1993 Scamp 16' repair and remodel

[TheWanderers]

We lightly sanded the primer high spots this evening and then tarped the front half of the camper because the weather is forecasting 60% chance of showers for tomorrow and we don't yet have the new front window completely installed. I have ordered the lock strip tool to complete the job but until that lock strip has been installed, that window will leak.

[TheWanderers]

Well, our local contractor called to say that our new window from the living room of our house is ready for install so I decided to take the day off work to let him in so he could do his magic on the window. While he was installing the new window on the house, I was installing the lock strip on the new front window in Ziggy. THAT job SUCKS!!! I don't believe anyone can complete the installation of the lock strip without the Lisle Lock Strip tool. With the tool, it's incredibly hard. Without the tool, I believe it may be impossible. That job completed.

Once the fog burned off, after installing the lock strip, I whipped Ziggy down and proceeded to paint the final coat of Oyster Whilte Top Side paint to the top above the bellyband. I finished that about 12:30 pm so I chose to jump on the first coat of color below the bellyband. I needed to make a quick run to Lowe's for some supplies, including a few more sanding blocks and a 6" finish roller for behind the bumper. I finished the first coat of Bright Red Top Side at 3:30 pm and we'll have a few hours of cure time before sunset to allow that coat the set. The color coat is a little splotchy but it's supposed to be if'n you're not putting too much paint on in one coat, so...here's an image of what looks like ELECTRIC RED. OMG is that bright in the afternoon sun.

I'm planning on at least one more coat of red and then see how Ziggy looks. It may only take two coats since the primer took so well. We'll see.

[emij]

Originally Posted by TheWanderers

Well, our local contractor called to say that our new window from the living room of our house is ready for install so I decided to take the day off work to let him in so he could do his magic on the window. While he was installing the new window on the house, I was installing the lock strip on the new front window in Ziggy. THAT job SUCKS!!! I don't believe anyone can complete the installation of the lock strip without the Lisle Lock Strip tool. With the tool, it's incredibly hard. Without the tool, I believe it may be impossible. That job completed.

Once the fog burned off, after installing the lock strip, I whipped Ziggy down and proceeded to paint the final coat of Oyster Whilte Top Side paint to the top above the bellyband. I finished that about 12:30 pm so I chose to jump on the first coat of color below the bellyband. I needed to make a quick run to Lowe's for some supplies, including a few more sanding blocks and a 6" finish roller for behind the bumper. I finished the first coat of Bright Red Top Side at 3:30 pm and we'll have a few hours of cure time before sunset to allow that coat the set. The color coat is a little splotchy but it's supposed to be if'n you're not putting too much paint on in one coat, so...here's an image of what looks like ELECTRIC RED. OMG is that bright in the afternoon sun.

I'm planning on at least one more coat of red and then see how Ziggy looks. It may only take two coats since the primer took so well. We'll see.

I LOVE it!! Love the red! It's so fun to see it all finishing up! Good work!

[Jeanne D. in ca]

Love that contrast.
Looks great!

Jeanne

[TheWanderers]

We have some very good weather this morning to keep the bugs down so I put the second coat of red on the bottom. The temperature is only 62° so it's gonna take a while to set and dry to the touch but the damn nats are down so I'm really pleased about that as well as how things look.

If you look at the ground, you'll see that Ziggy is still in the shade of the tree so I had some really easy working this morning. I found that this paint reacts differently from sun to shade and it was weird to start on one side in the shade, with the paint behaving in a certain way, and move into the sun with the paint behaving differently. I still have to paint the rock guard and the A/C cover but I can do that in the garage or basement.

This is looking pretty good and I'm very optimistic for the positive results. In case you're wondering, I feel like getting a chair to sit and watch the paint dry.

Gonna take a third coat to really finish it right.

