Two more days and more progress

Lots of progress has been accomplished!!!    Again at a much slower pace than I thought but that seems par for the course!

First out was the pressure tank.  We had struggled with the bolts spinning but the right tools make all the difference!   Out came the Sawzall and the tank was out in just a few minutes!  Yah!  And the score is
Dewalt: 1    AirStream: 0

And then the Airstream bit back..... It took forever to find all the fasteners in the vanity.  We tried to get it out whole but in retrospect it would have been a better idea to take the top off first.  That's what we ended up doing at the end.   We could not find how it was attached to the tub.    Guess what??????

Sometimes they put screws UNDER the veneer!!!!!   See those two little holes to the right of the hinge?  They were underneath the veneer.  They went into the tub side.  Nasty little things.  The bottom part of this cabinet was recessed so these screws would have shown so I guess the factory thought that veneering over them was the solution.    I had to break for lunch after that one!

I really wanted to get the tub out and even had the right tool !  See?

Unfortunately the tub drain just didn't want to budge.  Its going to have to wait until I take the belly pan off.  The score was now tied at
Tools: 1  Airstream: 1



The afternoon  and day two were spent removing rivets.  Remember that tool  I was so pleased with in my previous post?    Not so much now.   First of all, when you place it over the rivet you can't see the drill go in.  And it was slow, very slow .  I had to keep changing the bit because of the various sized rivets.  To change the bit (or to remove the rivet heads) you practically have to break down the entire tool.  Way too time consuming.  Finally I just chucked the bits in the drill and pretty soon I got the hang of exactly how far to drill to be able to flick/lever the rivet head off.  Soooo much easier, faster and no damage.   Plus when a bunch of rivets got stuck on the drill bit I could just put the bit in the claw side of a hammer, set it for reverse and strip all the heads off in seconds.  NICE! 

What follows is a picture caution for all Airstream owners! To wit,  this is what NOT to do!!

DO NOT layer sealants.  It will not stop leaks and it is a PITA to remove! These windows had MANY layers of ?????  We couldn't even see where the rivets were.  We used a razor blade to cut all the way around the frames and pulled off layers to be able to find the rivets.  It was crazy time-consuming and I exhausted my questionable vocabulary by window number three.  I have no clue how I'm going to get the framed cleaned up.  Any suggestions?  Does paint remover take off what I assume is every brand of sealant available to man? 

This next picture is how to attach your curtains....NOT!   I don't know if this Overlander came with curtain tracks or not but somewhere along the way someone decided that it would be a good idea to glue velcro to the tops of all the windows.  They used some sort of superstrength gorilla glue.  Not good.  I truly don't know if this is ever going to come off.  This is after I had pulled the velcro off.  This is just the glue residue.  I could sort of see where the rivets were but I would have expected some of this to chip away when I was drilling but it wasn't budging.  

I really don't think the deer were that interested in looking in!  I mean..... Really?

I do have another question for those of you still with me.  What;s this stuff all over the walls, Its black , hard and not sticky.  I'm thinking its some sort of adhesive residue????  Should I worry about it causing corrosion?  Its in almost every panel and trust me if it was to hold up the pink insulation it didn't work.  Most of the insulation had fallen and compacted at the bottom.  Must have been a cold time hunting!!!!

We manged to get most of the bottom panels out.  I think one more good weekend and she'll be stripped. 
This is the car packed to the gill for the long ride home!

One cool thing happened while we were there.  As we were working on Moonraker we heard all these motorcycles go by.  It was part of the Memorial Day ride by an organization named Rolling Thunder.  It was hundreds of bikers and many were carrying POW and MIA Flags as well as the US flag.  It was quite the sight.  You can read about the organization here.    The pictures don't do it justice.