Full Renovation - Vintage Camper RV | Start to Finish - Part 1 (DIY Before & After)

welcome back to Retro Revival, it's a mouthful, we have something special for you this week for those of you who are new to the channel, we are going to do a recap video of our motorhome and the progress we have been making. revamping it so those of you who have been watching all along or have seen some of the videos stay tuned, we have some things that you may have seen before, but we also have some new comments and some new clips of some of the things. which we've been working on, so before we jump right into renovating this RV 76, if you've been watching, you know we went on vacation last week and we told you we were going to keep an eye out for some older RVs.

Well, our 2003 Forest River ended up being one of the oldest, which is crazy, so here's a little bit of that vacation. We are on a family vacation in northern Michigan. God bless America. We just had Discovery raise your hand if you forgot your toothbrush oh my gosh it doesn't happen to you pretty people okay this is how you spend $60 at a gas station is you want mild spicy or spicy Jack on the way out, this reminded me of a scene from Dumb and Dumber, okay so it was only 40 something dollars but we are back on the road, you can see here the landscape changes, there are many trees that reached our destination from Bo City Michigan, beauti

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y located right on charlot boy lake, that's where we will spend half of our trip there.

We did it? The kids are excited to take off their bikes. I'm mainly putting water in the

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. Tyler is there checking on some things, but we are here after a 4 hour drive and arriving at our home away from home for a week. If you've been watching, you'll remember that we bought an ice maker for our Vint

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, so we decided to give it a try. This thing changed the game on the journey and then the Flood came. In fact, the weather was pretty good during the week - there were a couple of good showers - but who doesn't like that?

Camped after the rain stopped, we drove all over the state park looking for retro campers. I was only able to find this cute little Shasta, overall little Shasta was super cool and peaceful. vacation without further ado, here is the beginning of a renewal. Adventure Venture with Harvey the RV. We had been browsing Facebook Marketplace for a while looking for a 70s or early 80s VR project we could work on and we had actually seen this one and saved it. when it was listed for 2500 um but when we saw the price dropped to th000 we thought yeah this is definitely worth looking at it's a 1976 dodge cruise air house on wheels and tyler liked it because it had the big 440 engine and I just liked it because it looked like it was in good condition.

I also like the size, it's 21 feet long and interestingly enough it's about the same size and weight as an adult Asian elephant, so we've never named a vehicle before, but for some reason I just felt like this guy I needed a name and we chose Harvey. I like jav. Jav sounds good. He sounded cool, old and really looks like Harvey. You can get an idea of ​​the condition in these photos, but. the smell was just wow, it was just wow, so some people thought we were crazy, but we went to pick it up oh, there she is, oh, she looks good, she's fine, so we just bought this caravan, she's yours, yes, here's a look.

Inside this old Asian elephant we knew that anything like a sign or a rug would have to be removed just because of the terrible smell and the amount of excrement that was here, but at first we were hoping that we would be able to keep a lot of this. but hey, you'll see what happens, it's a bathroom, oh God, where some people could have escaped. We left some cash and took it home. I've never thrown up doing something like this before, but this is right on the edge of it. It's so disgusting I think if you look at this carpet you can see why the smells in here were so intense once we

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ed tearing up the back wall we found a bunch of rot or I got this wood.

I wanted to turn it into a piece of art for the wall. But I think we threw it in the trash bin. So eventually the whole kitchen had to go once we realized the back wall was as rotten as it was and we didn't really know the extent of the damage at the time so everything was gone. to come out so we could assess and see what was going on here's the mattress coming out. Have you ever seen a happier human carrying a urine-soaked mattress? We then set our sights on the master bedroom which was filled with various types of excrement. including cats and mice and also some wild animals like ants and spiders, this cabinet came down to see what was going on with the side wall and then the carpet had to be removed from the master bedroom, here's me seeing how long I can hold my breath so He breathed none of that evil.

There is our wall. We identified a small water leak that the owners told us had been fixed, but everything was soaked. A squirrel attacked up there after we had a better idea of ​​what was going on inside. of the RV and before we

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ed rebuilding it we thought we might want to check the condition of the engine, it has over 90k miles on it and we wanted to determine if it was going to be a reliable power plant for six of The eight cylinders had good compression, a couple were a little low, so you can see here that it reaches about 70 PSI.

