We drove down Highway 6 to Guelph in clear sunny weather yesterday with a quick stop at Timmies in Hepworth for sustenance. We took a look at the aluminum beauty and think the outside was in amazing shape, in our inexperienced opinions.
The Safari 22 airstream trailer had hardly any dings or dents, we thought the trailer body would look older or more used than it did on the outside. It almost looked new, especially from the back. The actual carriage is 19 feet long but the 22 comes from the extra 3 feet for the tongue.
There was a couple of small shallow surface scratches on the road side back corner about 4 feet off the ground, and one small 2" ruck on the left side of the tongue. I can't wait to see her all polished up.
The previous owners had the airstream rv 11 years, and bought it near London, from the 2nd owner and he had it out in a field. The trailer is under trees now. I think still had the top coat. Property is sold Sept 30th and they are going to live in the boat they've built.
The owners took out stove and kitchen when they got the airstream trailer as it was "not working" and full of mice! We think a smaller nice custom galley would work for us anyway, no stove just a cook-top, fridge, sink. The Suburban furnace is gone, no big loss, as it was a recalled item anyway.
All the windows, doors, covers are there and work, one window near the door (on right of out from outside) leaks if they open it so they leave it closed. It's been a weekend trailer camper in one location for 10 years and they seemed to know it intimately, nice folks.
They showed us the area of punky wood by the door, floor was painted plywood and looked and sounded good overall. Didn't find any rot elsewhere, 'cept there was an area on the bathroom floor that looked more rippled too right near the shower, so am sure it will need to be redone. No signs of stains on ceiling or around windows.
Inside the compartments was great even the fridge vent one. Chimney goes out through the old fridge vent, they said the cover was fibreglass and cracked so they don't have it anymore.
The roof vents are seized, just in the last year or two, not sure if taking apart and cleaning the workings might help with that. They were intact otherwise.
End wall of bathroom was nice looking wood, otherwise it was wide open in there with the original bench across from where the galley was.
It looked like surface rust on chassis, back part near bumper had like an aluminum wrap around the frame and one small area of the aluminum layer looked corroded, but the metal showing underneath was solid just surface rust from what we could see.
We'd read about the trailer doesn't bounce, the axle rubber is dried and solidified and it seemed to be bouncy enough. We are still prepared to replace if we have to. No cracks in the tires which are older, all hold air even the spare, original chrome hubcaps on the tires too.
So no matter what the airstream needs inside, we thought as these don't come up often in Ontario and the great shell condition, lovely size for us that it may be beginners luck. We may not see any airstreams as nice for some time, so we went ahead. I think if something else "better" comes up we could get our money back if we don't mess with the trailer too much, but after reading and researching, this looks perfect for us, the style we like and a great size and beautiful too!
After we said we'd go ahead, they told us they'd had a ton of emails (about 15) and 4 people telling them call them as soon as you can if they (us) don't want it. They were happy to wait for us to come as we were the first reply. We trust them not to sell the airstream out from under us, we weren't sure til we got there and met them. Both groups have had it happen before where you go with the money, it’s all agreed and they sold it to someone else who skipped the queue, so I feel reassured. They wrote up an official receipt for the deposit with serial number etc and we feel pretty happy, and lucky.
We have been browsing the original owners manual they gave us and feel like new airstream owners now! Serial number is J-0226117
We are excited to begin the "can of worms" adventure. We pick her up on around 24th Sept and I will be posting lots of pics then! I am looking forward to any comments or insights on a project like this if you have them ;-)
I-phone pic sorry for the quality. Along the road side of the Airstream, the door does close right up, it was not shut properly there and they had keys etc for all the doors/compartments.