[TheWanderers]

I'm on vacation this week because it's deer season but I couldn't waste the fine weather scheduled for today while worrying about the impending crash in temps for this weekend. So,...I pulled out the work cart and rolled on the last coat of Rustoleum Top Side Bright Red. The first two coats covered pretty good, but it was clear that we really needed one more coat to smooth out the finish and obtain complete coverage.

Late last night Laura and I decided that now is the time to replace the tail lights as well as the marker lights so we ordered those for replacement and I drilled out the old incandescent fixtures before this last coat of paint.

I started early this morning and towel dried Ziggy because there was so much dew that I just knew that it'd run down onto my fresh wet paint if I didn't take the extra time and care. Then I lightly sanded the previous coat of red followed by a tack cloth to pick up the dust. Using two rollers, one 12" and one 6" as well as a brush for tipping, I applied the final coat of paint slowly, and lightly. There were a few bubbles that wouldn't settle so I just hit them with the brush tips and popped them manually and the finished job looks "marvelous darlings!"

[TheWanderers]

As the sun set Laura and I re-installed the Shady Boy Awning as well as the new rock guard hardware over the new paint job. We were working to finish before losing the light. It seems crazy that the new time change has everything black dark by 5:45 pm, but that's what we were working with/through.

We've ordered new LED lights for the back end as well as the marker lights and those will be installed once they've arrived. Tomorrow I'll re-fit the repainted A/C cover on the side with new hardware and a new weather seal of foam from Scamp. I'll post pictures of the new lights when they're installed, but for now...

It's been a long project and I'm sure we could have done things differently, but it's almost complete, for good or not, and we're pretty pleased with the results. Ziggy looks a lot better than he has for years and shows that somebody loves him.

[TheWanderers]

Well, since it's 77° in November and it would seem like such a waste of the fine day, I decided to paint something! Hummmm,...I've already painted the top of the camper so let's paint the bottom! Yup, I broke out the POR15 and hit 95% of the frame.

A couple pointers that I'd offer:

1. Someone else suggested wearing a hat. Now I know why...ouch?
2. Start from the center line and work your way outward to the edges. You won't get as many drips on you and you won't be rolling around in any drips.
3. Long sleeves.

This stuff is so easy and so forgiving that I used several of the cheapest brushes that you can buy and it flows back together so well that the "leveling properties" virtually erase any brush marks. Since I didn't want to get into dropping the grey water tank, there is a portion of one of the cross members that I couldn't reach so I didn't get that painted, but...what can easily be seen looks excellent!

After finishing the frame work I installed the A/C cover that had three coats of Rustoleum Top Side applied a few days ago. I had to let it cure out before re-installing the hinges but that job is now complete. All that remains to complete Ziggy's restoration is the tail lights and side markers. So, we wait...

[TheWanderers]

Just wanted to add a few images of the work completed yesterday.

[TheWanderers]

Laura and I tag-teamed these new lights from eTrailer. We were able to get four of the six lights installed before we lost the daylight and it became to dark to work. I was laughing at us as we were installing these lights and fighting to finish before loosing the light because it just seems silly to worry about light while working on the lights...ah, never mind.

To make the job easier, I decided to remove the dinette just so we could gain access to the wiring under the bench seats. I know, I know; this might not seem easier but once we started working, everything seemed like we could move about easier without standing on your head to work in the area confined under the dinette bench. I'm real glad we did it this way. I probably won't pull the front bench seat out since I can reach those wires easier and I've had a little practice installing the four rear lights already, I think I can do the front marker lights with my eyes closed now.

I feel very good about these new lights. The tail light assembly includes a lifetime warranty and when you look at how they're constructed you notice that it's completely sealed from all access by you or the road elements. The side lights have a heavy metal base that'll act as a protector if you should happen to hit the housing while backing or other stuff. All six lights include a closed-cell foam gasket that creates what would seem to be a good barrier to potential leaks. I used a little butyl tape on the old holes to seal those that weren't sealed up with paint from our painting project.

