Shasta T-Shirts on Ebay...

I came across these shirts on Ebay. I really didn't think that the $13.00 price was that bad at all. Just thought I would pass them along. Go to the link here...Shasta T-Shirts

The Dime Tour...

Overall, Louise is in good shape for her age. There are a few problems and water damage but nothing major... hopefully. She has been relatively untouched. The missing wings are probably the biggest deal. The loss of the rear window to a bad AC unit being the second place winner. In recent years she has been "dressed up" with some wall paper and some newer flooring. I believe that the female half of the previous owners thought the original aspects were not that great. Those changes are easy enough to undo. We really want to get the Shasta back to the vintage look. We dig that and think that this trailer will be a good candidate for such restoration. There will be some real challenges along the way I have no doubt. However we will cover that in later posts. Lets get to the tour...

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-The curb side shot. The skin is really in pretty good shape. There is a small crack in the skin just above the door which will be repaired. The Bargman L-66 door handle is broken and need to find a replacement for it. Need those wings!

Street side. No major problems. You can see some staining from rusty screws and parts on the paint. No matter. It will get repainted anyway. The white on white isn't my favorite color scheme. Besides, the paint is worn and oxidizing...

Front view. You can see the dent in the front left side. Nothing major. I'm glad that is one of the only bad spots...

That damn AC unit. How I hate it so...

Original wheels with the new temporary tires on it. They need a repaint and some slick hubcaps...

I HATE you...

Exterior entrance door and screen door are in decent shape. They will get some attention though...

The grab handle is a bit pitted. You can see the Bargman door handle is broken...

One of my favorite parts of a Shasta! The great big name plate. A small amount of pitting. It needs some polish...

All of the windows are there (except for the back) and in good shape. These will get pulled, taken apart, polished, re-weatherstripped, and reputtied back in the trailer...

The original license plate light and holder is in rough shape. It will be take all apart and cleaned up. Hopefully it won't be too far gone to save...

One of the original hubcaps. Too bad he is an only child...

The marker lights are too far gone. Good thing replacements are only 5 bucks a pop...

I love original badges. A Shasta made in Indiana, Sold in Missouri. Lived in Illinois. And now stays in Wisconsin...

The original Bargman No. 99 "Wedding Cake" tail lights. These will be restored also...

Twin propane tanks...

Original water fill spout...

Original Mobile Home Manufacturers Association badge...

Now to the interior...

Shot of the dinette. Some snazzy wall paper border as you can see. The table top has been recovered but I'm told the original yellow and gold flecked formica is still under there. We will see. The dinette benches will get a new upholstery...

The overhead storage...

Another one of my favorite features of the Shastas... The magazine rack. All of the sconces are there too which is a great thing. You can see one of the canvas bunk brackets too...

Some of the bad stuff. Water damage under the curb side window...

The fresh water tank. You can also see the rear window drip rail laying there. I'm glad they saved it...

The kitchenette. Most of the cabinets are in good shape. The original cabinet pulls are replaced but I'm trying to find the best replacements. The stove and fridge work good and are just in need of a bit of polish...

The original vent has some leak issues. The vent lifters work but need some TLC. The vent will get pulled and restored. My favorite light is there above the stove...

The original yellow and gold flecked formica is OK condition. It is 45 years old after all. We will clean it up and keep it. You can't get formica like this anymore... 

The tiny potty area. Is it bad of me for not wanting a toilet? I am thinking of turning this into a storage area. There are plenty of campers out there with out a toilet. There are toilets available at most camp sites. I may buy a mini porta-potty for cases of emergency. We will get into that more later...

Original propane lamp. Don't you just love that wall paper? Yuck...

The nasty air conditioner has caused a bunch of problems. The back panel is messed up and needs to be replaced. I can't wait to pull this out...

The small plywood box that makes up the cargo area is delaminated from moisture and will have to get rebuilt...

The shelf and cabinet above the rear pull out couch/bed...

The canvas bunk was in it's storage area under the rear plywood box that was messed up. Water had dripped down and rotted out the bunk. I think I will restore the bunk but I'm not sure if it will see any use...

Well there you go. That will be 10 cents please. I could use the dime to fix her up! I'm sure I will be posting much more detailed pictures and information when I get to each part of the restoration. Stay tuned!

Where IS MY Link???

"What gives? Where is my link?".

