More parts parts parts parts...

So I paid a visit to my friend Rodney Fowler out in Auburn as he was parting out Phil's old 1968 Cortez. This is the Cortez I looked at in Seattle when I still had my Barth before I traded for the current Cortez. It had some choice parts I felt like I missed out on, until I met up with Rodney at the Vintage Rally back in Sept. He said he was only after the running gear, and didn't have any plans for the other parts (interior and exterior). So I gave him some cash to balance out his investment in the deal, he kept the title and the shell and I got to take whatever I wanted off the 68. Here is a list of what I pulled off. :)

Exterior Parts:
Rear Ladder, platform and Roof Pod (Similar to a Thule Box, water tight roof mounted storage)
Side Awning (What's a RV without an awning, right?) complete with mounts and poles.
Rear Grab Handle
All 6 Roof Marker Lights (Match mine, will replace round lights on the edges of the roof)

Interior Parts:
Sliding Closet doors (With full size mirror)
Bathroom door (with latching hardware for travel, and waterproof interior skin that matches my bathroom walls)
Dresser Drawers for the closet (With travel latch)
Dining table (White with linen pattern... smooth glossy finish)
Cupboard Latches
Drawer latches
3 way Dometic Fridge (a lot newer than the 42 year old fridge I have... may swap it or just keep as backup)
Power Converter (20amp 120v to 12v, good for bench testing stuff)
Porcelain Toilet (same as mine, but I accidently cracked mine, oops)

pretty darn good parts haul for $300, and I don't have to dispose of the body. ;)

update to the wheels on the last post... So I parted out the last set of wheels... I sold the tires for $250, and traded the rims to a guy named John for a different set of 20" wheels and tires with a less aggressive offset. They look a little something like this:



So I'm pretty sure teh offset and tire size is fine with these... as instead of the 305/55/20 they are 305/50/20 which is a 31" diameter like my 16x7.5 stock tires. But... the big issue I still have is the lugs on my Cortez. They are 11/16" and it's absolutely impossible to find normal size lug nuts for 11/16 lugs. They are the flat mount type dually style lugs. Oh well.. on the auction block they go.

Bought some new wheels for the Cortez

So I lucked out on craigslist again, and picked up a set of 20" 8 Lug wheels and 33" tires. I need to work out a few things to see if they are going to work... size based on my measurements should be right on with the 305/55/20 Mickey Thompson tires.

The lug bolts I have are too big for these wheel's holes... so I need to figure out if it would be better to swap out the bolts to a standard Chevy lug (wheels came with 32 chrome lug nuts) or better to just drill out the holes to the larger size and get new lug nuts... Since I'm missing tow lugs on one of the rear wheels, I need to replace some anyways... so it's not too bad to just throw a few new ones in... on all 4 wheels though. Hmmmm.

The wheels themselves are pretty nice multi-spoke Chrome with an aggressive lip. They measure out at 20" x 10" and et25mm. So fitment is going to be close for sure! I may need to cut/roll the fender lips to get them to tuck up inside the fenders. (They already do with Stock wheels... but I've tossed around the idea of lowering it a bit. would make it easier to get in and out.... but may cause issues with the driveway. Air may be in this RV's future.

Just got to get the body work and paint done first....

anyways here is a look at the new shoes:



and I have to jack it up a bit to fit them under the wheel well (other wheels were still on) but this at least gives a bit of perspective to what 20's would look like on there.


(I will try to replace this picture in the am.)

Some Paint Ideas...

it's never to early to start thinking about paint schemes... the 69 Cortez was unique in many ways, but the paint scheme they used in 69 left a lot to be desired... here is an example of an original 1969 Clark Cortez... This is how mine originally left the factory as evident with doorjambs and the like...







Looks good, but why they chose that contrasting, (not even in the same color family) grill color... I will never know.

The earlier Clark Cortezes (63-68) had a very cool color scheme too, but being that they painted a large percentage of them just... exactly... like... this from the factory, I have decided to not "blend in" with the rest of them like my original plans to paint it like this. But here is a nice example of the earlier Clark paint:



So, I came across this one, also a 69, named the "Alaskan LaBomba" and it was painted in Aluminum/Silver and I really liked the simplicity of it.



And, for those who watched my 66 Aristocrat rebuild know I love red when it comes to Vintage trailers/RVs, so it won't be a super shock when this one caught my eye as well:









So I decided to take a version of the Alaskan LaBomba, and switch up the placement of the red paint to be on top... and keep that center band white (I like the way it breaks up the colors, going back to the original early Clarks above) and played around with a few variations as it has to do with the front end.

