle.

Aaaand now I figure out what that odd bit of metal was. One of the tabs that fit inside the vertical rails was broken. Someone (former owner?) improvised a fix using a piece of scrap metal.

Without it, the vertical rail does not stay in place.

As a quick fix, I drove another screw into the door to hold the rail in place. Doesn’t look fantastic, but it works.

The finished product.

Replacing the Window Shades - Part 1

NOTE: Be sure to read the other parts; they contain better pictures of some of the things I am talking about here,

The vinyl window shades on the trailer were pretty busted up - the edges were frayed so they did not want to stay inside the tracks when opening or closing.  The screens were not much better; full of (taped up) holes and generally weak feeling.

Nothing about this process was hard per se, but it was involved because it involved taking off the wooden valences just to get at the screws to remove the shades from the wall. As always, be gentle unscrewing and don’t use power tools because the screws are threaded into the soft wall material and you want to be able to get everything back in place.

I’ll spare you the gory details of getting it off the wall, mostly because I neglected to take enough pictures. The valence comes off by popping off the round, brown plastic covers on the fasteners and removing the screws (this takes a square bit driver).  Once off, the entire unit looks like this:

The screen and shade are on separate rollers.  To remove, find the side of the unit that is removable with three screws.  While removing the screws, hold down the side with your finger as the unit is spring loaded and chaos will ensue if it flies apart in an uncontrolled fashion.

Once you have the end unscrewed, carefully let the end slide off, but don’t remove the rollers. This is what the other side (the one without the screws) will look like. The metal rods are spring loaded horizontally and will extend out of the rollers a couple of inches; don’t let the metal rods come out of the plastic slots just yet.

To remove the rollers, pinch the rod tightly and remove it from the white plastic slot. Release some of the pressure on the rod and let it “spin out” to remove the tension in a controlled fashion.

You should now have two rollers separated from the plastic housing. The material is connected to the roller and the pull-down handle by looping the fabric in a slot and running a strip of round plastic bead through it to lock it in place.  Slide the fabric out of the slots horizontally an inch or so.

Now get a hold of the plastic bead and pull it out. Do this carefully, as you will need that plastic bead to secure the new fabric in place. If you pull too hard you can break it.

You will note that the old shade material is sewn together to make a loop around the bead. It is not necessary to reproduce this, as the bead will be tight enough to hold the new material in place. Once you’re done, you should have two empty rollers, two empty pull handles, four strips of plastic bead, two discarded sheets of screen/shade, and the plastic housing.

Now is the part that, for me, was the most difficult: cutting the fabric. This is at least in part due to a lack of tools and work surface to do the job properly, but I find working with fabric in general difficult. The first time I cut shades, it came out as a completely useless parallelogram. Cut the material to EXACTLY the same width, but give yourself an extra inch or so in length. I used a vinyl-backed cloth material for making blackout curtains from JoAnn, and obtained replacement screen material from Home Depot.

At this point I stopped taking pictures because I thought I would take more when I did the other window, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet. I’ll make a follow up post when I do, but in the mean time, here’s how to finish the job:

• “Stab” the fabric into the slot on the roller with a credit card for a few inches on one end. Slide the plastic bead in the slot forming a loop in the fabric. Repeat this process a few inches at a time until the fabric is firmly attached to the roller for the entire length. Repeat for the pull handle.
• Roll up the fabric onto the roller. See the pictures above if you forgot which way they should go.
• Insert the flat end of the metal rod back in the slot on the plastic housing. Rotate the roller about a dozen times to regain the tension, then put the roller flush in the housing.  The pull handle should keep it from unrolling until you manage to screw the side back on.
• Screw the unit back onto the wall. When putting the side rails back on, make sure the pull handles are inside the slots.

The finished product: an intact screen and significantly less beige.

Strip Lighting

One of the things I dislike about the t@b is the lighting.  All three lights are at eye level when sitting down, so there is horrible glare when you are inside at nighttime.  Also, the light in the kitchen is mounted on the side, which makes it impossible to see what you were cooking because it throws a shadow in any sort of pot with high sides.  I actually need a flashlight to reheat stew.

LED strip lighting is pretty cheap and can be wired directly into the 12v system in the trailer.  So I removed the kitchen light, replaced it with a switch, and added two sets of lighting.  The first is in the kitchen; I put a strip going across the width of the overhead cabinets and tacked on some trim using finishing nails.

Now I have light coming from directly above and I can see what I am doing.  The stainless steel backdrop also reflects it out so it can be used as general lighting as well.

I added a second strip to the top of the window valence on the left side.  This provides indirect lighting that is bright enough to work with without the harsh glare of something mounted on the wall. The valence already had a lip and it is also above your head, so there was no need to add trim up there to hide the strip.

While I was fiddling with wiring, I also added a bluetooth sound bar. I wanted something built-in like the newer trailers have, but I only found some rather expensive ones that were a brand I never heard of so I didn't bother. But as luck would have it I found an Amazon Basics sound bar that (a) had wall mounting hardware and (b) took exactly 12v as input, which meant I could wire it straight in. All I needed to do was cut off the AC adapter block and attach the wires.  Note this is the sound bar model without the subwoofer, as that model took something like 15v.

