When we’d left off talking about our trailer restoration, we’d just gotten the windows out of the sides. Once the windows were out, we took home the ones that would fit in the car, removed the screens, and gave them a bath in our tub! This, plus a paint scraper, some Goo Gone, and Mother’s Aluminum Polish left them looking as good as they were going to get. We carefully marked which windows had come out of which sides of the Shasta, and set them aside until the end of the project when we’d put them back in.
After getting the windows out and all the various badges and vents, the next external pieces to be removed were on the roof, so it was time to set up some scaffolding. Fortunately, one of our cousins was able to lend us the perfect metal scaffolding setup, and his kids helped us put it together really quickly! In a few minutes we had ledges about six feet off of the ground, running the length of the trailer on both sides. If only every step in repairing a trailer went this smoothly. If you’re doing a project like this, especially one that involves roof removal and repair, you’ll need to get some scaffolding or a similar system.
That’s some mighty fine scaffolding!
Once the scaffolding was in place, we removed the antenna and the central roof vent. Both the antenna and the roof vent were after-market additions to the trailer by previous owners. We bought a replacement fan vent from Vintage Trailer Supply, because the one that was in the trailer was a wreck. We discussed what to do with the antenna – in 2014, there’s not much point to having a giant crank TV antenna on your trailer – but we decided we’d put it back in place when we were near the end simply to avoid having to deal with the hole in the ceiling. In the future, we’re planning on looking into using it as a cell signal booster. The antenna also got a bath and polishing and was set aside for the duration of the roof repair.
Judging by the grime, it’s been a while since the antenna was raised.
It took a little while to get used to walking around on the scaffolding, but eventually I was just about hanging upside down off of it to get at screws, staples, and nails – we’ll get into all the different methods that Shasta Industries had used to make sure no one would ever get into their trailers in the next post. We’d been anxious about the extent of the damage to the wood in the roof, but the wood around the antenna looked great, and same with the wood around the roof vent. That was a relief, since it meant that there was at least some part of the roof that hadn’t been water damaged.
The antenna footprint, sealed with silicone.
Hello down there!
The scaffolding was absolutely essential to working on the Shasta. At points during the summer we had six people on the scaffolding, and no combination of ladders would have been even close to as useful.
The perfect height for working on a Shasta.
1972 Shasta 1400 