Do I split the red and silver just bellow the side window like this:



Or, do I wrap the white around the front like I've seen on some of the tri-color Clark jobs?



or do I bring the Red down to meet the lower body line to bring a bit more color to the front end?



I'm sure I'll change my mind a few more times before paint ever hits the Coach... but figured I'd toss a few options out there, to organize my thoughts a bit.

Doing Body Work finally..

Well with everything else pretty much sorted, now it's time to get to the body work. So this all got jump-started when my 4 year old decided he was going to drag a magnetic tool retriever thing back and forth along the side of the coach... can't be mad, I think it was almost an improvement to the paint job (he knocked a bit of rust off).

So we grabbed a few screwdrivers and went to work popping all of the little rust bubbles... EVERYWHERE!!





They were on the belt line, above and below. Below the gutter, in the gutter, above the gutter. Down every body panel seam. under the front and rear spoilers... along the bottom. You name it, there was rust bubbles. I'll be smoothing out every one of these damn seams... just one more place for water to get under the paint and make rust bubbles.

Then I pulled out the 4" grinder and a flap disk and went to town on the spots that were a lot worse. It's really bad when some spots you can poke your finger through it... basically the paint was holding the rust together, barely.





so I started in on the LONG LONG project of removing all of the rust areas, and filling in the rough spots to get this baby ready for paint in the spring. I'm not even going to try to get it painted this year... too much to do. But I did bet Rodney it will all be back together with paint by next year's Lynden Rally (Sept). I hope it will be much sooner then that!

Here are some progress pics. I'm learning as I go with body filler and stuff... just shooting for a somewhat rust free, smoothish surface that will drain the rain off easier. After scraping and grinding I shot all the bare metal with a quick coat of primer, for nothing else to keep it from rusting again. It's been raining a bit and VERY humid, so trying to keep the rust at bay.













The rear door is almost 100% rust free... the trim strip was welded on correctly, with an angle to sweep the water away. The panel just next to that you can see is angled BACK towards the coach... gee.... I wonder why almost all of the beltline had rust?! I am going to probably modify a few things... one will be to create a jig to shape the bondo at the right angle to allow the water to run off better, the second may be to eliminate the gutters completely or fill them in and smoothe them into the roof.



I will be resealing the roof with a one-coat rubber roof of some sort... we'll get to that later, but for now those gutters are causing some issues and need to be dealt with... in the form of eliminating the water to be able to sit in them, period. Like I said this will either be to fill them and smooth the angle into the roof, or just plain cut them off.

See, I have to rebuild for the most part both the front and rear spoilers due the the excessive amounts of RUST RUST RUST. So, do I want to try to re-engineer them? That may be my only hope here...

I could weld (or Rivet) pieces of Aluminum in place to do the same job, or just use Bondo. I wouldn't have used bondo if I hadn't found a shit ton of it already form the last paint job in 1990. So more bondo we go. Just looking for a smooth finish, and realize I'll probably need to do more rust repairs in the next few years, as I'm not about to take on a full strip down of the interior in order to remove and replace the rusty panels. See the walls and ceilings have insulation in them, so for most areas if I were to try to weld, i might end up catching the whole thing on fire.. so burned to the ground or bondo on the panels? You got it.

I'll try to post up a few more pics along the way as the work progresses...

That heater? I can't keep it lit... so I might need a new thermocouple ($17 or so) not too bad... but it may need to wait a bit.

Picked up a new heater, Almost Free!

Just grabbed an older Olympian 3100 (Wave 3) off the local craigslist for $10!! hehehe... I wasn't going to stand around and test it for $10, but the piezo starter still sparks great, and he said "it worked the last time he used it" which of course is as silly as "you always find your lost item in the last place you look for it". duh. My glass held water the last time I drank from it... before I dropped it.. get it?

Oh well... we all love pics so here you go... I'll powder coat this to match my appliances if I redo them.. it needs some restoration/sprucing up... but for now it matches my RV juuuuuust fine. :)



Cleaned her up a bit... and I ended up with this charmer. :)

Busy past few weeks

So here I think I am having battery charging issues, jumping the old girl every time she won't start... sometimes as bad as a single click when turning the key. This problem reared it's ugly head just before the Lake Wenatchee SP trip, so I brought along my charger as it seemed a freshly charged battery seemed to have the gumption to turn her over. I swapped batteries around thinking that was the problem... nope.

