1973 Compact Jr

[Mike Taylor]

Norcold 323
I have a 1973 Compact II and when my original Dometic stopped working on gas I had to find a replacement. I found that the Norcold 323 fridge is only 21 1/4 inch deep so it fit in the space fine. The only problem with the newer fridges in this size is there is no freezer section. It does a good job of cooling on gas or 120volt. I've never ran it on 12v but it is wired if I need to.

[Dana T]

Thanks for the info Heath & Mike!

[Dana T]

Man, is it late!

Both in time of day and well past time to update this thread.

Here are some pictures of what I dragged home in the wee hours, but taken the next day when it was light out.



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You can see I didn't do a good job of tucking in the poptop skirt...

[Dana T]

The bent bumper and broken window are quite visible here.




The previous owner is quite a bit shorter than me, so the shelf above the dinette worked well for him but not for me. I also found the TV shelf at the end of the dinette intruded into my space too much.




The vinyl skirt is yellowed and cracked with the bigger splits mended by tape.




The upside is the trailer has a heater, the downside is that it probably doesn't work.

[Dana T]

Here's the other side -- we have a dorm fridge (110V only) and a small clothes closet.

[Dana T]

So what's hiding under the dinette seats? Uh oh, mold, mildew, and rot. However, we also have a camp axe, shovel, and the wheel for the tongue jack.




We also have some 12V electronics of uncertain condition.

[Dana T]

The original galley vent rusted out so it was replaced with a standard heater vent. I found the pieces of the original several days later behind the heater.

[Dana T]

These are the tires that I didn't want to drive home on, so I replaced them at the first town I came to.


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[Dana T]

The top is dished instead of bowed.




The rubber channel in the windows has cracked and shrunk tremendously.




Looky what I found underneath the swing jack and layers of paint!

[Dana T]

I pulled off the curbside window and discovered several things. One is that the screws along the top are very close to the edge of the fiberglass, and one isn't even in the fiberglass at all!



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How do you like the original color -- robin's egg blue!?

For where I'm going I think the mud brown is a better choice...

[Kent I]

Wonderful photo documentation. It would appear that the quilted insulation was added in 1973 models. I have the same issue of screw holes for the curbside window very close to the edge of the cut out. I am trusting the sandwhich effect to hold all in place.

[Rick Brown]

I think all the Jr windows were cut the same because mine were that way. I just made sure the screws were in the wood trim and every thing has been fine. Keep posting pictures on your progress and good luck with your trailer. A couple owners have done ground up restorations which are a great help when working on our trailers.

[Dana T]

Hi Kent, I also decided it was better to leave things alone regarding the screw holes right at the edge of the fiberglass and like you am also depending on the fact that the aluminum window frame and the new wood frame I built adequately sandwich the fiberglass. The somewhat scary part is that the waterproof seal at the top of the window is less than a 1/16" in width -- it doesn't leave much margin of safety!

[Dana T]

Thank you for the kind words, Rick.

Yes, I have been reading the other threads about refurbishments to get ideas for my own. And I'm not limiting myself to only Compact Jr threads either! There's lots of really great stuff here.

[Dana T]

The original wood frames for the side windows were completely rotten -- I pulled them off without having to bother removing the screws.

So I made new ones out of poplar stock I got at Home Depot.




Some previous owner had decided the way to stop the leaks was to tighten the screws some more. Of course this only succeeded in bending the frame so the points halfway between the screws stood even further from the trailer body with the result that the windows leaked even worse than before.



This is something my father taught me when I was replacing the thick cork oilpan gasket in my mother's Nash -- only tighten the studs as much as necessary to make good contact. If you tighten any more than that the pan will distort and it will leak worse than if it had no gasket at all.

After careful hammering and flexing I got the frames pretty well straightened out again.




I used the windows themselves as the jigs for squaring up the wooden frames when I glued the joints. I did it this way so if the frames were not square it wouldn't matter -- the wooden frame would match the window anyway.

[Dana T]

While the window frames were setting up, and then being varnished, I attacked the cushions. I pulled off the current covers and was greeted with the original fabric -- it was so choice that I had to set them in the trailer so we could enjoy them in their full glory:




Here's the label which tells us the foam is urethane foam:




The original covers were badly sun-rotted, and the foam itself quite moldy, so I ripped off the covers and this is what I saw:




I washed each foam block in the bathtub with Clorox water and lots of rinses, drained overnight, then I used a wet/dry shop vacuum to pull out most of the water that was left. Even so, each cushion took several days to dry because the humidity is high here near the coast. So it took about a week and a half to do all four cushions. They do look quite a bit better now:




The reason I didn't just toss them and buy new foam is that my wife and I are not sure how much camping we will want or be able to do. This way we won't have a whole lot of money sunk into this project if it turns out we need to abandon it.

[Dana T]

While the varnish was drying on the window frames and the cushions were drying out, I cleaned up the walls and floor of the trailer. Fortunately that quilted vinyl will tolerate some pretty agressive cleaning to rid it of the accumulated dirt and mold.




I also had to tear out much of the upper framing for the dinette seats because it was pretty rotten, especially on the curb side.


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So, I could make seat slats with wood from Home Depot, or something I found at our local ReStore -- the Habitat for Humanity store. I found some really nice maple cabinet doors for only $1 each, which was quite a bit cheaper than buying the same amount of poplar at Home Depot -- and the wood in the cabinet doors was better too! Well, when I came time to cut them up I just couldn't -- they were too pretty. So I went back to the ReStore and bought some doors that were in a hideous color that I wouldn't mind cutting up. As I was walking out one of the volunteers looked at the doors and said "Ooh, that's my favorite color!" Because it wasn't my favorite color, I happily sliced them up to make the seat slats.




Another piece of wood I found at the ReStore was a very nice 3/4" birch plywood sheet 34" x 48" -- just right for the table top (2' x 4') with two 10" x24" pieces left over to fill in the aisleway slats when the dinette was made into the bed. I got that for the grand total of $11 + tax!

[Dana T]

I finally got the table in and the foam cushions dried out and back in their covers, so it was time for the acid test -- is the trailer comfortable?

On July 3 my wife and I camped out in our back yard, and slept in the trailer. We wanted to know whether the foam cushions were adequate -- and they were! We did lightly bottom out on them, but not so much that it was annoying and it certainly did not impede sleeping.

The trailer had passed it's first major test!

[francene]

Nice work, Dana! You really must have scrubbed the inside; it looks so much better than the 'before' pictures.

I did the same thing with my foam cushions- lots of bleach and many days in the sun.

You really fixed the windows nicely; the woodwork on the frames is very cool.

Great finds at your Restore- wow, that's nice thick birch ply. Good show!

Keep up the nice work; looks like you've gotten a lot done so far, in not much time.

Fran
74 Compact II

[Dana T]

Hi Fran, I'm just trying to keep up with you!

In comparison to your thorough renovation my little dibs and dabs are quite picayune. The "woodwork" in mine is pretty pathetic, with the contact paper peeling off and the drawers askew, but I'm leaving that alone for now because I really want to take the trailer out and use it this summer. My wife has some time off in early August so I had better have things buttoned up by then.

A funny thing is that the broken rear window is the first thing I started to fix, but only got done a couple of days ago. Other things, like mold eradication, took priority. Oh yeah, "done" is a relative term -- it's good enough to use, but it would be nice to fix the latches as well.