The 'Flyte takes flight

"Airflyte Fever"??  Not really a recognized disease.  But my wife and I managed to suffer with it for a couple weeks through the negotiations for the purchase.
When we were looking through it, and didn't find any mice droppings or horrible odors, we kinda set our limits then.



There were only a couple times we actually said anything to each other.  My son-in-law, Steve, went with us to look, and he was engaged with the owner, Tracy, in conversation, which included an unofficial opening salvo of price talks.  He mentioned something in the low-hundreds, and that did not ring any bells.

Meanwhile, I was poking around underneath as much as I could reach, and finding the typical soft spots in the side framing beneath the dinette windows and the door.  It did not seem as bad as I had expected, and the interior, with nearly all of the original appointments present, was impressive.  I ended up that day making an offer of $1000.  That was a good enough offer to be serious about negotiating, and even though we made a couple offers in between, we ended at $2000 for it.  Tracy was not about to come down off that figure, and did not have to. That much  made it worth the while to pull it out, and it was worth that much to me that it was not to become a storage shed.  Coincidentally, that was what Momma and I had agreed should be the max we could go.  Match made in Heaven?  Ehhh, maybe.
 It was really hard to separate the camper from its surroundings, that is in terms of looking at a potential purchase.  It seemed so at-home where is was.  Believe it or not, I actually found it in the aerial photos of the woods on Google...See?  Ya can't hide anything any more, even a mile out in the woods.

One of the hurdles was to get it out before the rains soaked the road in to the point that trekking it out would become near impossible. We made plans to get it out to the road as soon as possible, but that landed on a day when, wait for it....it rained.  Heavily.  For two days before.    Two cans of Fix-A-Flat, the air from a portable tank, and removing the frozen tongue jack, and it was on its way.  This whole adventure should start out on an exciting note!

Steve seemed to enjoy this adventure in the mud.

 Fortunately, Tracy had enough tools to keep it from being too exciting...

Always remember to secure the load.

And THIS is why I spent the money for the hauler trailer!

It was sure a unique view in the mirror all the way home.

The Hunt, Part II (or, "And Then There Were Three....)

Without the threat of giving away too many secrets here, one of the largest resources I found in my hunting for information and tin was the Vintage Shasta Trailer Forum message board:

http://vintageshasta.proboards.com/

There are a great many resources there, including a lot of folks who have a lot more knowledge about these ole gals than I.  There are several members that have spent a lot of time and money rebuilding old campers, and who are very willing to share their knowledge.  There are several whom I have had the pleasure of communicating with, directly or through the board.  I could never thank them all enough for the sharing of laughter and information that the time there has brought.

{EDIT:  As of mid-June, just as summer hits, the Vintage Shasta forum has been closed down.  Some info still remains for now, but it his under lockdown.  Most members who were active there took their wealth of information, knowledge, and humor, over here:   

 http://vintagetrailertalk.freeforums.net/




}

I have also had the extreme pleasure of being introduced to our next addition to the stable by one of the members there.

It seems there was an ad posted on another website...might have been "Tin Can Tourists", looking for a bit of information concerning the proposed value of this older trailer.  She had run across the ad, and sent me the photos of it. 

 It was located here in New York State, was a family heirloom, and was about to be sold or become a storage shed....'nuff said.

 It had been parked in the woods on this very spot since the late 1970's.  The inspection sticker was dated 1977.

This photo probably caught my attention the most.  This ceiling shot included the edge of the vent.  It was amazingly undamaged.

This interior was in great shape, or at least appeared to be.  I knew we had to look at it.













The "hunt" took a really strange turn here, because we had found a '70-s Shasta in our summer travels that we were negotiating for.  In fact it is still on the wish-list.  Even though we had the 16SC in the shop, in torn-apart condition, and the Compact waiting on the to-do list, the one we found was a great answer to our "let's-get-going" needs while the others were in the repair bins.  But then this one found us.

