New Vents

Over 4th of July I had the good opportunity to meet Steve from Vintage Trailer Supply and pick up three replacement vents and a brand spanking new VST hat! Steve and I have exchanged numerous emails, as we both have 56 caravanners. Steve's operations and warehouse are modest, but as he said to me he's outgrowing them quickly. It's amazing to see how many items he has on hand and the quality of each. Steve's an amazing character and spends countless hours researching the smallest part. Frankly, I beleive because of his efforts to re-introduce old products updated and new ones as well he is driving the the re-birth of vintage airstreams. Some folks might say otherwise, but without Steve's work we would all have to invent our own means of repairing old parts.

Nice Job Steve.


I purchased three new fantastic vents from Steve, two without motors and one with. I also purchased a new antenna.

Installing the new vents was not such a hard job, just messy... at least for me. I drilled out the rivets from the inside and then cleaned off the old putty tape from outside. This trailer had been sitting for years before I picked it up and the dirt, pollen, and tree crap was pretty well embedded in the roof. A little steel wool and some aircraft stripper did the trick. When I had the rig up to Colins for work, he used an aluminum tape and plastic sheets to seal the vents for the winter. Worked great, but the tape was a bitch to get off. Great stuff, don't get me wrong and did a good job. I ended up using a blowtorch to heat the tape and then scrape it off. The glue came up easily with aircraft stripper and steel wool.

The first vent I put on was the rear and I used these large pan rivets that I picked up from my local autobody supply house. Well, that did well until it rained. Had some leaks around them, so it was a quick seal from the inside yesterday. I'll wait to see how the next storm does. For the next two, I used the same rivets but before putting them in the hole dipped them in sealer. It looks a bit messy, right now, but I'll clean it all up when the caulk has set and then add more to make it look good.

After I installed the vents, I then went back and hitched up the powered one to my battery. Worked like a charm.

One other item I picked up from Steve was one of his window openers. I had bought some WCM 807CK openers from dyers for my 65 about two years back and these are almost the same as Steves. BUT, and this is a big but the nylon bushing in Steves is inserted in the back versus the WCM version which is inserted in the front. These bushings take a great deal of pressue and the WCM's tend to pop out. Steve's would have to split in two to pop out, which I think is a superiour design.

Saving a couple bucks to buy openers that "look" right will not save you any headaches. The WCM are ok for smaller windows but not for anything reasonable in size.

Another great old-product updated from Steve.



Hope you have a good weekend.

D