Trailer Talk Tuesday: Community Edition

Hello!  It's Trailer Talk Tuesday again, where I share our progress on Jolene, our 1967 Play-Mor 140 camper.  I am proud to say (cue drumroll), that we have finally removed all the paint from her exterior and are almost done removing all the silicone, tar and various sticky stuff the previous owners used to prevent leaks.  The final process we came up with to get the tape and tar residue off is:

• Cuss a little
• Use the heat gun to heat up the vinyl and pull it off
• Cuss a little more when you see how much sticky stuff there is.
• Use the heat gun again to heat the residue and scrape off what you can.
• Lather, rinse, repeat.
• Heat it up one more time and use a shop rag to wipe off the final bit.  

It really feels like it takes about 30 minutes per foot, so, it's been a slow go since we have limited time to work on it.  But we're in the final stages of this process and we've been checking out what to do about the trim.  Some of it looks a little rough, but we can't decide whether removing it will bring more trouble than it's worth. 

Here's where the community comes in.  There are so many cool vintage camper groups on Facebook. They freely share photos, tips, ideas, and advice for newbies like me.

  Here are some of my favorites:

PlayMor Vintage Campers

This group is very specific to PlayMor campers like Jolene.  It's been a great source for pictures of PlayMors, since there aren't that many of them out there on the internet.  I've had lots of questions answered and they've pointed me to different sources for vintage camper parts and trim.

Shasta Glampers in the Know

This group is for people who own the 2015 Shasta Airflyte Reissues, like our Sundance.  There were some warranty issues with these when they first came out and this group was absolutely the reason those problems have been dealt with by the manufacturer.  They are a fun group and share camping photos and tips, as well as different ways they've tricked out their darling Shastas.

Retro Shasta Airflyte

This facebook group is all about fun photos.  Some are Shastas, but there are lots of photos of Airstreams and other brands of vintage campers.

Canned Ham Vintage Trailers

This is a great page where people share photos of their "canned ham" vintage campers.

Vintage Camper Trailers

Vintage Camper Trailers  is a great source of information about rallies and vintage campers for sale.  I like these posts because a lot of the for sale photos show before and after shots.  Lots of good ideas!

Instagram is also a fun source of vintage camper eye candy!  Some of my favorite feeds are:

van.crush

reggie from the road

girls glamping guide

the camping hams

and tin can homestead

These are all just lovely feeds to read through when you're stuck at your desk and need a break from the indoors.  

Some of the great parts websites I've been pointed to by the vintage camper community are:

Tear Drop Fix-it-Shop

They have a wide variety of trim and mouldings, as well as great photos of these cool little tear-drop trailers.

National Serro Scotty Organization

Not a commerce site, but they have links to a lot of resource websites.  And cool pics.

VintageCampers.com

This site is an absolute jewel.  Great resources on parts, information for DIYers, completely restored campers for sale and lots of lovely photographs.

Well, friends, next week, I hope to have some lovely photographs of my own.  Until then, have a great week and happy camping!



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