Someone bought our renovated Boler 1300 so I bought a 17 which had been sitting in a back alley for 3 years with broken roof vents and leaky everything. We're going camping on June 15th (had already booked that before we were convinced to sell our 13; so there's a lot of work to do. The previous owners of the 17 haven't so much as changed a light bulb in the last 20 years.

So the job of stripping almost everything to see where the damage is, and get it all cleaned up was first:

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...Then it was time to attend to the leaks. We had a heavy snow which pointed out where the leaks were... First there was seeping through the fiberglass around the seam in the center, so off came the rail and in went the sealant:

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and out came all the windows for re-sealing:

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Then off came all the interior insulation:

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and fix some dry rot:

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During the process, you find some things that tell you how much love and care went into the manufacture of these things. The gaucho bunk was built with one of the support legs standing on the furnace wiring:

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and the bathroom window was lovingly cut straight leaving lots of room for fasteners:

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These power converters are junk and do nothing but buzz anyway so it's going in the trash:

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So that was 2 weekends of work. Doesn't seem like a lot but it is ... Now that the insulation is gone, and all the old crusty glue has been ground off:

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it's time to start re-constructing... Since I've always wanted to learn how to weld aluminum, I decided to rebuild the bunks out of aluminum:

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I'll post more pictures as I make more progress ....

I like that idea!

You are very ambitious!

It'll look great when you are done, and it's "Your" way.

Hi, Herb
I am greatly interested in following your mods. I have a 1700, that is in a very better condition than yours, but I am thinking about some refreshing on windows and some other minor mods. I am sure you will present some great ideas.
Good luck with your project, and go on showing pics.

What did you use for welding the aluminum? Mapp/Propane Gas and trialloy aluminum brazing rods or did you go all-out and run argon gas and aluminum alloy welds?

One of these days I'll have to learn how to torch-weld . . . All I've done is brazing and wire-feed arc welding.

--Peter

I have what's called a ReadyWelder which is basically a spool gun with some battery clamps. It also has a gas valve. I clamped it to my MIG supply and hooked up an Argon tank with my MIG regulator... The ReadyWelder is really just a trail welder meant to run off car batteries with some flux core for emergency welding. I put a spool of aluminum wire in it to try out Al welding... Seems to work ok.

Looks good Herb. I can see by one of your pictures how much more lift you get with the spring over.

What are you going to use for your new insulation?

Joe at TeamTrillium (and International RV) sold me some closed-cell foam that he uses on the Outbacks.. It's about 3/8" thick.. Then over top of that, I'll be laying the light brown fuzzy stuff that he glues on top of the same insulation.

I'm totally not looking forward to that task.

Had a busy weekend and a few busy evenings...

I did some more exterior work. After the most recent rain, I found some more leaks so I had to seal some more stuff that I was planning to leave alone until I painted the exterior. That was actually a silly notion, in retrospect. One thing I discovered was water leaking out from under the shower/bathroom (which on my model is right beside the fridge). Since my trailer hasn't had any active plumbing in 3 years, I was sure it was rain water. Since I had just resealed the bathroom window and frame, I was confident that wasn't it. The next place I looked was inside the fridge access panel on the outside. It was drenched . We live on a windy hill so rain probably got blown inside the vents and then dripped down onto the wood, and from there, through the cracks in the old sealant (butyl putty plus some other caulking) and down the inside and finally out from under the fridge/bathroom wall onto the visible floor. Still not entirely sure how that fridge area should honestly be drained but I'm thinking of building a wooden dam a few inches in to at least keep the water on the outer few inches of that area...

I also stripped and painted the front of the frame. I got rid of the propane and battery storage because I intend to construct a new storage bin like I did on my 1300. Since the hitch was pretty impossible to wire-wheel, I sandblasted it with my cheapo princess auto sand blaster:

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I also added a bike carrier receiver and redesigned the tire carrier on the rear bumper:

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and I rolled some truck bed liner on the front of the trailer to hopefully prevent more rock chips. I'm taking a gamble on this because I wasn't entirely pleased with the performance of the 'rubberized rock guard' stuff on the 1300..