Anyway, we finished the two tail lights and the rear marker lights. Of course it took longer that we thought it would. It ALWAYS takes longer than you think it will...we found out that someone has switched some of the wires on Ziggy so we were fighting to decode the new wiring silliness to complete the job. We still have to connect the front markers but that should be a piece of cake since they'll hook up just the rear markers.

Here's a few images of the new lights for you.

[shaggydoink]

I've been getting pulled around in a million directions over the past few weeks, finally checking in on the forum here. You have made amazing progress, and the results look incredible from where I'm sitting, I'm impressed!! So ultimately the job was done with just brushes and rollers, right?

Jonathan

[TheWanderers]

Hi Jonathan! It's me Laura (not Bill)
Hope you have been having good adventures and welcome back!
Yes we used foam rollers and good quality brushes (for tipping) which Bill says is the key to making it look good.
We did learn some things that might help other driveway paint jobbers
1) Gnats love the paint - get busy before the gnats are awake (50 degrees works just takes longer to dry)
2) You can sand the gnats off

Before we painted, the water would just kind of barely stream off and it looked awful.
Now we have high gloss and water beads up and jumps off!
It has a nice finish. Happy with the results!

[TheWanderers]

I have been considering what's left to complete the remodeling of Ziggy and I have the new battery box to mount to the tongue as well as the license plate to affix to the rear. I'm thinking of attaching the license plate to the bottom of the spare tire mount frame but as I think about this, I may simply put it back on the bumper of the left side near where it was last located. We'll see when I fab up the mount bracket.

Laura has found some protective film to stick to the front of the camper to protect the paint from rock chips and dirt but I don't know when we'll get a chance to put that on since it'll require some warmer temps. I believe we'll get that on order and simply wait for a nice afternoon...

[shaggydoink]

Originally Posted by TheWanderers

It has a nice finish. Happy with the results!

Thanks for the reply on your tools and technique, I've got quite a bit of work to do in order to get my monstrosity prepped, but you've inspired me to give the exterior painting a shot whenever I reach that stage!

Jonathan

[TheWanderers]

It was supposed to be nice today!Oh well, since the work I have left to do won't be affected by lack of nice sunshine or warm temperatures, I went ahead anyway.

We ordered tongue box from eTrailer and I fabbed up a 2X4 sub-frame upon which to mount the new box that will act as our battery box. Now, before y'all freak out, it has lots holes for breathing so we won't have any of that explosive stuff goin' on 'round Ziggy. Besides, I cut an extra hole in the bottom of the case to pass the power cables through to permit the battery to ride inside it's protective vinyl case, inside the tongue box. Counting the 2"X2" hole I cut, there are five holes for ventilation into/out of the new box. I didn't take any picture of the 2X4 frame that I built because it's just three pieces of 2X4 screwed together and bolted to the subframe where the old battery box used to live. Then I screwed the tongue box to the 2X4s, easy peasy

This box includes a water resistant seal around the top of the case and a cheapo lock to keep the lid down as well as a gas strut to hold the thing open when you need to get inside. I plan on storing our tongue jack stand inside with the battery.

I was going to attempt to apply the self adhesive sticker to the entry door today but I couldn't find any of the door molding in town and we really want to replace that old stuff when we do the sticker job. We'll have to order that stuff online or from Scamp.

I also reinstalled the license plate but didn't take any pictures of that because, well, it's boring. Now that I have this part of the reno complete, I'm planning on moving the sewer hose from below the frame to above the frame in the space behind the battery box. I want to switch that white pipe to a black pipe to "hide" it in plain sight.

Here are some pics of the battery box for your enjoyment.

[shaggydoink]

I really like the tongue box, looks 10x better than the ghetto plastic one I have lashed onto mine with bungee cords! LOL!!