Ideally we would like to see 100 across the board. This is a good indicator of engine health, so we added a little additive to see if we could increase compression, but it will take time. We had to get rid of almost everything. The upholstered driver and passenger seats were in pretty good condition somehow, so we decided we wanted to reuse them and they needed a good cleaning and deodorizing if you've been watching our videos. I think I mentioned before that I will look for any excuse possible to use the pressure washer, so the next logical step in cleaning the seats was to give them a good hose down with a pressure washer and since we live with teenagers, we learn new terms regularly, so apparently these types of satisfying videos are called ASMR and they can make you relax or comfort you, so you suddenly feel relaxed or comforted there.

Wow, you're welcome, here's a little sample of the seats. They fit very well and they don't even stink anymore. I spent a lot of time redoing this oven and vent hood and it turns out we're not even going to use them. but we were able to make pizza in the garage and who's to say they've ever done that? During a couple of cold, rainy days while I had the carburetor off, I sprayed the engine with some Chrysler corporate blue. Here you can see that I rebuilt the giant. Thermo quad put it back in bold and it's a racer once we were pretty sure the engine was going to be salvageable we had to start working on this rear wall it was going to need a total rebuild so the first step was to take it a

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all.

I can see that the wood here is completely rotted on both back corners. We didn't have much stability there. We got the kids involved to help us make some pieces to put it back together. I should note that we had about 4 days to do this because we had to go out of town for a wedding and couldn't leave the RV with just a big hole in the back wall, we ended up having to replace

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of the floor, we used the template Craig and the pocket holes for We rebuilt the back wall, there were some screws in our way so we decided to remove the awning.

Turns out they weren't for the awning, but the awning removal was complete once we had a general frame on the back wall we got to work on stapling. the aluminum back on and man, we spent a few nights working on this trying to get it ready before we had to leave for our wedding. This clip shows a little game we like to play called Oops, we put the poles in the wrong place so we needed to. so they would line up with the end of the aluminum when we put the back panel back on, so they all had to go up several inches.

The problem was solved. One of the products we've been using quite a bit is this proflex RV that turns out to be pretty. The good thing is that we were working with the 15° angle on this back wall, so it was definitely a relief when everything was back as it should. We added the border again along the bottom and then this super sticky seam tape to place under the border at the bottom. sides and keep everything together oh that's one way, it's very useful, it's really pretty with the sun setting behind you and you're up with the sky and yeah, the moldy back wall is nice, isn't it that romantic?

Yeah this is the only way to flashlight work well yeah I think we're good okay this is ridiculous we made it right on time just for fun here are a couple of photos from the wedding so you don't think that we always look like

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ragam muffins. So when we got home we immediately started photographing the muddy RV and just kidding but I was able to get back to one of my favorite hobbies which is power washing. You could see us removing that huge tarp from the roof before doing the roof project. We turned it on and off every time we wanted to work on this, it took us forever, so ooh, there was some kind of Goat living under that D, so we started by basically spraying everything, it took off a good amount of that LG and other gunk and stuff that was there for years before we got it, we would have liked to keep these cool letters on the RV, but they were coming off so we had to take them off.

We've debated a bit about whether to rewrite them. that again so let us know what you think in the comments after a couple of days of scrubbing and cleaning we got these before and after shots you can definitely see a big difference once we cleaned it up it was finally time to To address the roof we didn't want any more leaks and we definitely didn't want to have to deal with that huge tarp anymore. This roof was in terrible shape. It was covered with residential roofing tar on top of silicone on top of other unknown materials on top of wasp nests.

We lifted everything up. It was loose, we scrubbed it, rinsed it, removed the air conditioning and the different roof vents added some patches over any of the holes we could see there and then got to work priming the entire roof so that the color black wouldn't leak through the new white roof coating that we had purchased for this RV, we decided to use a rubber roof coating for this project and this is a Black Jack Evercoat and we basically just sprayed it and rolled it over it. and smoothed the nice thick layer around the entire top of the RV, sealed it and looks great, next project on the list, new air conditioner with heat pump instructions, well there's this deal, oh it's valuable , the pointed tip goes towards the front Dad, did you bring a screwdriver?