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Finally, I took the wheels off and left them at the tire store to be replaced and while there, took the brake drums off, repacked the bearings and inspected the brakes:

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(also in that picture, you can see the motion sensitive porch light that I installed. I've had this light sitting in a box for years always intending to put it on my 1300 but never getting around to it (sorry Yuri). Since the porch light on this trailer was decimated in some high speed pine tree collision, this was perfect.)
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On the inside, I've been busy as well.. I sealed and painted the floor plus sprayed the storage compartments with rubberized rock guard. I wasn't thinking when spraying the side gaucho area and sprayed a little too high for some inane reason.. I also finished the dinette bunk and side gaucho bunk in aluminum:

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For the upper bunk/storage compartment, we plan to put my 5 year old up there so we can leave the dinette in table form as opposed to bed form. We figure this will be good for a few years... So I welded a rail out of aluminum. I've bought a ladder to mount to here as well. Time will tell whether this will all work out for the better.

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I'll replace those bolts with proper ones later.

As far as electrical goes, I was hoping to leave well enough alone but I discovered the converter that came with the 1700 couldn't so much as supply enough power to spin the hood fan, I decided to give the whole thing a rototilling. Out came the converter. It must have been someone's idea of a joke. The stove hood fan would barely spin so I figured it was broken. I took it downstairs, hooked it up to my variable DC supply and when I turned the supply on, the fan jumped to life, launched itself off my bench and proceeded to take a chunk out of my thigh. It then hung there by its wires spinning itself in a gyroscopic frenzy while I contemplated what was wrong with the stupid converter that couldn't even supply 800mA to turn a motor (no batteries were hooked up)... Plus the fact that there's 20 feet of cord sticking through a massive hole in the side of the trailer (along with I found an entomologists dream of dead insects which clearly, over the years, had decided to crawl in this 'cable access port' and make their home). So I bought a new cable hatch, bondo'd the old holes, and epoxied in a twist lock 30A 125V male connector. Then I'll cut the cable to length and connect it to the AC breaker panel that was part of the old converter.

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I'll make some pigtails to convert to 30A male RV as well as 15A household. I've never encountered an RV park with one of those 30A RV plugins so I'll store that 15 foot pigtail deep in the rear storage compartment where nothing else will fit in the event that I wind up in one of those RV parks at some point. I don't know yet whether this is a good idea or not but it has to be better than losing almost an entire storage compartment to a 20 foot black cable that has been pushed in there through a 1inch hole, not to mention the insect ingress... I sleep in a trailer because I don't like bugs crawling on me while I'm asleep.

As far as DC, my plan is to put a 30A fusible link on the battery, run that to a DC breaker panel and use a smart car charger to keep the battery (or batteries, I haven't decided) charged. I also have a 55W solar panel that I'll mount to the roof and a controller to charge the battery(batteries)... I'll probably have to get to this next, since I'm coming close to laying the insulation and fuzz...

New cushions have also been ordered ....

That's all for now ...

Very interesting project Herb.You mentioned one maybe two batteries.I use 2-6volt batteries.Best power decision i ever made.With your solar power unit you would be good for a long time.

Well, I'll probably go for 2 12V batteries just for practicality... First, I still have 2 deep cycle group 24 UPS batteries... Also, since one of my trucks is a diesel, if my truck batteries dies, I can boost my truck from them; and finally, I can rewire them in series and use them for emergency welding ... Additionally, if one of them drops a cell, then I can still get a full 12V out of the second one whereas if I have 2 6V batteries and one of them drops a cell, then everything will be running at half power and it's not clear whether the furnace fan running at 6V would be enough to clear the heat out of the combustion chamber of the furnace... I can probably still last a few days out in the bush with the solar charger topping up a single 12V battery than with a single 6V battery that I can't charge with my solar charger.

Anyway, that's my theory.. I don't know how truly valid it is.

Herb, now I feel like I have neglected my B1700! Nice work!

I particularly like the reworked spare mount: I think that the stock design places the tire unnecessarily far back.

