Vintage RV Restoration and Fabrication

The core fact of vintage work is that the supply chain ended decades ago. A specific piece of aluminum trim, a window frame, a curved fiberglass corner, a wheel well, a frame crossmember: these are not backordered, they are gone. Some have a small enthusiast market producing reproductions, usually at a price that reflects a run of forty units. Most do not. So the practical question is never where do we buy it, it is how do we make it.

We form aluminum, weld steel and aluminum frame stock, lay up fiberglass and cut cabinetry from templates. That means labor hours where a modern coach would have a part cost, and it means the work is billed by the hour at $210 for body and paint and $260 for mechanical and electrical rather than quoted against a parts list. It also means the finished part is usually better than the original, because the original was built to a 1970s production budget.

On a modern coach we can tear down an area and be reasonably confident about the boundary of the damage. On a fifty year old vehicle there is no boundary. You open a wall to fix a leak and find that a previous owner in 1991 repaired something with drywall screws and roofing tar, and that repair is now the primary structural problem. This happens on essentially every vintage project we have ever run.

So we do not pretend to give a fixed price for a full restoration. We phase it. Phase one is teardown and assessment with a written report of what we found and photographs. Phase two is structure. Phase three is skin and paint. Phase four is interior and systems. Each phase gets its own authorization and its own budget, and you get an off ramp at every stage rather than an open ended commitment.

A standard actual cash value policy on a 1975 motorhome will value it at almost nothing, which means a modest collision produces a total loss offer of a few thousand dollars on a vehicle you have $60,000 into. The fix is an agreed value or stated value policy with a specialty carrier, backed by an appraisal and photographs. Do this before you spend the restoration money, not after.

Keep every invoice from the project, including ours. On an agreed value claim, documented restoration investment is the evidence that supports the number, and a folder of receipts is worth more in that conversation than any amount of describing the quality of the work. We provide itemized invoices with labor hours and materials broken out for exactly this reason.

Interior remodel and rebuild runs $1,500 to $50,000 and up. Frame welding runs $750 to $20,000 and up. Full paint refinish runs $5,000 to $35,000 and up, and on a vintage coach it is usually toward the upper half because the substrate needs extensive preparation before any color goes on. Water damage and subfloor work runs $750 to $15,000 and up, and on a vintage trailer it is rarely at the low end.

A full frame off restoration of a small vintage trailer is realistically a six figure project once you total the phases. A cosmetic revival with structural repair, a repaint and refreshed interior is much more commonly what people actually want, and that lands somewhere between $30,000 and $80,000. Deposits follow the standard schedule and special order reproduction parts require full non refundable deposits.

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.