Figured out if I pushed the coil arm forward I could get it to start, so I wanted to try one more short trip to see if the battery would hold up on it's own. So I went for an over-nighter with my Brother to Lake Easton SP, just up and over the pass... well if it didn't start there either.. finally got her started and headed for home... only to run out of gas 2 miles from home. Poop.

Got some Gas from my other brother, got it started and got her home just in time to get showered and head out the door to a wedding. Sunday Morning I pulled the old starter down and drove to my Dad's shop to tear it apart to see what was up... we thought it was a corroded washer for the post contacts... well yes that was corroded for sure, but that wasn't the real problem... the armature was snapped in half, and it looked to be that way for quite some time based on the rounding off at the break point.

Okay, I'll just get a new armature and replace it, right? Nope. They stopped making those about 20 years ago. Then I'll just get mine fixed right, nope. I was turned down at several machine shops as it would take them several hours to lathe out the inside to try to either press fit a pin inside to fix the break, or turn it to insert a new 1/2 in rod. Either way the outlook didn't look good for my old starter, so I should look to see if I could find a replacement. How about ebay?

I scoured ebay for days looking at hundreds of possible fits, only to be shut down time and time again. Hole was too big or too small... mounting holes were too close and too far. Bendix was the wrong size, too many or too little teeth... nothing was right.

See the problem I was running into here was this starter as far as I can tell was specifically made for only the 1969 Clark Cortez with a 4sp Clark gearbox and the Ford 302. Period. No other years of clarks, not a 302 ford starter... no this was a custom cast nose mounted on what I can tell is a 350 chevy motor... at least that is the NEW one re-manufactured by Dixie. (S-1183) Then I find out it's available at the local auto parts store for 1/3 the price... ouch.

well here they are... old and busted and new and shiny:





So after I ordered that starter, and was waiting for it to arrive... I installed the Coleman Mach III AC with the Elect-a-heat option. I picked this up from the guy I bought the awning from for the Barth. $180 and it works great. Even got the owner's manual for it... this AC is older than me. :)



out came the ceiling fan (for now, plan to re-use this in another area later) it's a power Hehr vent... have to re-use. But I took it out to make room for the AC.



Got some help to lift it to the roof



inside



3 long bolts squish the roof and hold it in place with this bracket



Found Clark decided to wire all 1969 Cortezes with 110v duplex, just in case the customer choose the option... in my case I did, just 42 years later. I wired it in to the box then installed the heater element panel



forgot to take an interior shot of it installed... or Exterior with the shroud on... got destracted trying to trace that wire to find out why I didn't have power...

So I took down several ceiling panels to trace that wire only to find it dropped down the wall but was not connected to the panel. But I couldn't find the otehr end, so I pulled it out of the wall then ran it back down and tied it into the 20 amp fuse for the Converter/Charger. Both run just fine together and have yet to blow the fuse.

So starter is in, AC is working... time to clean her up a bit and get ready to head up to Lynden for another Vintage Trailer and RV rally this weekend. Can't wait!

Ready to Roll!

So she's ready to go Camping! We have our trip planned this next weekend and I finally got the finishing touches in place, including the new Black tank valve.

It took a bit of "help" as I didn't exactly get the right one... the rear was supposed to be flush fitting, and I got one with a stepped lip. Crap. A quick trip to Lowes and I got a makeshift gasket and glued it on. Let that set then added more glue when I installed it... presto! no more leaks... wait what is that dripping?

Yup after 2 days of fighting with the valve, sure enough there was a 3" crack in the holding tank... son of a.... ran down to the local car parts store and picked up a roll of that steel infused epoxy putty. Mashed up a whole roll and shoved a bunch inside the hole and mashed a bunch on the outside. let that sit for a bit then sealed it even more on the edges with the silicon based glue I happened to have right there from the valve fix. Sweet... no more leaks!

Thought I would check the freshwater holding tank and the water pump... good thing as after I filled 40 gallons in the tank and tried the pump, all the seals were pretty much toast and it leaked all over from the pump. Out came the old pump, and in went a new Shurflow 2088. (2.8GPM, 45PSI, On-demand) got that plumbed in, re-filled the tank and presto I have fantastic water pressure when I need it on the road. :)

One other thing I did this weekend was installed a new bathroom light... then thought there is no way my 4 year old could reach that in the middle of the night... so I ran a set of wires down to a switch I installed on the wall to the left of the sink, just below the cabinet/mirror. I used a switch that wasn't quite working anymore by the back door, and used that in the bathroom. Presto, we now have a factory-looking switch!