Please be patient. I have a bunch of vintage travel trailer links saved on my 'puter. It does take some time to get a blog up and running and I am in the proccess of flushing it out. However... I can not find every link on my own. If you don't see your link up here please feel free to leave a comment on this post and I will add it when I'm doing blog maintance. Thanks for your understanding!

The Story Begins...

The Story Begins...

 

I had been looking all summer of 2009 for a vintage trailer. We were getting frustrated with trailers in serious disrepair and over priced. I happened upon this trailer on the St. Louis Craigslist. I don't normally check the St. Louis listings because of the distance from us. I ran across a post for a Shasta trailer that had been posted a few hours before. It had no pictures and limited information but given the asking price of $1000 made me curious as to what it was. I heard back almost right away from the seller and they emailed a few pictures. From what I could see it looked like it was in decent shape. A few emails back and forth and a phone call and we were headed to Columbia, IL the next day at 8 am.

Molly and I went down with the full intention of dragging a Shasta back to Wisconsin unless there was some kind of major flaw that would keep us from doing just that. The 6 hour drive down was pretty uneventful except from being snagged by a Illinois State Police speed trap. Luckily, I was let off with a warning and we continued our trip. Driving and reinforcing each other that we were NOT completely out of our friggin' minds for making such quick a decision the whole way.

We met the seller and made our way to the trailer that was parked at his Father's house. His Dad bought the trailer brand new in 1964. We had the pleasure of meeting him as well. After some questions from the sellers about our sanity and some small talk about WHY some one would drive that far for "this old camper" we had the grand tour. We will get into more details about that later. They did tell us that they had 15 emails in the 24 hours since the trailer was posted on Craigslist. I'm pretty sure one of the seller's started to put two and two together and realized they probably should have asked for more dough for it. We paid the man his grand and hooked the trailer up and made our way North. We were sort of in a bit of shock and glee of buying the 45 year old trailer and only 20 miles down the road...

BANG!

I instantly knew what that sound was. I managed to look in the mirror in time to see the hub cab bouncing across 2 lanes of traffic. . I quickly pulled over to see what was damaged. The curb side tire was shredded. Now, I had looked at the tires before we had left. They were a bit dry rotted but didn't look that bad. I was wrong. Having no spare I jacked up the trailer and removed the wheel and threw that in the truck. Molly was franticly trying to locate a place that would have a trailer tire to replace the shredded one. Finally we found that Wal-Mart would have the tires and it wasn't too far away. I unhooked our new found friend and went to Wally World. They quickly mounted the new tire and we raced back to get it back on the trailer. Once that happened we pulled the Shasta back to Wal-Mart so they could replace the other one. We were not about to let that happen to us again. Add another $250 to the cost of the trailer.

That experience really sucked to say the least. We took it real easy going back home. I didn't really want to chance anything and have another catastrophic failure. We made it home VERY tired and grumpy at 1am Sunday morning.

Overall the experience was a good one. We can cross it off as something we have done in our lives. We found out a few interesting things about the trailer from the original owner...

-He bought the trailer new not far away in St. Louis, MO in '64

-The trailer made the trip down to Disney World the year the park opened.

-The trailer survived a tornado that picked up another trailer parked a few houses down and tossed it 1/4 mile or so. The Shasta sat untouched.

-He always wanted to paint the trailer...I think we are going to make that happen.

-His son always wanted a awning...That will happen also.

-He took the wings off 20 years ago...Unfortunately.

Because the trailer originally came from St. Louis, Molly came up with the nickname of "Louise". Get it? St. Louis...Louise...it makes sense to us. She is a good addition to the family and we hope she will not cause us too many more problems for us. I hope to give you all the grand tour so stay tuned...

Welcome...

Welcome to our vintage travel trailer blog!

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle the adventure which is owning a vintage trailer. We maintain our main blog known as Atomic Addiction. We really enjoy all Mid Century items and is the focus of that blog. I'm sure some folks that read that blog get tired of my camper posts and vice versa so by buying this trailer we did not want to clog our main blog with trailer posts.

Our intentions, I hope, is to provide links and information from all over the internet that will assist ourselves and the rest of the trailer community. We might throw in some fun stuff from time to time. We may also provide event and vacation information and coverage when we finally get on the road. Although the majority of the posts is to give ourselves something to look back on as we restore our trailer.

Given that this is a very long project and is our secondary blog I wouldn't expect a daily post but more like weekly and monthly posts. I'm sure it will be jam packed at first but will slow down after a while. Sometimes real life gets in the way of blogging. I hope everyone enjoys the blog and feel free to contact me with any information!