Our story of Otis, a 1964 Aristocrat Lil Loafer

 This is the passenger side of the dinette. The red grain plywood is some import stuff that looked awful. It was installed as an attempt to repair water damage on the rear of the trailer.   This shows the complete dinette. Kinda a mess.  This is the drivers side of the dinette.  The dinette converted into the bed. I had lots of ideas for this area. I wanted to possibly try and make the drivers side of the new bed wider. This would mean shortening the pantry a bit. I also don’t like the boards and stick supports needed for the bed. I wanted to construct something more efficient that simply slides in and out to support the seat cushions. 

 The pantry and closet. That electrical box has to go! My plan would be to install a converter power center somewhere in the closet or pantry area.  The two above counter storage areas. You can also see the ceiling sagging around the roof vent. In this picture, I have already removed the nasty broken fridge as well as the drawers. As I tear down things on the inside, my brain can’t stop thinking about the location of future wire and plumbing runs. 

 This is a picture of the water tank and drain/vent assembly. Take note of the wimpy 1/2” thick plywood shelf that holds the 10 gallon tank. My goal was to reuse this old school brass assembly.  In this picture, I already removed the drain pipe portion that attaches to the sink. I love knowing it’s one year older than I am! Here is the sink underside. Again, my goal was to cleanup the brass drain pipe an reuse it.  The sink and faucet. The sink was pretty banged up, but the faucet looked rebuildable. I can’t wait to completely update the stove area. Although really cool in a vintage way, the wall areas  just look so random and busy. The range hood was very rusty. Nothing I couldn’t refinish easily, but I was thinking I would like to add a fan and filter (updated range hood) As for the stove/oven, I’m also thinking I would just update in someway. 

 Rear driver side roof corner  Passenger side damage. The tape was my attempt to hold together what was left for future measurements and/or template making in order to recreate new structure later. Again, this portion of structure was literally rotted away. Looking up at front driver’s side roof corner Front view. The bottom front portion was rotted away so much that the structure was sagging downwards. I see so much opportunity to bring Otis back to life with new materials!

 The rear end was not without its issues. It looks like the dry rot got so bad that the previous owner attempted to replace the interior panels and some of the cross spars. Expanding foam works great to seal gaps between rotten wood and new panels......NOT! :^|  A closer look at the rear driver’s side. So much of the rotten wood was like fine powder.  I see lots of vintage trailers online that people update inside with a little paint and and some elbow grease. I understand most people may not have the resources I have to take the siding off to inspect the wood structure underneath, but man, I’m glad I did. Structurally, these trailers are built to be pretty durable as a whole. But when side walls and floors start deteriorating and separating , joints where they fasten together have rotted away, the overall strength of the trailer is truly compromised and the stresses of being towed down the road in this condition are just begging for something bad to hap...

As you can see there was lots of dry rot, especially on the edges and corners. Nothing I wasn’t expecting. I love how the high voltage cable is stretched across the roof and over the front radius. Not exactly the best way to do it, in my opinion. I’ll definetely run it differently when the time comes. My other observation is of the wimpy fiberglass insulation. I understand there is only 3/4” of insulation depth, but in many places the insulation was so thin you could easily see through it. I will be using rigid insulation in place of the fiberglass. It’s light weight and will add some substance to the entire entire trailer.

Door, bunk window, and door removed There was nothing too noticeable after removing all of the windows and the door. A lot of my excitement during the teardown process was too see how well (or not) the Lil Loafer was built. As a teardrop manufacturer, I feel I built very quality trailers using both RV and furniture construction techniques. This experience would definitely play a part in the reconstruction method of Otis later on.  I didn’t have real high expectations for build quality of the Lil Loafer, but it was still being pulled down the road 54 years later. I would soon find out that Aristocrat, in my opinion, was no different than today’s RV manufactures. Things were pretty crooked, few “square” openings, millions of staples (that do very little over time to actually hold things together) and poor plumbing, electrical, and gas systems. But, with that said, again, Otis was still hanging around all these years later and the construction flaws are the reasons they a...

Once I got Otis to the shop, I could hardly wait to really start tearing in to him! One of the first things I looked into was the updated fridge situation. Lil Loafer’s originally came with an ice box, so at some point someone swapped it out with a fridge. I knew I was going to want a fridge also, so I liked the idea that someone else did some of the work to install one already. We would eventually see where that road takes us.  Part of me was hoping the fridge would work, but another part of me really wanted to update everything I could. I would decide to replace it soon after I started gutting the interior.  This was officially the first piece I removed off of Otis! It’s the exterior portion of the stove hood vent. My goal was to do my very best to reuse as much as I could when putting Otis back together. 

Bringing Otis to his new home. Anytime I am on the road, I am constantly looking on peoples property for forgotten vintage trailers. For years I was hoping that little gem would be found. Other than a few for sale here and there that really didn’t fit what I was looking for on the typical online websites, locating a small vintage trailer is really hard, especially locally. So, for years, I just kept my eyes peeled, although I wasn’t putting serious effort into the search. I truly believed that if the right little trailer came to be, it would present itself with little effort. Kitchen One day during the summer of 2017, my wife went to visit a sick friend of ours that lives a couple blocks down the road. After the visit, when she got home, she informed me that there was a small little trailer across the street from our friend’s house for sale. I think I remember her mentioning how run down it looked. When she told me about the trailer, I couldn’t get there fast enou...

Otis, in the very beginning.  This is the beginning of our story with Otis, our 1964 Aristocrat Lil Loafer. For many years I have been wanting to find a small vintage trailer to restore. This hunt actually led to my seven years as a teardrop manufacturer, since, in the beginning, I didn’t have the space to work on a “bigger” sized trailer, but had the space to build smaller teardrop trailers. My interest to build or restore any type of RV stems from the fact that we love camping in RV’s in addition to my love of building, making, and constructing anything involving woodworking, electrical/electronics, metal/welding, plumbing, etc. The success of my tenor building teardrops allowed me to use a corner of this large warehouse business space to restore a vintage trailer, if I could find one. So, with this said, let me begin the story of Otis, as he was welcomed into our family camping adventures. 😀