I do regret where I mounted it.  I centered it in the valence, but I think it would have looked a lot better centered over the window instead.  But I'm not willing to make more holes in exposed woodwork to change it.

The wiring itself was rather simple.  I kept the original wiring for the light (red) and added more wiring (blue) to reach the overhead cabinets and the window valence after the new switches.

I wish I could get strip lights in the right hand side window valence, but there is no existing route to exploit to get it there.  But the two strip lights I have already are more than bright enough; I only use the remaining two lights over the bed if I need to get up in the middle of the night.

The Paint Job - Part 5

So I decided to dremel the rivets off of the main bucket and replace with nuts and bolts.  That was pretty easy.  But all attempts to dremel off the rivets on the lid failed; it was obvious that there was no way to remove them without also damaging the plastic.  So I masked the metal trim on the lid with masking tapee.

The repairs to the bucket were extensive.  This represents almost an entire tube of JB Weld (done on both sides).

The frame had some foam tape installed to pad the plastic from vibrations. It was obvious that this was not going to do its job anymore to I scraped it off and replaced it with rubber washers on each hole.

Basically, the bucket was attached using this hardware:

Self-tapping screw
Metal washer
Rubber washer
Plastic bucket
Rubber washer
Trailer frame

An this is the end result...

Only time will tell if the color lasts and the repairs hold up.

Total cans of paint: 10 (might as well save some money and get a 12 pack case).  Total hours: I don't want to think about it.  Dong it one piece at a time over a month or so was the right move; attempting to do this all in one weekend would have killed me.

The Paint Job - Part 4

Good news...the top keder rail did not have butyl tape between the rail and the trim so it was a lot easier to deal with -- screw it off, paint, and screw it back on again. I don't know why that was only featured on the bottom rail, but I am grateful.  The top rail is really long and cleaning that up would have been a shore. There were a couple of places where the trim was cracked, but I patched that up with a bit of JB Weld.

There were so. Many. Screws. All that screwdriver work above my shoulders was a killer. But things are looking decent.

Now on to the tongue box, which I am dreading for reasons I will detail below. First, the propane and battery come out.

The two horizontal bars are the support for both the battery and the propane tank; remove the four screws at each end to remove it.  Or, in my case, three because there was one missing. That certainly explains why it rattled so much.  The screws themselves, large self-tapping sheet metal screws, are all pretty rusted so I will probably replace them with new ones.

Once the bracket is out, an additional six sheet metal screws need to be removed.

Everything's off.

I knew the tongue box was cracked, but I didn't realize it was this bad until I removed it.  Not only is there a chunk missing, but a 6 inch long crack extends from the break to the metal post.  It's going to be a real challenge to repair this in a way that is sustainable.

More bad news. The metal bracket is attached to the plastic via rivets.  So I have a choice -- mask the metal frame for painting, or dremel off the rivets and replace them with nuts and bolts later on.

Same story with the lid -- the metal trim is riveted on.  This, plus the damage to the plastic, is going to make this the most complicated bit on the entire trailer to paint.

It doesn't look half bad with no tongue box at all. If I decide painting is too much work, I might just leave it off permanently. This also means there would be enough room to mount the spare tire up there. Or I might replace it with a generic diamond plate box.

Speaking of paint jobs...

This is not the first time I applied paint to the trailer.  Soon after purchasing it, I painted the CoolCat grill because I found the color (a bad attempt to match the cabinetry) revolting.  Simple enough, remove the screws, scrape off the decal, clean it up, and paint.

I didn't care for the putty-colored refrigerator either, so I painted that as well.  Remove the two screws forming the hinge, and the door comes off.  Mask off the white plastic interior, and go to town. Unfortunately, I didn't mask it very well; I took great care to mask the bits in contact with the front, but didn't think to mask the inside any further.  The result -- a fine mist of black spray-paint wafted onto the interior, making it look like I have black mold growing on the inside.  Luckily, the worst of it was on the bottom and can't be seen easily. The panel to the left of the refrigerator unscrews just like the CoolCat cover, so that was easy.

Now everything in the interior is black...except for that pesky 120v outlet.  Must do something about that.

The Paint Job - Part 3

So at this point I have the entire bottom half of the trim removed.  But before painting, there is a lot of cleanup to do this time.  The keder rails are an absolute mess.

I used a putty knife to scrape off most of it, but the remaining residue needed to be taken off using a strong solvent -- in this case, xylene.  It reduced the butyl tape down to something resembling used chewing gum on a warm day, so physically scraping off as much as possible first is key.  Once cleaned up, I applied a new strip of butyl tape to the rails by cutting the tape lengthways (3/4 inch wide is too much).

Most of the butyl tape stuck to the keder rails but the trim did not go unscathed; I also scraped off what I could using a putty knife.

Since xylene would reduce plastic into a gelatinous mess, I had to resort to using citrus-based degreaser/label remover to get the last of the crud off.  It worked, but required a lot of hard rubbing.  I worked the sections between holes one at a time until it was clean enough to paint.

All told this is about 3-4 hours of work just to get the butyl tape off everything and get the trim cleaned up. I seriously reconsidered taking this project on at this point because I knew the top trim was even longer and was not looking forward to it.  But, once I got the trim back on, it started to be worth it again.  I'm about halfway done at this point.

Oh, and never leave butyl tape lying around on the ground. This is never coming off.