I put all of the camping "stuff" back in... dishes, martini shaker.. you know all the important things. And I am amazed at how much room I still have! didn't even touch the overhead bins, the cabinet over the fridge, or even 1/2 of the space in the pantry cupboards. Fantastic.

We leave Friday, I can't wait!

Doin' Work!

Alright, I'm sure I may be repeating some of this stuff... but here goes.

I fixed the Kitchen Sink Faucet, still leaks a bit, I need to replace another seal, but for now it's fine as it only leaks when it's on, and it leaks out the front and ends up in the sink... I can deal with that for now.

I replaced the Bathroom faucet, and of course installed the new Water Heater. I also replaced the Ball valve on the toilet, that one was spraying the wall pretty good. To say it was a pain in the butt is an understatement. So that's re-installed and working. Yay!

I got the Car stereo installed in the Dash a few weeks ago and finally got it all installed. So I installed a new 110v outlet and the 300w inverter in the cabinet above the fridge. Just tapped into the main 12v lines that come up and over the roof and got that mounted. The 110v is simply a extension cord wired into a box and outlet.





I also ran an audio/video cable to the rear, and power wires to the front. So the car deck instead of running off the Coach battery (Engine Starting) it will run off the House batteries in the rear. The rear batteries get several benefits, they are isolated from the front batteries, so if we accidently run them down, I can still start the Coach and charge them back up... and The converter is hooked up and charges the rear batteries when we are plugged in to shore power at a camp site.

I ran all of the wires I could in the walls, behind the monitor I removed the speaker, so there was and easy path to run the Power cable, the Video Cable and the two Speaker Cables. They were all run down the wall to the opening just in front of the wheel well. This opening is covered by the mini wall, then the bench is bolted to that.

The Sub Woofer will be mounted to the floor and everything is neat and tidy. :)

Here is it all working:





I also ripped all the smelly old carpet out. I decided to go with a dark red Indoor outdoor carpet. It's thin, rubber backed and water proof. So spills will clean up easy. It's a very short pile so I can either vacuum or sweep. Here is some pics with it all torn out, haven't gotten it all installed yet, so I'll wait to take those when it's done.

My Entertainment System

So I bought a car stereo from my brother a while back,

The deck has some cool features. Built in 3" LCD screen, 2 RCA Video outputs and 1 Backup Camera Input. Plays MP3 and DVDs, SD card input, Line in and USB for plenty of flexibility. So it looks like the 8-Track is coming out after all in favor of the new media.

I figure I can run my Android phone on Google Maps or Pandora, piped in to the stereo. Movies? Sure I can do that too, it plays off the internal DVD, SD Card or USB. So when I install this where the 8Track once lived, it will become the multimedia hub of the RV. I will run a RCA Video and Audio back to the new entertainment system, and I think I will run a 12v power feed from the rear 'house' batteries to the front at the same time. My thinking on that is I will need to run the stereo when I want to watch movies and such, so it would be better run off the rear batteries as the converter will charge those and provide power when plugged in. The Coach automatically charges the front and rear batteries while driving and I won't risk running the starting battery down by accident.

So I removed the speaker in the wall on the starboard rear, the other 3 speakers will run off the new deck power (May need to upgrade them eventually too... but not right now.) and the line out for audio will run to the Altec Lansing PC speakers and sub woofer as well. So it will be (or can be) pretty loud. (Already tested it with Pandora on my phone) :)

So the speakers while traveling can run off the Inverter, then be swapped to 110v when we plug in at the camp site. This should work out quite well. Very minimal equipment needed or valuable space taken up.

So here is where the new Entertainment system will live. I still have access to the other inputs so if I wanted to plug in my laptop I could do that too.

Water Water Water everywhere!!!

So I got what was I thought was the last thing to test out my new water heater... I guess not. I had to get some 3/8 to 1/2 rubber plugs for the bathroom sink fixture, the old dried out and cracked plumbers putty wasn't cutting it anymore. So installed those and turned the water back on... water was spraying everywhere! It was leaking from BOTH of my new connections (hoses) the inlet hose, and water was spraying on the wall behind the Stove... great, another leak.