Upstairs we didn't go up anything, no, they gave us tables, how is this undone? How was the other one up there? Does it say bring a big hammer? Are there tables? Don't have photos? We need to disassemble the boards for which round? sealant here it goes hey come on take it get it it's doing things yeah there's only one way to connect it right the plenum set that goes up there like that you'd think yeah oh how about this oh oh yeah that feels good, this next step was quite satisfactory because you could see an immediate difference, so to further combat the odor problem we covered everything that was exposed wood with primer and it was the same primer that we used on the ceiling, on reality and did a good job covering everything. the wood and basically sealing all the stench that it retained.

I love projects where you can see such a different before and after. I mean, Tyler likes the mechanical side of things, but if you redo a carburetor, it looks the same. true, maybe to the untrained eye, yes, my eye is untrained. I found some 16 inch wheels to replace the 16 and 1/2 inch tires that came on the RV. Older RVs have those 16 and 1/2 inch tires and it's hard to find tires. because we didn't want to get stuck down the road with that, so we decided to use these. I went ahead and cleaned the rims. Edge made them first and then I came back with this green ectoplasm to give it some space spice. some spicy spy spice Scary Spice whatever you call them they're hot and green and beautiful ooh you're supposed to say ah ah the exhaust manifold on the passenger side is actually causing us an oil leak and with that I say it oh really.

It was cracked before we welded it on, but that weld is sticking up high and actually pushing on the valve cover and that valve cover not being able to seat properly is leaking oil, so we're going to take the bolts and nuts off the exhaust manifolds and prepare it to put somenew joints, so here's the old one and here's the new one for me, um again, that big weld doesn't help us at all, this one has no cracks or welds, um previously. So it's going to be great, I have to clean it up a little bit, just clean the surfaces so the gasket will stick there and hopefully sealing all of this up, the engine is so big that I had a hard time getting the exhaust manifold. on the driver's side so I had to bend the floor up a little after taking it out and replacing the gasket.

I folded the floor back down and everything came back together like it was supposed to be, now let's put the gasket in place, it's a little sticky, now let's slide our giant heavy exhaust manifold into place, okay , this is a little bit easier than the driver's side, heavy, heavy, okay, this is what we're starting with. If you want to see the poop situation check out our first couple of videos on this RV, the toilet water line is free, oh boy is the right car outside. I guess that's okay, so it's time to get rid of that yellow bathroom.

I'm going to use this, I bought it at Home Depot, I'm not sure why I kneel when I say Home Depot, but anyway, this worked pretty well, it was thinner than I thought, it also had more smell than I thought and the comments Everyone said you need a well ventilated area, it's very loud and at first it wasn't but as it went on I think because it's such a confined space it started to get quite smoky in there. So I was taking breaks here and there, but overall I just applied it and ended up doing three coats of this stuff.

We really didn't want to have to try to find a new piece for this bathroom. I mean, these were the walls, the floor, the sink, everything. in this wet bathroom, so luckily it was as good as new, we decided to cut our losses on that old toilet and looked for a new one. ADD, we ended up touching every surface in this bathroom so we wouldn't have any memory of what happened. The old bathroom used to look and you know everything from the new wallpaper, the new shower, the new toilet, the new towel racks, um, it all came together and made it look like a new room.

We went a little more modern with the medicine cabinet and bought one that has a built-in LED light at this point in the process, we've had the RV for a couple of months and it hasn't really been on the road so we're dying to get it out to see how it worked. I also wanted to do a good wash of the black tank. We've mentioned smells a couple of times. We tried to throw it here and there was nothing in it, but we could see there was still stuff in it. So was there a pyramid? it was kind of like a pyramid, um, so we ended up throwing a bunch of different concoctions that we saw online down there, a bunch of water and we wanted there to be a squirrel that was going to kill us, squirrel, um, we wanted to drive it around and loosen up a little bit.

Pick that up and go to the state park that's about 15 miles from here and clean that up, so here's a little bit of how it went wrong. Do you hear that? Yeah, oh, we could be here for a while, maybe they'll have a camp. What's going on? oh it's boiling oh man if that gets on my shoes I'm going to throw up so this was the point where we had to call one of our older kids to come pick us up we have a ranger situation Brewing Brewing , take it well, play cool boy, hey, thanks for picking us up, yeah, you're welcome, I couldn't sleep well, wondering if the caravan was still here, you don't get to see the sunrise many days, we're so lucky today to be here, oh, it's nice. although look yeah no it's really nice if you break down just yell at the CB and someone will come to your rescue and help you during the test drive we found out we were having some major cooling issues so after we got home we decided that we had to solve it.

