That was a friggen pain in the . . .

I had advance warning that this was going to be a difficult part of the project. Someday'59 down in Atlanta had recently described a frustrating couple of evenings trying to put their end caps back up.

Monday night, Mary and I spent a couple hours trying to put the front end cap in with no success. While we were able to line up the holes along the top of the window, we couldn't get within 2 inches of the rivet line in the rib that goes accross the top of the trailer. I was pretty convinced it was because I had laid on the insulation too thick and decided to call it a night and try again after thining the insulation.

After thining out the insulation on Tuesday, I was able to get the front cap up and riveted in several places (accross the top of the trailer, a few over the front window, and a few along the street side). I was working by myself Tuesday and had to really put a ton of pressure on the end cap to push it into alingment with the rivet holes.

Last night, I used a floor jack and a two-by-four to put pressure on the bottom edge of the end cap. It was kind of scary as the edge is brittle and developed some cracks, but those will be covered by the aluminum pannels that go up next. While pushing up with the floor jack, Mary and/or I would also push the center of the curve to get the holes to line up horizontally. I got the last few rivets lined up tonight and will move onto the rear end cap tomorrow.

That nasty brown stain on the end cap is from the puddles that the end caps held while sitting out in our backyard through two months of rain storms. Glad to have those out of the yard.