We Bought a RV Clark!! Oh no! Rebuild thread

We almost messed up.
We had already measured and cut ceilings , and were just about to glue and hang them up when I suddenly realized we had not added extra bracing in the ceiling for the ladder mounting points on the roof.

That would have been a mess

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So..now that the braces are all in place, it's time to glue, screw and do the ceilings.


Looks like Bobby's ugly twin brother showed up to help.
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Add a little bracing...

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Then a little more...
Note: the old flooring is on its way out.

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Bobby and I played rock paper scissors to see who did what in the bathroom. I chose scissors..he chose rock. Well, rock breaks scissors, but I'm pretty sure we both lost.
I took out the old toilet and Bobby started tearing out the old carpet that was under and around the toilet.
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There was a carpet covered wooden thing that covered the back wall and plumbing. After seeing how many staples were holding the carpet to this peice..We tossed it and built a new one.
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Then covered it with commercial carpet which will be easier to clean.
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Then I covered the rest with new lvt.
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Added some trim , extended the waterline to meet new toilet, added a new swivel and some stair nosing, then called it good.
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If you look at some pictures closely, there is evidence and you can see that my time line skips around a bit.
Throughout this build, I have always started on another "phase" before completing the last one. Some of the reasons for that have been...boredome, getting burned out on one large task, waiting on materials etc..but no matter what the reason, having a newly demolished area to look at has always helped me be a few steps ahead in my "thinking, imagining, problem solving, and material gathering. But mostly its boredom.

Anyways..Once I had everything in place, and knew what I had to do in the bedroom, but before I had actually done most of it, I started looking into my fridge situation. The old one that was in the rv worked great when I bought it, but seemed to be going on the fritz a bit as of lately. The freezer had stopped working and the fridge was not cooling as much anymore. It might have been a simple fix, but I decided I didnt even want to bother with it. I would just replace it with a new one.

Let's figure out how to get the old one out.
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I guess no one took any pics of the pain in the ass process that was fridge removal, but it was very aggravating. This was the worse workday by far. The fridge was dropped, which sent a metal heat shield through the back of the fridge, puncturing the copper and the unit itself. basically rendering it completley useless. Then..the damn thing wouldn't even fit through the door. We needed to remove large window on order to take it out whole.
NOPE. Ain't happening. Sawzall got it out without removing window. (No pics of this)

This is under the old fridge compartment. It's the passenger side wheel well. This is more blowout damage I'll need to fix. The bent metal is the actual wheel well.
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So, this is what it looked like once we removed the fridge. Pink insulation stuck to the walls, lots of bugs( both dead and alive) and 20+ years of dirt and grime. Also, now I have 2 holes to cover. One in the ceiling from the fridge vent and a huge hole in the wall where the fridge used to be.
All of this area below the fridge hole was rotted from where it had leaked through the outside vent.
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This side wall has to go in order for me to gain hammer access to the wheel well.
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Gotta figure out these switches first.

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After that...knocking the wall down was a breeze.
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Didnt take long to decide to tear it all out.
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I already had a little practice in tearing out rotted walls and rebuilding them, so it didnt take long and we had new walls...again.
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So once again sweet work. On the note of tire blow outs. I want to figure something out that I can build inside the fender well of my 5er that will help contain a blowout. Last summer the carnage almost brought tears to my eyes when I lost a tire on the DS. Another thing for me is on both sides there are slideouts above the tires so there are wiring looms propane lines (fridge and stove slide out the DS) and so on. It seems to me they didn’t not build anything to contain the blast of an overloaded tire at any sort of rotational speed.
 
So once again sweet work. On the note of tire blow outs. I want to figure something out that I can build inside the fender well of my 5er that will help contain a blowout. Last summer the carnage almost brought tears to my eyes when I lost a tire on the DS. Another thing for me is on both sides there are slideouts above the tires so there are wiring looms propane lines (fridge and stove slide out the DS) and so on. It seems to me they didn’t not build anything to contain the blast of an overloaded tire at any sort of rotational speed.

Maybe fit a traditional steel trailer fender inside the fenderwell? Im not sure if it would contain a blowout, but would have a better chance than the stock fenderwells. Would likely need to extend it fairly far outward to completely prevent siding damage.

Are you running TPMS on your 5er? If not, it might help prevent the blowout.
 
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Maybe fit a traditional steel trailer fender inside the fenderwell? Im not sure if it would contain a blowout, but would have a better chance than the stock fenderwells. Would likely need to extend it fairly far outward to completely prevent siding damage.

Are you running TPMS on your 5er? If not, it might help prevent the blowout.
Yes I do have tpms on all 6 and I’m hoping these new tires will hold up better as the brand new good years I had were an absolute waste of my money that didn’t get warranteed. I like the idea of installing some heavy steel trailer fenders I’ll have to look into that.
 
Did you figure what the ditch was for? Looks like a momentary switch.
 
It's hard to believe how alot of the most critical stuff is right in Harms way if a blowout occurs, but it is. Both sides on this rv had blowout damage, some stuff had been shifted, some pinched, but everything still worked.
 
Maybe fit a traditional steel trailer fender inside the fenderwell? Im not sure if it would contain a blowout, but would have a better chance than the stock fenderwells

The wheel wells on our race trailer are steel on the inside with aluminum flares on the outside. They've contained a bunch of blowouts with no significant damage.

Buffing the rubber scuff marks out of the trailer walls, on the other hand....
 
This is the hole in the wall I was talking about.
It's all good on the inside, I just need to fill this hole with foamboard and add a patch. I'm still pondering ideas.
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Here Bobby is working on screwing things together.
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We've added foamboard in between the panels of the shelf. Now they wont sag.
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I capped the shelves with white primed 1/2 inch cabinet styles and added my corner trim.

Oh yeah...got a brand new freezer/fridge squeezed in there.( we fastened it down before we added the sidewall)
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So once again sweet work. On the note of tire blow outs. I want to figure something out that I can build inside the fender well of my 5er that will help contain a blowout. Last summer the carnage almost brought tears to my eyes when I lost a tire on the DS. Another thing for me is on both sides there are slideouts above the tires so there are wiring looms propane lines (fridge and stove slide out the DS) and so on. It seems to me they didn’t not build anything to contain the blast of an overloaded tire at any sort of rotational speed.

What size axles, tires, and rims?

@Dylan W. Any guesses as to how much that rig is going to weigh?!
 
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