Maude The AcuTrailer Update : Underbelly

We've been anxious to get the aluminum shell set back down onto the frame, so we've been putting in a ton of hours' work to get that piece of the project done! This post will be 4 weekends' worth of work to get us brought up to current :)

Here's where we left off after the last blog post - the subfloor, wheel wells and stairs are all installed. With all of the rain that we were having, we decided we had better protect the new subfloor, so we gave Maude a really ugly skirt ;) 

Next step was to install what's called the C-Channel. ​This is the C-Channel from the rear of the trailer. As you can see, there are 3 surfaces - the surface that gets screwed down to the subfloor, the inner surface that will get riveted to the inner skin, and the outer surface which will have both the underbelly and the outer skin riveted to it.

And here it is, roughly in place!

Some of the C-Channel was horribly corroded, which made it so we couldn't re-use it. We used pieces of the old underbelly to make new sections! Yay for reusing materials and reducing waste! The picture above was of Mike practicing making a small section of C-Channel using our metal brake! It worked extremely well!

C-Channel getting installed!

​The last step before being able to set the shell back down onto the frame is to get the underbelly replaced. Airstream trailers have an aluminum underbelly that encloses and protects the steel frame.​

Several weeks ago we purchased the new aluminum sheets for the underbelly. The old underbelly was so damaged that we couldn't put it back in place. LUCKILY, it was in good enough shape to be able to use as a rough template for the new aluminum sheets so we had a starting point, and as mentioned above, as material to make replacement C-Channel!

I forgot to get a picture of us using the old underbelly as a template to trace onto the new aluminum, sorry!  Just imagine really corroded aluminum with rust marks and tears and holes all throughout ;)

Above is the new aluminum traced and cut to shape! 

Mike built a wooden frame to set the aluminum sheets on while we installed it. We used a floor jack to lift the whole thing up into place. Each sheet got screwed to the bottom of the frame and riveted to adjacent sheets. Poor Mike spent WAYYYY too many hours under the trailer ;)

And this is what two whole weekends' of work looked like - clamping the aluminum into place (after MANY adjustments to make sure we had it in the right place!) and riveting it to the C-Channel.

Oh man, getting these curves right was rough!

But even more difficult was getting the angle right along the bottom of the frame! You see, the belly pan slants up at the front and rear of the trailer. There was a LOT of trial and error to get it to look just right!

It took us 20.5 hours over 2 weekends just to get the aluminum belly pan into place. It was a TON of work, many mistakes, LOTS of redos, but I think we did a reasonably good job! Working with that much aluminum came with a fair share of blood sacrifices (our arms and hands ;) ) as well as a NASTY bruise that I got while working on the very last piece of belly pan!

I got hit with a falling steel bar on my wrist, right across my watchband - those bruises are the holes in the strap! The deep bruising isn't visible yet, but I assure you, it's going to be a dooooozy!

All in all, the belly pan has been the hardest part of the project so far. We had to do a LOT of reverse-engineering to get it all figured out. We are super tired both mentally and physically, but we did it! And we're INSANELY excited to move onto the next step which is lowering the shell back down onto the frame!!

Until next time, you guys! <3 Becca