Back to this restoration project Sunday 8 21 2011

A year ago I had to stop this project because I wanted to restore an vintage 83 Fleetwood Pace Arrow motor home to take my wife to her family reunion. The trip was a total disaster having the motorhome break down after only 30 miles, due to a reoccurring belt problem, ended up having to have it towed home only to throw everything into our vintage 1955 Crown travel trailer and making that trip to Texas in her.

So now I am back to this project again as of today, took a while to figure out where I left off, and after making a few minor repair I decide the best place to start over again would be the restoration it's Magic chef stove, so I went ahead and pulled it out.

This is the first stove that I have restore that had rust damage under the stove top, so I guess I will have to begin there.

I will admit I am happy to be back to working on her, at least I have had some success in restoring of these vintage beauties.

Began the restoration of the Magic Chef Stove

Last week end I pull the stove out to begin the restoration, and was surprise to discover that it had a lot of rust damage which I had to first repair, which I was able to do today, I was able to restore everything to work correctly but was not able to get the oven to light, I was finally able to get the pilot light to stay lit but I still have not been able to get gas to the burner, even after blowing out the supply tubing.

So I guess I will start that troubleshooting that problem next week end.

Well after working on the thermo-coupler I finally got the over to light today Monday 9 5 2011

I was really surprised that the stove grates also were covered with black porcelain, and the stove grate were covered with heavy built on grease it was not noticed, but once I started stripping them down I began to see the luster, and I wanted to do everything I could to retain what luster was left, so I carefully stripped away all of the build debris, they soaked the in a detergent and polished the out and got a lot of the luster to again shine, I went ahead and painted the bottom with a high heat black paint to round the grates restoration out and now the are ready to put back into service, it is funny how it was harder and more time consuming to get these grates were I wanted them to be, than it took me restore the entire stove oven unit.

Today Sept. 11 2011, I reinstalled the completed restoration of the Magic Chef Model # 185 Stove unit and got it reinstalled back into the Lo-Liner

Began the restoration of the Sunbeam Sun-Lite gas lamp

I bought 3 complete lamp [over paid for all of them] to insure I was able to have one complete working lamp so today I picked the best parts from all 3 lamps for my project lamp, I dissembled the lamp and cleaned it, I hope too be able to test it next week end pending finding the gas connection to attache it to my one pound tank and if the sing tied one mantle I have works, the first time out, otherwise I will have to locate more of the correct mantle to complete the project.

Today Sunday Sept 25, 2011 I made a test bench for the restored gas lamp so I could test it, , took the lamp I restored and installed it onto the test assembly and tested it and was very to find that everything worked correctly so I ended up getting it reinstalled back into the trailer I am restoring.

Repalce the tail light bulb socket today sunday 9 18 2011

The left tail light was a problem because the light socket was loose and failed to make contact so I replaced the light socket.

Made a patch for the crack in the door

The door had a crack that seem to be getting worst, I was planing to have it welded, when I took it to the shop to have the door frame repaired, so today I patched it to at least make it staple.

Filling dings and holes in the skin and sanding and prepping for paint

Over the last few weekend I have not done any thing beside prep for to get ready for paint, and being this is about the only part of restoration I hate, I was not going to post anything but today I thought I should at least document the task so here is is:

Sunday December completed the stripping, priming and painting of the tongue