Hi-Lo Renovation Day 3 & 4

So I’m back to working on the Hi-Lo this weekend. I had to take a pause and call in a restoration guy to come out and give me some advice before proceeding. So this is where we are at to date.

The first thing I had to do is raise the roof {meaning the entire top half of the trailer} in order to be able to replace the seal. Let me just say that raising the top half is sort of a nightmare of a job. It took 4 of us to do it and it was just a little scary. But we got it raised and secured with 2 x 4’s wedged between the two halves to hold it up. We did have to unhook the cables to do this. You can see the Mr. in there waving. I had to enlist his help along with others to get this raised.

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In the photo below you can see the 2 x 4’s wedged in between the top and bottom half. Getting these in here required a lot of patience, brute strength and prayer!

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As I took a closer look at the bottom of that far wall I discovered….lots of rot. Yikes!! When you buy a trailer and it shows signs of water damage just know that even if it doesn’t look THAT bad on the surface, underneath it is! That black area you see is still wet to the touch! so that bottom section has got to go and will be repaired. The saying that once you start working on a trailer there is more work than you originally thought…is very true!

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Here is a wider shot below. As you can see it’s all along the bottom edge. Fortunately this is a board that runs the length of the trailer. So I don’t have to cut it off, just remove it. Notice how I had to move the 2 x 4’s that are holding the top half up? I had to do that so that I could actually work on this wall. This is what makes working on this trailer a challenge. The top half is probably 400-500 lbs so it’s not something you can just take off and set on the ground easily. You could but it would be even harder to work on the bottom edge if it was on the ground! So having it propped up is really the only practical solution. Not that anything is all that practical when it comes to doing any of this LOL!

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Here with that board removed. I just pryed it off with the back of a hammer. It came off quite easily. Now instead of replacing the entire wall…which would be quite a challenge, I am just replacing the bad wood. To do that I’m going to clean up that bottom edge, add the new wood and secure it by using a keg jig to screw in screws into the studs and steel steel plates that will also attach to the studs and at each corner. {You can’t see the studs as they are on the other side of the wall}. I’ll show you in pictures when I get to that point.

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Now this bad section is near the front of the door. This section I did have to completely cut out and I’ll do the same type of repair here.

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All in all it’s getting there but it is a slow and sometimes daunting process. There are times when you run into unexpected challenges that just suck up your time or dumb stuff like trying to get a one screw removed that takes you 30 minutes! So you have to have patience and I admit there are times when my patience is running on empty. But little by little it’s coming along.

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Comments

  1. Heidi B says

    I just replaced one while side wall, the door side, on my 63 HiLo. Got derailed by a family emergency so I only got half of the back wall done as well. I’ll also be replacing all those old screws with hex screws for more easy removal in a few years! I’ve been really lucky that my only work has had to be on the top half, and new tires and seals all around.

    If you want, i can send pics of mine later, when I’m on a computer and not my phone.. Good luck!!

  2. Seeing your restoration process is a real eye opening, but I’m enjoying it. You have a lot of patience.

  3. Do you know where I can find out how to replace the cables on the HI-LO?

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