Vintage and Classic RV Restoration for San Clemente Owners

Pull the exterior trim on a 1970s travel trailer or a period Class A and you find vertical wood studs on 16 inch centers, horizontal blocking at window and door openings, and a wood or steel bottom rail sitting on the trailer frame. Fiberglass batting or foam fills the cavities. The skin is aluminum in long sheets, lapped and sealed with butyl, with a screw or rivet every few inches into the studs. The skin stiffens the wall in shear, but the frame carries the vertical load and the frame is what rots.

The rot starts at the bottom rail. Water enters at a window, a seam or a corner molding, runs down inside the cavity and sits on the bottom plate where it cannot dry. From there it moves up the studs and out along the floor. By the time an owner sees a soft floor near the door, the bottom rail on that whole wall is usually gone. Correct restoration means removing skin panel by panel, replacing every compromised stud and plate with matched material, and rebuilding the wall as a unit rather than patching from inside.

Under a vintage trailer is a welded steel frame with main rails, cross members and outriggers, usually painted once at the factory and never again. Coastal storage accelerates the corrosion badly. The outriggers go first because they are the smallest section and they sit under the floor edge where water drains. Then the cross members near the axles. On motorhomes of the same era, the house structure sits on a truck chassis and the failures are the body mounts and the outriggers rather than the rails themselves.

We inspect frames with the belly pan off, not from a walk around. Scale gets removed, sections get measured for remaining wall thickness, and anything below serviceable gets cut out and replaced with new steel welded in with proper fit up. Then the whole assembly gets primed and coated. Doing that work well is what separates a restoration that lasts from one that looks good for two years, and it is invisible in every photograph anyone will ever take of the finished trailer.

Nothing on a vintage coach is available from a parts counter. Hehr and Miller window frames, cast aluminum corner moldings, specific extruded drip rails, jalousie hardware, original latches and vents: all of it is either salvage or fabricated. We fabricate. We can roll and brake aluminum trim, machine replacement latch components, and cut skin panels to match original lap patterns. Where a piece exists only as salvage, we will tell you that and let you decide whether to hunt for it or have it made.

Finish work is its own discipline. Original exteriors were frequently painted aluminum with a baked enamel, and the correct look is not the same as a modern basecoat clearcoat with heavy clear. We can shoot a period appropriate single stage or replicate an original two tone with the correct sheen and the correct break line. Interior Zolatone multicolor finishes can be reproduced. We match to a documented sample from an unfaded area rather than to a photograph or a memory.

Body and paint labor is $210 per hour, mechanical and electrical is $260 per hour, diagnostics are $285 per hour with a one hour minimum credited to the repair and detail is $95 per hour. On a vintage project we work in defined phases with a checkpoint between each, because pricing a full restoration up front on a fifty year old unit is guesswork. Phase one is disassembly and assessment. You get photographs and a written scope for phase two before phase two starts.

Realistic ranges: aluminum skin and sidewall replacement runs $2,500 to $25,000 and up. Water damage and subfloor work runs $750 to $15,000 and up. A full exterior refinish runs $5,000 to $35,000 and up depending on size and prep condition. A frame off, wall out restoration on a 25 foot vintage trailer is a six figure conversation and we will say so early rather than discovering it together at month four.

Body and paint labor is posted at $210 per hour. Mechanical and electrical is $260 per hour. Diagnostics run $285 per hour with a one hour minimum that is credited back against an authorized repair. Ranges below reflect jobs we have actually completed.