WD 40 is my new best friend

It's been quiet on the blogging front, mainly because summer was filled with guests (we dodged the forest fires but not the smoke). Lots of guests! It was great to see family and friends. Brother Bob came up for two weeks and helped me with a building project. I've been steadily working on the remainder: electric heat is just about in, wood stove probably next week, then build the table around the table saw and voila! a new workspace will be available.

The Airstream is never far from my vision, mainly because it takes up 30 feet of yard space. I've been researching the many different ways of renovating the windows.  All the gaskets are shot, and they all need new glazing material. The challenge is to find a Canadian source. Sure, there are a couple of US sources, but the shipping costs are appalling. The latter has exactly what I need, so I measure, see what a place like Vintagetrailersupply.com recommends and then try to find it on Amazon.ca.  The .com folks have waaaaaay more options. What is it with Canada and importing something as simple as gasket material?

Today, I tackled the Vista View windows and lower stackers. The VV are curved, the stackers are below the main windows. After much research, I discovered that my '74 has VV and stackers that have a plastic second pane and are held in place by a metal ring. Easy! With other models/years people have been known to try to break the second glass panel with a spring loaded punch. Horror stories abound about fractured safety glass flying a Mach 1 all over the place. This is one bullet I've dodged.

I'm not sure there will be many more.

A few pictures to show the before and after. Mind you, this is just the aluminum frame for the glass. The glass is still caked with decomposing mylar and the plastic, well, looks just plain crappy. WD 40 did the trick. The butyl tape melted off the aluminum, but it was a slow melt which required a fair amount of muscle.

By the way, I managed to removed all the windows without breaking one. This is a good thing, as they cost over $400 USD to replace.

Forty-four year old butyl tape. Still sticky but useless at preventing leaks.

Crud on the window

Lots of WD 40 and a sharp razor blade did the trick

Crud removed with much muscle and 3M plastic abrasive pad

A beautiful, clean channel where the window (once cleaned) will be re-installed.

Ghetto look now, but just wait until it's polished, but that's about a year away.