Loretta

In April of 2014 we purchased a 1957 Boles Aero, Mira Mar. She is 19’ long and all original. We named her Loretta after my wife’s sassy Great-aunt Loretta. Loretta is different than most travel trailers of this period in that the interior skin is a whitewashed birch rather than the usual darker stained interiors. With some TLC we are going to restore Loretta to the fully functional travel trailer that she once was, while preserving the essence of the 1950’s. Check out my surf blog: http://uppertrestles.blogspot.com/

Thursday, May 29, 2014

And So It Begins

So I took the week off from work to surf and work on Loretta. I began with the roof. Somebody in Loretta's past sealed the roof with an aluminumized mastic, the kind used for asphalt repair.  NO BUENO!

It took me 3 full days to scrape and clean off that mess, just in the area around the vents, rivets and lap seams. I'm going to leave the rest of it there, nobody looks on top anyway :-P


I then painstakingly filled all the lap seams and every rivet with Captain Trolly's Creeping Crack Cure just in case. Once that dried I wire brushed the lap seams back to bare metal and sealed them up with TremPro 635 Polyurethane Sealant.  I'm no pro at doing this so it isn't pretty. But I can guarantee it won't leak. 


What you see here represents 4 days work. I bought some new "retro" vent hoods on ebay, they should arrive in a day or two. Meanwhile I started on the rear windows.  Pulled the eyebrow and windows and discovered the original seals with a lame attempt at a repair. More scraping and wire brushing. Got the windows back in with Butyl tape, stainless steel screws and sealed the top with more polyurethane. Going to leave the eyebrow off for now so I can polish the area.




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