Jonathan

[TheWanderers]

The high temperature for the day is supposed to be 20° so I figure it'll be about 10° when I start working on the door in the morning. It should only take me about 10 minutes to remove the door and several hours for it to warm up to room temperature in the house where I'll be working on applying the new door sticker. Stay tuned...

[TheWanderers]

Well, the weather was less than cooperative for working on Ziggy so I'm glad I'm not outside in the 16° temperatures that we had this morning. I crawled back in bed for an extra hour on my last day of vacation for 2016.

After sawing off a few more Z'sssss I popped up all bright and shiney to find out it had warmed up to a glorious 24° and the sun was shining beautifully. So, I pulled the door off Ziggy and brought it in the kitchen to work off the island where I would have good light and much more reasonable temperatures. Although this job shouldn't take me too long, I reasoned it'd be nicer to work inside and stay warm and listen to Christmas carols while I worked.

I started about 10:00 am after a hasty breakfast with lots of optimistic expectations and starry eyed. I pulled the tool cart out of the garage because I had left all my tools on the cart for this project. It took me all of two minutes to remove the door and carry it inside. Guess I could have left the cart in the garage and carried the two wrenches out that I'd need for unhinging the door. Hummm...

I started this project by removing the old black edge molding from the old door. The bottom of this strip of yuck was pop-riveted to hold the entire affair in place while bouncing down the road so I was reduced to drilling out the old rivets. Yes, I drilled over the trash can because I hate a messy work space and Laura is already gonna be mad about me working on this project in the kitchen.

That old door trim gave up pretty easily and broke into pieces as I was pulling it from around the tight corners of the door edge. I'm guessing the stress of living in the sun dried it out pretty bad and it wasn't very flexible any more. I proceeded with removing the rest of the door hardware like the hinges and the door latch/handle. Once I had the hinge arms removed I noticed that one of the hinge arms had been mounted about 15° out of plumb and reasoned that this may be why our door is "sagging." Well, maybe not sagging really, but wasn't hanging straight. I'll fix that issue when I re-install that hinge arm by redrilling the mount hole to straighten the placement. I'd bet that'll push the door over in the frame a little and maybe straighten our door to reduce the look of sagging.

I pulled out the cleaner that we'd used on the shell of Ziggy before we painted, Comet Bathroom Cleaner, and gave the door a good scrubbing and whiped up the mess I'd made while eye-balling the window in the door.

Now, you gotta' understand that I talked to myself while I'm working and most of the time I agree with what I'm saying to myself and we get along fine. Today, however, myself suggested that to do this job "the right way" a body would remove that window and clean up all the yucky caulk while making it easier to stick the new applique to the door. Well, I didn't think much of what myself suggested and after a few choice words that weren't very civil I had to agree with myself, even though I didn't really "want" the added work of resetting the window, I figure I was right and we should simply (right-simply) pull the window while we're at it and get that fixed too. I'm am such a nag to myself...anyway...

I scraped and scrubbed and drilled that ol' window outta that hole to find out the the core of the window frame had rotted and lots of wood "schips" feel outta' that mess all over the floor. Well, now we gotta' get the vacuum out to clean up that mess before ya' track that schip all over the house. Thanks for recommending this part of job, myself! I'm including an image of some of the wet rotted wood from the interior of the door panel that I cleaned out during the cleanup process. There was also a lot of old yellowed glue under the window frame and door edging that I scraped off to get a really clean surface for the new sticker.

However, after cleaning up the stupid wood schips I realized that I'll need to create a set of shims to hold the inner shell away from the outer shell while clamping the two parts of the window frame from the outside to the inside. Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into, myself!

I dragged the table saw up from the basement because the last time I cut anything down there I set the smoke alarms off, so...I put the table saw in the driveway (did I mention the we've warmed up to 28°) and ripped a treated 1X2 into the correct dimension for the interior wood frame.

Well, I've finished cleaning off the outer shell around the window and it's now time for the fun part of this job! Let's get that sticker STUCK on that door! I'd read the instructions for this part of the project last night so I already had my tools and x-acto knives handy.

