1963 Airstream Safari: Structural Roof Repair

Part of the reason the roof on this 1963 Airstream Safari was collapsing under the weight of the air conditioner has to do with the Airstream design.  Most of the structural aluminum ribs that arch up from the plywood floor to support the interior and exterior skins don’t span the entire width of the travel trailer.  Instead of making a complete arch from one side of the trailer to the other they stop at the center of the roof.  As they are also placed on alternating sides and 30″ apart on average, there isn’t a whole lot of load bearing capacity for anything besides the structure itself.  The reason the ribs don’t span from side to side seems to primarily involve window and door placement.  As a rib arches up from one side of the trailer there is either a window or the door in the way of that rib continuing down the other side.  One of these half ribs runs on either side of the opening in the roof where the air conditioner sits.  I decided the best way to spread that load out would be to continue the rib down the other side as far as possible.

Since I couldn’t run out and buy new ribs at the auto part or RV store I had to fabricate them.  (I suppose I could have had a metal shop bend some aluminum C channel to the desired shape but that wasn’t really in the schedule or the budget.)  I bought some off the shelf aluminum C channel that was 1.5″ wide with .5″ legs and .125″ thick.  I cut it into lots of 6″ long pieces which I then riveted together in the approximate shape of the rib that I needed.

New rib riveted together.

I determined that shape by forcing the roof back to it’s natural position with a couple boards wedged between the existing ribs and the plywood floor.  I was then able to rivet the 6″ sections on one at a time matching the contour of the exterior skin.  I also attached two pieces of 1.5″ square aluminum between the two ribs on either side of the air conditioner opening as extra reinforcement.

After everything was riveted into place I removed the 2 boards I used to wedge the ceiling in place.  The structure didn’t stay exactly in the desired shape, but the sagging was very minimal and infinitely better and stronger than what existed previously.  As a final test I grabbed onto the sides of the opening and pulled my feet off the ground to see how well it would support my 155 pounds.  It passed the test, so I had no worries that the new 95-100 pound air conditioner would be supported adequately.  Yes, that’s right I said new air conditioner.  It

View of two new ribs, one running partway down either side of the trailer.

was hoped that the 1970′s Coleman unit would be salvageable, but after I opened it up to have a look the news wasn’t good.  Rather than get everything back together and have the unit fail in a year or two it was decided to go ahead and replace it with a new one.  So it was ordered and the rewiring commenced.

The air conditioner opening, now fully supported on 4 sides.

1963 Airstream Safari: Adaptive Reuse

1963 Airstream Safari

I had an unusual job come my way in the recent past and I thought it was worth writing about.  A local Phoenix art, design, and crafting firm, 26 Letters, purchased a 22 foot 1963 Airstream Safari about a year ago with the intention of transforming it into a small backyard artist’s studio.  After the purchase I was implored, and then employed, to undertake this remodel, restoration, re-purposing.  In much the same way that the city of Phoenix has made it a bit easier for entrepreneurs to reuse historic downtown structures as commercial establishments, I intended to turn this self sufficient travel trailer into an open floor plan studio space.  The fancy construction term for this sort of thing is “adaptive reuse.”

Almost all of the  interior furnishings and accoutrement were already missing when the Airstream was purchased from it’s last owner.  This  made the first step in this project, gutting the interior, much easier as there was almost nothing to remove.  As the 46 year old electrical wiring was looking tired and dangerous, a total rewire sounded like the best bet. In order to get access to the wiring the interior paneling, or skin, had to be removed.  The interior skin of an old Airstream travel trailer is much the same as the exterior.

A section of interior skin before removal.

There are thin sheets of aluminum riveted to the structural aluminum ribs that attach to a plywood floor, which is in turn bolted to a steel frame.  Removing the interior skin involves drilling out all the rivets so the panels will come loose.  Fortunately for me the previous owner had already drilled out quite a few rivets and made my job faster.  Once all the interior skin was removed I got rid of the old fiberglass insulation that was sandwiched in the 1.5″ space between the interior and exterior skins.  This gave me complete access to the nasty old wiring and also revealed a rather disturbing structural issue that needed to be dealt with.

Aistream interior with the skin removed

Back in 1963 Airstream did not make any provisions for a roof mounted air conditioning unit.  It is my understanding that they didn’t begin reinforcing the roof structure to accommodate this until 1969 or so.  When the air conditioning unit was mounted on this particular Safari, probably in the 1970′s sometime, they did very little to support the extra 100+ pounds of weight.  100 pounds doesn’t sound like that much, but unless you’ve seen an old Airstream up close, especially with the interior skin removed, it’s hard to describe just how flimsy and insubstantial the whole thing is.  The tin can descriptions are very accurate, and since virtually everything above the plywood floor is aluminum you can literally bend the frame and panels with your bare hands.  So before I tackled the rewiring I had to fix the structural problem as air conditioning is a must for spring and summertime use in Phoenix.

Sagging Airstream roof (see bent rib towards the bottom of the photo).

Outfitting the Gunnar for Commuting

The rack and basket I ordered arrived the other day, so I set about attaching everything to the Gunnar Sport to complete my bike commuting setup.  On the rear of the bike I attached a cool Nitto Big Back Rack from Rivendell Bicycle Works that came on the Bleriot when I bartered for it.  It’s pretty

Nitto Big Back Rack

simple to attach but I had to get some longer rods to run from the rack to the braze-ons at the tops of the seat stays.  No big deal, and I kind of like the look with the rods running long so I didn’t cut off the excess. I was planning on attaching a Wald wire basket to the Nitto rack but the one I ordered turned out to be a bit small.  The sides taper, so the footprint is smaller than the opening.  Because of that my lunch cooler wouldn’t fit, so I’m sending it back for the so-called Huge size.

The Gamoh front rack from Rivendell Bicycle Works.

On the front of the bike I attached a Gamoh rack, also from Rivendell.  It’s a cool flatbed style rack with wooden slats in the bottom.  The two legs attached to the braze-ons at the fork drop outs easily enough, but I had to remove the brake caliper and do some shuffling around of washers and spacers to attach the top mounting bracket and keep if from rubbing the headset.  Again, no big deal.  These racks, along with my bell, my NiteRider MiNewt headlight, and my blinky rear light almost complete my Gunnar-as-a-commuter set up.  (I still need to get my Huge rear basket.)

The Gunnar 99% ready (need my rear basket).