After I finally got the stove out (Gas fitting was giving me grief) I saw there was an inch long split in the hot water pipe that ran to the rear. Out came the hacksaw, a 6" section of the same tubing I used to connect the water heater, and two more hose clamps. Because the pipe was so swollen back there too, I had to heat up some water to soak and soften the hose a bit. Now it has a custom fit hose clamped and done. Tried it again after tightening all of my hose clamps everywhere... Success! My system hold water pressure, yay!

my "rebuilt" kitchen faucet leaks when it's on.. so I'll have to rebuild that again with correct parts. it leaks under the handle only when it's turned on... so that's not too bad, as it mostly leaks into the sink... but I'll get some new parts all the same.

but I found there was a leak in the P-Trap.. I re-tightened both connections trying to figure out what was happening... found again, there was a crack/split at the bottom of the trap, about an inch long.

So new Trap and gaskets for the fixture and I'm Done with plumbing so far.

Found a new Ball valve and rebuild kit for the toilet for $20 on Ebay, bought that and will tackle the spraying ball valve when that arrives. Still need to do the waste valve. again, not looking forward to that.

Weekend Work

So this weekend I got a few things done to the Cortez. First I bought that 120v Water heater, and had to finagle that in to it's new home. Well this is where it needed to go, this one opened up like a can of pop in the freezer. :)





The new one!




After fighting with it I found out the 1/2" copper pipe on the hot water side after 41 years decided it wanted to expand so as to not accept 1/2" fittings anymore, so I had to cut the pipe off and use pressure rated hose. So hopefully that all stays put.

So the little problem I thought I was going to have turned into a good solution... I took out the old water heater, so that left a one foot square hole in the side of the RV... the door that was on there didn't look too bad, and had a easy open (1/4 twist) screw... so after removing the guts from the LP water heater, I cut it down to size and riveted the end back in place and now I have a 8" deep cubby that is externally accessible for things like sewer hoses and fittings.





the door fits on like normal, and if I need to I can just plug those holes.. .but I don't think it will make a huge difference either way.

Wiring.. oh yea... I wired a new outlet directly to the fuse panel. The 30 amp service is broken up into 3 internal fuses, and a main shutoff. From the left to right: one line powers the 12v Converter/Charger and bathroom outlet, the 2nd runs the two kitchen outlets, one on the wall to the left of the stove (next to the water pump switch) and the other lower on the wall behind the driver's seat. Then the 3rd runs over to the fridge and outlet beside the dinette. The far right is the main turn off. These are now labeled ;)

So I wired this into the kitchen circuit, so if I need to turn it off for any reason, that is pretty quick and easy, this one only runs at 11amps, and the switch is rated for 20, so I should be pretty safe of not overloading it.

Other work...

I fixed the kitchen sink faucet, just replaced a few rubber seats and it works good as new now. I also replaced the bathroom faucet with a new 4" faucet i found on clearance at Lowe's for $20 or so... Just need to go get a few gasket washers tonight and I'll be set and be able to actually test the water heater. Yay!. (wish me luck!)

I got rid of a kitchen bag full of crap, out of drawers and storage... plus the scraps from the water heater install... continuing to clean her up. I have the deck ready to install, just need a couple of RCA cables to run to the new entertainment center (as I affectionately call it).

I am thinking of flush mounting the inverter in the cabinet, then installing a 120v outlet (on the fridge line) right beside it... this is where I will need to switch the power source from the inverter to 110v for movies (and rear view camera) on the go, or movies at the campsite. Should be as simple as changing one plug from outlet to outlet. :)

So, left on the list is still to replace that black water gate valve (screws are stuck after 41 years.. yeah.. fun)


Also, change the oil, install the 300w inverter, and install a new 120v outlet inside the cabinet above the fridge. I also need to replace the ball valve on the toilet, it's leaking at the moment, but at least I can just turn it off pretty easy at the wall, but that doesn't allow me to use it. :)

Once that is all done, I can see about other things... like carpet and upholstery. Carpet should be fairly cheap and easy to do, about $75 or so. Give it a day or so for that install.

The upholstery might need to wait as my upholsterer currently has his hands full with other things... should I attempt it myself?? maybe I can just order the vinyl and fabric from him and stitch them up myself... they are essentially covers... shouldn't be too bad, right? (Okay that discredits his skills... I may need to just wait.)

Then comes the exterior!