Saturday, April 5, 2008

Cleaning her up





It took about 3 months after the initial visit to the Tradewind to finally get to bring her home. The PO had lost the title and had to go through hoops to get a new one since everyone prior to her was dead, she had to post it in the paper for 7 days to make sure no one could claim it. Once she had it in the paper, we decided to go ahead and buy it.
Pick up day! Boy was this fun! We were so excited! We thought it would be pretty simple, go over, hook it up, and bring it home, NOT! The tires were flat, understandable from sitting so long. We put air in them to get it home. Got everything hooked up. Called my dad to come and follow us just in case. Luckily we only lived about 5 miles away. Started to pull out and the brakes locked. Husband got out and checked everything and it looked ok, so we tried it again. We got maybe 100 yrds when they locked again. So hubby decided to unhook them just to get it home. FINALLY! We spent 2 days scrubbing the walls,, cabinets, stove, etc.. boy were they nasty.

66 Tradewind






A little late for starting a blog since most of the Tradewind is complete. Wish we would have taken detailed photo's along the way, but didnt think about it at the time. You live and learn!
These photos are of the day we decided to buy it. We had already restored a 72 Overlander so this time around we looked at potential instead of everything that it needed. Had this been our first Airstream, we would have passed on it. The PO had never used it. She bought it from her uncle some 12 years earlier with the intention of using it and never got around to it, I know that feeling. Lucky for us, she moved it to her daughters house to try and sell it. It just happen to be behind my sister in law. We drove by it probably a hundred times lusting over it. Finally one day I decided to stop and ask about it and sure enough, it was for sale! And the rest is history! As you can see in the photo, the bathroom was the worst! It had aparently been leaking for some time. Good thing, it is a small area and will be easy to replace. We found 2 more places in the floor up front that needed replacing. The rest of the floor is solid, yeah!