Our story of Otis, a 1964 Aristocrat Lil Loafer

 I love the little bunk window! I look forward to rebuilding all the windows, but especially this little guy.   The screen looks in good shape.   It’s no surprise the seal is hard, shrunken and pulling away from the frame.

 This is the shelf that held the water tank within the closet area. I have not officially figured out the tank capacity, but I’m guessing it’s around 10 gallons. That’s a lot of weight on a single piece of 1/2” plywood! I will definetely beef this up in the rebuild. You can also see more water damage in the floor and wall corner area.  Here’s another picture but showing more of the upper portion of the area. Again, you can see in the upper corner, water entry, in its earlier stages. Here is the water tank. I will sanitize and re use it. It looks to be in good shape. I will obviously replace the copper and vinyl tubing. One of the problems I noticed with the installation of the tank on the shelf is that the tank does not have a flat bottom to sit on. Instead, it’s got extruded reinforcements that creat weird high spots that make the tank wobble around. I will remedy this later by building risers that will make the area around the reinforcements flush with the...

This is where the standard 15 amp Inlet is located. The simplicity of the original single outlet and one light fixture allowed only a 15 amp Inlet, but I will be adding an RV 30 amp Inlet in its place. This will allow me to install a 30 or 40 amp converter/power center. I have grand plans for the new electrical system that include lots of lighting, outlets, and various other goodies.  This is a close up of the sink drain, vent, and city water connection. I will do what I can to update the plumbing. Because I need to use the existing cutouts, I saw the need to probably add decorative aluminum plates to cover screw holes and then redrill access holes through them. This will become more clear when I talk about it later at that stage.  Here is a picture of the water tank filler spout. The water system is a gravity feed system. The really cool cast aluminum fill spout is installed a little higher than the top of the tank. I can’t wait to clean it up. The lit...

 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!