Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Hi all,
As soon as I can find a free weekend to go pick it up, I'm going to be starting a refurb project on an old single wheel teardrop that I'm picking up to tow behind my VW bus. The trailer has some minor rot on the exterior siding (probably from leaning against the ground for 25 years), so I have a panel or two to replace. But in my searching I haven't found any matching siding patterns. What's on it appears to be a 3/4" mesa pattern (or at least that's the closest pattern I found), but all I can find are 1" and 2".... So is there a good place to look for oddball siding like this, or do I need to have the panels custom made?

Thanks all.

I may not be correct, but my guess is that the aluminum
corrugated that closely is also, no doubt, a thicker gauge
structural aluminum, not just the aluminum used as an exterior
covering. The riveting as shown in the pic leads me to think
this also. Maybe you could check out some old aircraft
structural skins. The Old Ford Tri-Motor planes had
structural aluminum skin of a similar corrugation - it is
very distinctive in looks.

A couple of the aircraft parts/materials places may have
the gauge you need. Also the Airstream parts suppliers
should have it too. You should able to take it to a sheet
metal fabrication place to have it rolled to match what
you have on the trailer. The Barth, and also later Boles Aero
all-aluminum TTs had a similar pattern on their skins,
though not so narrow of corrugations, so I'd guess that is
what they did - rolled the heavier gauge aluminum for that.

Some links:
Ford Trimotor Plane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Trimotor
A couple aircraft materials sources:
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/
http://www.wicksaircraft.com/index.html
Barth:
http://www.barthmobile.com/eve/forums/a ... /275102791
Boles Aero:
http://www.vintagetrailercamp.com/gallery/album22/PA882
An Airstream discussion/restoration info website:
http://www.airforums.com/


Cheers,
Norm/mezmo