The dual 12V battery logic makes perfect sense to me. Dual 6V batteries intended for golf cart service seem to be very readily available at good prices, which is a good reason to use them, but the same type and total size of battery in 12V has the same performance. One caution: with two batteries in parallel, care should be taken to keep the wiring to them identical in resistance, to encourage balanced operation.

Things are coming along nicely Herb, good job on the updates. Don't worry about the porch light... As for the rubberized rock guard, I taped and resprayed the front of the 1300 2 weeks ago and while it did go on beautifully, delivering back to the storage site managed to knock a few flecks free showing the marine paint underneath, for undercoating spray the stuff doesn't stick all that well, anyhow a good touch up every few months should restore the luster. Its only 6$ / can anyhow.

Your 55W solar panel plan should charge the 2x 12V batteries nicely, I picked up a 15W panel at Walmart for $99 (Can Tire wants 165$, sheesh) and a charge controller and managed to charge the 2x12V batteries on the 1300 40% (from 40% charge to 80% charge) last week just laying it on the front rack facing straight up. Last week was quite overcast as well. Based on my super low power consumption I'm thinking that it will suffice for my needs.

Here's to hoping you can get it all done by the time your first camping trip rolls around.

Thanks for the encouragement ....

So, has anyone done anything to isolate the furnace from the chassis so as to reduce the noise from the furnace fan? When the fan is on, the whole trailer sort of 'hums' because the furnace is bolted straight to the chassis ... I'm thinking of isolating it somehow but not really sure how yet...

Herb, Find some of those round rubber pads with a bolt hole in the middle that come from packing crates that machinery is shipped in. Or something similar. They usually throw them out.
The diaphram pump I installed in our Boler has rubber mounts.
I used some on the legs of my 80 gallon vertical compressor rather than bolting it to the floor. What a difference in the noise level! Also it doesn't move around at all.

yeah, that's sort of what I was picturing... I should head off to the dump and find an old refrigerator and grab the rubber mounts off the compressor. I'm curious whether that's going to reduce the noise level enough.

Don't get too hung up on eliminating the noise entirely, but you can reduce it by quite a bit, from damned annoying to just slightly annoying!

I want to make sure the heater doesn't drown out the campground crows at 5AM.

:-)

Been another week and I've been busy again though a lot of what I've done is not really visible or substantive ... I took the day off work yesterday to make it a 4 day long weekend of work in the trailer ... June 15th is creeping up...

The stove vent was a particular irritation to me. It's such a simple thing yet somehow, some previous bonehead managed to screw it up... The fan wouldn't come on unless the light was on. I'm not sure what neural dysfunction caused someone to rewire it that way but it's fixed now. I also removed the remnants of the wasp nest that was in it and sealed the inside of the vent with bugscreen to prevent future penetration by the insect set ...

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There was an AC plug under the dinette, the purpose of which I couldn't deduce considering there is also one on the front of the kitchen counter. It's hard to reach and I figure if I really must have the toaster to hand while having breakfast, I'll hire a therapist. So I moved the outlet to an even more difficult to reach spot to accomodate the battery charger under the sink. I figure there can be no problem putting an electrical outlet next to a hot water heater.

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I finally managed to get the scissor jacks of my dreams and welded them into place. I discovered that a person can either pull up a beach mat and spend some quality time lowering these by hand with the crank they provide, or I can carry a cordless drill with me.
I have a Ryobi drill and a vacuum cleaner that both take the same kind of battery. I think I'll add a little storage place just for the drill and vacuum (and hand crank).

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...continued.....

As part of my rethink of the electrical system, I found a new cable hatch (why do manufacturers think you want to have a gigantic opening in which to hang an insect highway on the inside storage compartment of your trailer?) and epoxied in a household 30A 125V male connector. I almost put the wrong gender of connector in there, I got so far as to mix the epoxy and had it all fitted on my bench before I realized my horrible mistake.