After a bit of arranging, we went to see this older one.  It was located a mile from the road back in the woods.  One of the big reasons it was still there for us to see by the time we got there, was that no one wanted to venture that far out to see it, and the owner was not willing to drag it out just to be seen, and beaten up over price for it.  Who could blame him?  Not me...thank you very much!

The back story was, it belonged to its owner's father, who bought it in the early '70-s.  They had used it on the road for trips when he was a teenager, then it landed in their woods for use while they built their cabin.  In later years, his folks still had used it when they would visit from their Florida home during the summer, and eventually the cabin became their primary digs out in the woods.  Their property is located within literally minutes' driving time from the place my father had grown up and my grandparents owned till they passed.  The owner turned out to be a year younger than myself, and had attended and graduated from high school with one of my cousins.  It turned out that location is everything, for more than one reason....

We looked at it on a sunny Saturday, a nice drive through the woods with the 4WD, back to about 300 yards from its parking spot.  It was love at first sight again...  However we did take a lot of time looking everything over.   It had the obvious typical old-age rot problems, but the plus column definitely outweighed the minus column.  There were insect problems, but not a sign of mouse leavings, no stink or anything.   It had a "parked-in-the-woods" odor to it, which is far better than mouse pee no matter how you slice it.  Most of the original features were not only intact, but were in remarkable shape.  My wife Melaine met me going around the back side of it, away from everyone, and said, "We better buy this."

All I could say was, "Yup."

It took a week or so to land on a final price, which as it turned out, was his initial price...he refused to come off it and who could blame him?  It actually bought enough time to put the money together.  We agreed to go ahead with the purchase, and he was kind enough to visit the Motor Vehicles Department and get all of the papers we would need to transfer ownership, since the original registrations were long gone (remember, it was off the road since the late '70-s).

On a rainy leafy slicked day in early October, the 1964 Airflyte took its first trip out from the woods in 35 years.

The Hunt

Hunting has long been considered a sport.  While actual hunting began out of necessity, I can't say that hunting tin is a real necessity, so  tin-hunting should fall under the class of "sport".  

Initially, the 16SC presented two challenges.   One was to find out what model it was.  It had no clear markings anywhere on it that would tell you it was a Chevy Impala or a Jeep Wrangler, or a particular anything that was manufactured.  All there was to go by was the measurements of the cabin, a vague understanding of the interior layout, and Google.  It took quite a bit of hunting to find images of similar models, but after much searching, it turned up.  The interior had been gutted prior to our ownership and it was near impossible to tell what was meant to go where, until I started to find some photos of them.

The second challenge was to figure out how close to original we wanted to make the layout, and to find parts and dimensions to rebuild it.  So the hunting actually started with a search for camper goodies that would allow for it to be rebuilt.  There were two approaches.  One to modernize it and the other to return to its vintage heritage.  Both options proved to be a very very costly list of materials, from the lumber for the cabin to the appliances and appointments. 

My research continued till I was becoming familiar with the line that the company had offered, and I found myself really drawn to a couple models.  The Compact was one that I just knew we needed.

It was late April on a day I was off from work, and had some chores to get done, that the craigslist ad showed up for this one.  It was listed in a town just about 30 minutes from home...something that never happens.

I answered the ad and set up to go and look at it that evening.  I basically had it bought before we left the driveway, which was probably a mistake.  Be that as it may be, we went, we saw, we bought, we licensed (the following day), and we towed home.

Even though the love affair with this one was just beginning, all of the flapping in the breeze that it did on the way home led us to know it is likely going to need a complete rebuild from the ground up.  Its previous owner had started to do some cosmetics on it, putting new veneer on some of the cabinet doors.  They looked decent, and still needed to be finish coated.  However the paneling is typically peeling apart. In fact, so is a lot of the framing. The whole thing will eventually be rebuilt. 

 The "hunt" for fix-it planning began immediately. 

Even with its issues, it still had enough of the original layout and features to make it appealing...

It will become a loved member of the family...it just may take a while to get that far.