Immediately, the overflow tank and radiator were full of sludge and mud, so we decided to have Ed wash them, give it a new thermostat, a couple of new hoses, and give it another chance. We got the 5000 wire deflector to try to remove some of this rust. I put it out and then hit it with some ready black paint, somehow it never occurred to me to cover this last night when we thought it was going to rain so back to square one with the bumper, I can't really do anything with it today, it's super muggy and it's raining, so I think we're going to turn our attention to some of these marker lights and try to change them.

I don't like it, it's okay. I'm going to clean this up. Oh well, like new. I see it matches my shirt. a new one that's new and works hey, looks good, you wouldn't think it would make a big difference to turn on these new lights, but the LEDs instead of the dirty old ones, ouch I caught that ouch I could have caught that! video this huge branch just fell, it's like the final destination is here today, somehow we managed to avoid death by the LM tree and installed the marker lights on the staircase, oh let's not talk about the staircase, why yes, this one ladder was bent when we got it and we thought we'd just try to bend it back, no problem, yeah, if that breaks I'm going to cry, you're going to blame me, that's what's going to happen and then I'm going to cry, yeah, CU .

You're jumping on him, it's just that you did it after the little mishap with the ladder, which was no one's fault, it's no one's fault. um, I got over some of my disappointment in polishing this bumper and ended up putting some POR 15 on it and getting a nice coat. black next were the window seals, they were rotted and shrunken so we went online and ordered a new window seal. Adding these new rubber seals would help make it airtight and keep out rain that is just coming in. Don't know. I'd like to think it's a new window seal on these windows, we'll keep going back and forth, so after our little trip to the campground, we posted that video and actually felt pretty good that there was nothing wrong with the window seal. butt.

We had no signs that there was anything wrong with the head gasket other than overheating, but people kept commenting that the head gasket was definitely the head gasket, so, I mean, you guys scared us a little after that we return. Talking to a friend and explaining the overheating issues to him he told me about a test kit he could buy for about 30 bucks that could see if you had a potentially blown head gasket so we thought we would give it a try, this test will determine if you have exhaust gases. combustion getting into the coolant which would mean you have a bad head gasket so what you do is you pour this fluid into um while the engine is running and hot and after about 2 minutes if it stays blue it's okay if it turns yellow or green, that's bad and that's an indicator that you have a bad head gasket, yeah that's 2 stressful minutes just staring at this fluid hoping it doesn't change color and in the end it turns out that mountains they are blue.

Fortunately we were able to find someone to repair our ladder, they welded it up and it is like new. We were already in this deep end, so why not change the water pump? When I was putting it all back together I broke a bolt on the alternator, why not add another project to the list? Removing this refrigerator should have been easy, but we removed every screw we could find and it still didn't budge, so we were relieved when we were finally able to get it out of the camper we got. To work next on removing the boiler, the plan for Harvey is that we won't actually use propane at all, we'll use all the appliances, so once the boiler was off we got to work removing the propane tank, we It will save a little extra weight and we won't have to go through the expense and process of reviewing and recertifying it.

Next we get to work updating the electrical system and if you watch the full video you can see my amazing artistic skills this is our old panel and the new one ooh look at the new one nice and shiny it comes with fuses we already added a battery disconnect so that our battery doesn't run out if we accidentally leave something on and we also added a converter to power our DC items when we are connected to the mains, so we tried our best to put all these videos in one, as you can see, They were just little clips, if you want to see a fuller version of any of them I'll link to the playlist. below in the description or you can just search for retro revivals on YouTube and they should pop up, so if you've enjoyed what you've seen so far make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the conclusion, the end of getting Harvey back on the road, we hope to take you to camping this year, so we're running out of time, but we really hope to get there.

You'll also want to keep an eye out because we have the 1973 Holiday Rambler travel trailer that we purchased, so don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on that transformation. Thank you all so much for watching, whether it's your first time or you've been with us from the beginning, we hope to return. Very soon, with big changes to the interior, we bought all kinds of things, a lot of things, sinks, sofas, stoves, refrigerators and water heaters, everything, so it will be put back together quickly once it starts working, so stay attentive. And we'll see you soon, very good, take care, be safe, guys.