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The previous tongue jack was missing its platform and the crank interfered with my spare tire carrier so it needed to move. I was going to move it to my bbq/cooler rack (future installment of this topic) but wasn't able to find a happy mount mechanism. This one was $29 and I could simply weld it to the side of the tongue. I added a half inch steel plate to reinforce the area before welding the jack in place. It has lots of lift and best of all, the handle comes off easily so I can use my drill to raise/lower it.

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I ran out of 'spare matching wood' for the various cabinets so I bought some of that fiberglass sheet they sell at Home Depot. It looks decent and clean... I mounted it on the front of side gaucho bunk. Looks 'ok'. I think I'm going to re-face those doors in the same material some day plus add another little storage door for the vacuum cleaner and drill to the left there.

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Gonna be a busy rest of the weekend so I'll be back to post more ...

This weekend I spent a lot of time not really accomplishing anything... I did build 90% of my front storage rack... I like having 2 batteries and I figure they put two propane tanks on the 1700 for good reason, and finally, I like having our beverages and such stored out of the trailer so we're not waking our kid up after he goes to bed. Plus, there's never room in the fridge. I also like somewhere to put the bbq for both travel and cooking. This rack worked really well on the 1300 so here we are:

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I still have to build the swing out tray for the bbq as well as devise some way to secure the propane tanks..

Also did some basic fiberglassing. The previous owner must have backed into a tree trunk or something. Sadly, his idea of 'fix' was to cover the crack with bondo and paint it with tremclad. The bondo didn't stick but created a nice ledge for water to collect on and seep into the rear storage compartment. So I ground away all the bondo and applied 3 layers of fiberglass cloth... When it stops snowing, I'll sand it flush, finish with a skim coat of body filler and temporarily paint it until I do the final paint...

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I also dismantled the horrible arborite job in the kitchen. There was 2 layers of arborite with curious seams all over the place... Purple/blue doesn't go with brown...

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It's going to be nice and simple white with oak trim.

A lot of work happened this weekend. My father came over and helped with the insulation/headliner and the arborite. We managed to do all the insulation, then all the headliner, and all the arborite/backsplash in a single 12 hour day with a brief stop for lunch and support... On Sunday, I did some final cosmetic touchup on the headliner, (add a few chunks where some of our borders came up a little short, blend some seams, cleanup some glue strings), plus added the counter top moldings, and got a start on the electrical. I also replaced the fridge door panel with some of that fiberglass sheeting.

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...and looking forward... here you can see the fiberglass sheet I used to replace the old wooden 'backsplash' in the front dinette. I asked myself whether to bother or not. I could have just mounted the table right onto the plywood behind the insulation but then the fuzzy stuff would get dirty whenever we wiped the table or ate spaghetti, or what have you...

As you can see, I made a measuring error while cutting this but I think the cushions will hide it. If not, I can fix it for the cost of another 4x8 sheet...

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Right now the sink is just sitting in there. I'll need to seal it as well.

Floor is almost done. Still missing some mouldings and have to size the doors to fit still....

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Looking good---How hard to install insulation / headliner?

HERB- - -looks good. But I gotta ask ya--I didn't know you had put a loft in-is that where that ladder leads to???? Larry

It was a nightmare. Well, a daymare anyway... My dad and I worked for about 12 hours from bare fiberglass shell, to complete (modulo 2 hours of trimming and cosmetic cleanup the next day). The glue that Joe sold us gives you no margin for error. If you get a piece placed wrong and let it grab hold of something, then when you try to peel it back off, you end up with both sides of the glue in one place and you have to respray the other 'half' again. The insulation part was very unforgiving but since it was only the insulation, we could be as patchy as we wanted... The headliner however, was very sensitive to alignment, and apparently had a 'direction' component too (some of the headliner looks dark/light depending on which way you're looking, however it had a little more give. ie: it could be stretched about a half inch to meet a seam... I thought the 1700 would be easier than a 1300 due to not really having any compound curves (all the compound curves already had furniture on them), but it turns out there are just enough compound curves to really frustrate. Namely the raised center roof section. If you start on one edge, then the roof section screws up your panel and you're out about an inch by the time you get across it...