I taped one third of the applique to the door as instructed and started squeegeeing my way to the edge being very careful to work the air bubbles out to the edges as I moved. Having 1/3 of the door covered successfully I was encouraged to attack the upper 2/3's...yah, right...

I was feeling froggy and started moving toward the top of the door frame to realized that I was moving too fast and making way more bubbles that anyone needs in a project like this, so I stopped...pulled up about six inches of sticker and re-set that moving much more s-l-o-w-l-y to ensure better precision. Ultimately, it took me about an hour to work my way to the top of the door. It was a slow process but the results paid dividends. It looks great.

I flipped the entire door over to cut the excess sticker from the edges and to remove the center section of the window area. The x-acto knives that I've been hauling around for years really came in handy. Nice to have the right tool for the job.

I flipped the door back over and began replacing the hardware of the hinge arms and door handle. I drilled a new bolt hole for the hinge arm and replaced the tarnished bolts with new stainless steel nuts and bolts. I used an extra stainless steel nut to fill the old hole from the hinge arm so I don't have to worry about that hole collapsing.

[TheWanderers]

Well, the sticker was on and the hardware re-installed so it was time to tidy up the job by putting the new door edging and re-set the window. I figured that only place we still had questions about possible leaks in Ziggy was around the door and that ol' window may have been the culprit because of that crappy caulking and old butyl that was trying to seal the window opening.

I used pop-rivets to tack the two ends of the door edging at the bottom of the door and it looked pretty good. I added two extra rivets at the corners because they always looked like they wanted to sag off from the door before. Here's an image from the point where I'm installing the new edging using the side of the head of hammer for tapping the edging in place.

I reset the window using double butyl around the top edge of the window frame reasoning that the water will attack the top edge of the window and I wanted to prevent any possibility of leaks. I remembered from work on resetting previous windows that you shouldn't try to tighten all the screws around the window frame down to their final position but rather tighten them around the window a little at a time to allow the butyl to escape as the pressure is increased. So, I was working my way around the window for the third time to really get those screws set when I notice the drain hole for the window was on the top edge! Yup, I had installed the window upside down!!!

Well, nothing to do but take it all out and spin it around to the correct orientation. Shoot, I'd only been working on this project for about seven hours now. So much for a quick job... I won't be going out to play later today like I'd planned. I was worried that the butyl would pull the applique up from around the window frame when I removed the window. After all, I'd used new butyl on a clean window opening to ensure that I had it really stuck!

Well, I can say that the sticker stayed stuck and the window reset perfectly. Laura came home from work after a long day and helped me rehang the new door and it looks MARVELOUS! Unfortunately, my quick job started at 10:00 am wasn't finished and hung until 7:00 pm and it was much too dark for a picture of the finished product. I'll capture that picture tomorrow for you and post it as soon as possible.

Here are a few more images from the job as the steps progressed. I will say that I wouldn't hesitate to do this again and I'm glad I agreed with myself and made myself re-set that 'ol window because the finished job really looks complete with the sticker neatly tucked up under the window frame.

By the way, the applique that we've chosen is of an old red telephone booth door we bought from Vinyl Revolution across the pond in the UK. It's an implied joke regarding the size of our camper. It'll make lots of people laugh when they see us pull into the camp grounds. Wait 'til you see the final image...it's a hoot!

[TheWanderers]

We're done. The reno project is complete. Of course, in the true sense of being done, you're never really done. There are degrees of doneness and things that once seemed done, pop up to let you know that you're not yet done, but just taking a break and there is yet work to be done. However, we're done for now.

Thanks for following along. It was quite an adventure and I hope to not have to repeat it very soon.

Merry Christmas to everyone who's had the courage to read all the way through this rambling mess of foolish expense. We look forward to seeing you, out there, somewhere. Happy Camping!