The whole experience was most unpleasant. The result that Joe gets on the Outback is far better than what I got; but my neighbors all say what we ended up with looks professional.. I guess I can see all the flaws because I know where they are.

That's for the rooftop patio.

Actually, it's for the bunkbed.

http://www.beer.org/gallery/Boler17-refresh/IMG_5454

Thanks Herb for feed back on Insolation and Headliner install

Another additional bit of progress...

Finished the electrical work. I have a (presently slightly undersized for the inverter) feed coming in through a fusible link, to a 30A main breaker, and from there to a breaker/switch panel. The solar charger also connects to the 30A main breaker (panel side) and the inverter goes between main breaker and fusible link. Everything is protected theoretically.

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Looks a little disorganized but everything is labelled, and strapped together in manageable groups.... The coil on the floor is the wiring from the 7 pin trailer connector.

No new pictures yet. This week/weekend was spent on little things. Clean all the windows with a toothbrush and hot water/varsol... The right thing to do here would have been to dismantle all the windows when I had them out to reseal them but this works ok too... Rebuilt a couple of screens that were broken/stretched/oxidized.. The big job was wiring up a hoppy 4->7 connector in the truck plus installing the prodigy and running 8ga charging wire from one of the truck batteries to the plug. I tested all the lights on the trailer plus the brakes, and took it for a spin.. The brakes seem to work well, though I don't know what to expect having never had them before...

Lots of little teeny detail jobs were done this weekend. It's amazing how the loose ends all pile up into a gargantuan amount of work. I broke a plumbing fitting so I'll have to fix some of that before I fire up the plumbing...

Only 4 more days before we go camping the first time... Getting tight.

Finally got through a substantial portion of the list just in time for our first planned camping trip...

Here's my little one up in the upper bunk. He liked it up there but the mattress was a little hard...

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This was 'camp', such as it was. We didn't get the new awning in time so I just threw a tarp up over part of the trailer.. Turns out to have been a good thing since it rained most of the time we were there ....

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Then on Sunday early morning (2:30 AM, we heard some cracking, and then a thunk/slide.. Looked like the weight of the water from the rain took down the tarp. oh well. 6:30 AM, I woke up to find I couldn't open the trailer door. Here's what happened:

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...I moved the gazebo thingy under the tarp the night before just so it would dry off and I could pack it up easier the next morning... That night it started snowing. The weight of the heavy snow broke the tarp lines and dropped the tarp down on top of the gazebo which promptly buckled and became pinned against the door of the trailer. I could only open the door about 2 inches. I couldn't move it with my hand through the slot in the door. So I told Shari/Jakob that we may as well make our final phone calls because we had been buried alive... Just when I'd lost the will to live, I remembered the dinette window. I got out my trusty jack knife and started hacking away at the gazebo through the window, started pulling on pipes and other assorted carnage, until finally, I was able to open the door just wide enough for my svelte physique to glide through... The cracking I heard was the trees breaking and falling down... So I got my wits about me and started dismantling camp. I had to move several tons of wet slushy snow to free the tarp and shove its dripping wetness into the back of the truck, along with the rest of camp. Shari and jakob in the meantime luxuriated in the warm confines of the trailer as well as packed up.. By 8:00AM, we were on the road. The roads were icy and the trailer really wanted to spend another night in the ditch but I fought it and got us back on the highway...

Isn't camping fun?

Well, glad you got out and used your new toy. And Jakob looks so very cute with his teddy bear in the bunk! I suppose you'll be driving further south for your next camping trip, no?

--Peter

YEOW! And people wonder why little trailers need an egress window or roof vent...just imagine if it would have been a tree blocking the door.

Snow and all, it appears the trailer is the ticket to keep the family warm and dry

Well, you did want to make memories

The egress window in my B1700RGH is the rear one, over the gaucho. It's just a normal horizontal slider, but it is the largest, and is designated as the emergency exit by a label. It would be an awkward exit, but I'd take it rather than stay in a fire, for instance.

I don't know if the Side Gaucho B1700 has a similarly designated window, but the street side dinette window looks like the same size (and type) as my rear window.

The kitchen window on the side gaucho is designated as the emergency exit though I tried to lift the glass panel out and couldn't...

I'm pretty sure I could find multiple ways out of the trailer in the event of a real emergency. Back window included...

So far, this trailer is proving to be a real source of 'learning experiences'.

Given that the kitchen is along the street side, this is the same window which I referred to as the street side dinette window; we seem to be on the same track.

I don't think the panes lift out readily - I assume that they just expect you to go out the normally opening part. It's not like the real egress windows as found in buses (and modern RVs?), in which a red handle releases the whole thing to swing out.

Yes, you're right... We are talking about the same window. I have trouble with 'curb side' and 'street side' for some reason... "port" and "starboard" works for me though. :-)

Herb, your snapshot of the camper ought to make home page status. We always show our rigs in lovely backgrounds. But sometimes, reality intrudes.

Oh Michael (or whoever selects the home page pics), what about it? It would reflect the hardyness of the fiberglass camper, and stress its "all seasons" capability.

Well, the blueness was really a camera operator malfunction instead of an actual representation of the lighting... It did, in hindsight, adequately represent our mood though...

It's June in the Kananaski's.

Hi Herb. Just bought a Boler 1300.A week later I came across another for free.Needs some work and thought that you may be able to give me some ideas.Basically the interior is fiberglass so any material which you did your 1700 would help.I would not have a clue where to buy ensolite in the Maritimes.Any other hints would be helpful as well.

You could order from Team Trillium... They don't have any choices ... One insulation, and one color/style of headliner. Also one choice of glue... I used a $20 paint gun from Princess Lotto as I figured it would be 'done' by the time the job finished. I didn't want to trash my really expensive HVLP gun... Joe says they use 36 linear feet of hull liner for the Outback's... I used less than that on the 1700 but the 1700 has more furniture/windows, and I didn't do the inside of the cupboards...

Another place to check is Aqualine Vinyl but they don't sell the closed cell foam insulation or the glue... The glue they recommend only works well on vertical surfaces... Joe uses some other glue (that I don't know the name of) that he's found works well on vertical and horizontal surfaces. Having used it, I can attest to that... It's very tenacious.

Figure on this costing you about $500 for materials alone. This is a horrific job and I can see every flaw in mine... Check your local hotrod club to see if they have an upholstery guy you can hire to do this for you..

I finally took a few minutes to take some 'basically finished' shots of the interior...

In retrospect, I'm not entirely pleased with how the white fiberglass backsplash for the dinette area worked out... It lines up perfectly with the window but looks awkward with the cushions and table... The table itself is still the ugly one from the previous owners but I haven't gotten around to building a new one yet.

The cooler normally rides on the front rack but lives inside so it doesn't get stolen while the trailer sits on my driveway.

In the corner, I bought a cheap meter from Princess Auto which is for debugging electrical problems out in the field, but it also doubles as a battery monitor. It is connected to two banana plugs on the storage compartment (can just barely see them above the cushion) and the meter is velcro'd to the hull liner. Above the meter is the clock/indoor-outdoor thermometer. Next to that is a dual 12v power outlet for charging cellphones, GPS, ipods, etc...
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Nothing exciting here. I mounted a fiberglass panel to protect the wood panelling when the gaucho is slid out into bed form. I also added one between the bathroom door and fridge to accomodate the coat hooks and a handle for my son to stabilize himself when he climbs down the ladder.
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I replaced all the lighting with these truck dome lights. They're very bright and they're very cheap (about $12ea). They also take standard brake light bulbs so eventually I can put LED bulbs in if I feel like conserving power. For now, one provides plenty of light for the dinette or kitchen sink.
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A final shot of the kitchen counter. Nothing exciting. Basic white arborite with some oak trim... I cut up an old kitchen cutting board to fit over the stove. Still not convinced of that idea...
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That largely fixes the interior. The outside still needs lots of work.

Herb,

That is beautiful work! Your trailer looks absolutely beautiful inside.

All your hard work really paid off. Looks great!!