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Rear A/C cabinet refurb question
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bself
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 11:22 am    Post subject: Rear A/C cabinet refurb question Reply with quote

Has anyone been able to successfully remove the staples from a westy cabinet joint in order to dismantle the cabinet, replace a panel, and rebuild it? If so, what tool(s) did you use? How hard and time consuming was the project?

Here’s the backstory to the question…

I have an ’87 camper w/ factory air conditioning that has never worked since I've owned the van (2004). A few years ago we had small kids, both in car seats, both hooked up w/ the GoWesty Tether bracket kit which calls for you to cut a couple lovely oblong holes in the bottom of the A/C cabinet (aka headbanger). All my kids are now older and those tether holes no longer in use. Add to that, a previous owner of my van somehow started a small fire in the engine bay while doing maintenance work which was hot enough to scorch 1/4 of the vinyl 'wallpaper' on the bottom side of the same cabinet. The scorched vinyl has bugged me since I bought the van but I never really looked into fixing it until now. Along with the two unused tether holes I’m trying to make things look as original as possible

Yesterday I dove in headfirst and removed the spice shelf, the A/C plenum, and the A/C cabinet in question so I can work on it on a bench. After trying to 'scrape' the old vinyl off, I read a super helpful thread on here mentioning the use of a heat gun (vinyl removal went from being a royal PITA to a piece of cake so thanks to 'btownkid' for that suggestion!).

My original thought was to replace the bottom panel of the cabinet and either re-vinyl it or not vinyl it and stain it). This seems a cleaner solution across the board but the builders used a lot of small staples which aren’t easy to remove. If the chances are high the cabinet itself will be destroyed trying to remove them I'd rather not go this route.

An alternative option is to leave the bottom panel and cabinet as is, cut out wood plugs for the tether holes, epoxy them in, sand them flat, and re-vinyl to cover things up. Certainly seems like a much simpler and less destructive solution but I’ve never done this either so if anyone has experience with this option and could provide advice / guidance, it would be appreciated.

Thanks
Brad
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bobbyblack Premium Member
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 11:41 am    Post subject: Re: Rear A/C cabinet refurb question Reply with quote

I've hand my headbanger out a couple times now. I didn't correlate the staples with the wood joints, although they certainly did run in the same directions. I thought it was something to do with keeping the wallpaper in place. My task on the second removal was to get the wallpaper glued back down to the bottom as it was peeling/crawling. Heat gun was super important on that job.

Per your task at hand, that very same heat gun may be one answer in finding out how badly this can go. I know for sure that the joints are glued, if in addition to the staples.

In my head, I would plug the holes with whatever process you decide on, sand it and paint it with rattle can similar color as other cabinets W/O wallpaper. I have also seen some very clever folks put in a sheet of plexi on the bottom, and insert a map of their travels, plans to travel to, etc. Then, while lying down, you can look up at a better thing than a boring wallpaper..

One bit of advice on your headbanger cabinet though: cut slots up from the holes the drip tubes go through. Get all that plumbing nicely in place prior to reinstalling the cabinet. You will thank yourself so much the next time you have to take it out, and the ease of installing it this time will bring a smile to you. Hooking up the plumbing after you install the cabinet is extremely frustrating.

-bobby
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khughes
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 11:58 am    Post subject: Re: Rear A/C cabinet refurb question Reply with quote

bself wrote:
Has anyone been able to successfully remove the staples from a westy cabinet joint in order to dismantle the cabinet, replace a panel, and rebuild it? If so, what tool(s) did you use? How hard and time consuming was the project?

Here’s the backstory to the question…

I have an ’87 camper w/ factory air conditioning that has never worked since I've owned the van (2004). A few years ago we had small kids, both in car seats, both hooked up w/ the GoWesty Tether bracket kit which calls for you to cut a couple lovely oblong holes in the bottom of the A/C cabinet (aka headbanger). All my kids are now older and those tether holes no longer in use. Add to that, a previous owner of my van somehow started a small fire in the engine bay while doing maintenance work which was hot enough to scorch 1/4 of the vinyl 'wallpaper' on the bottom side of the same cabinet. The scorched vinyl has bugged me since I bought the van but I never really looked into fixing it until now. Along with the two unused tether holes I’m trying to make things look as original as possible

Yesterday I dove in headfirst and removed the spice shelf, the A/C plenum, and the A/C cabinet in question so I can work on it on a bench. After trying to 'scrape' the old vinyl off, I read a super helpful thread on here mentioning the use of a heat gun (vinyl removal went from being a royal PITA to a piece of cake so thanks to 'btownkid' for that suggestion!).

My original thought was to replace the bottom panel of the cabinet and either re-vinyl it or not vinyl it and stain it). This seems a cleaner solution across the board but the builders used a lot of small staples which aren’t easy to remove. If the chances are high the cabinet itself will be destroyed trying to remove them I'd rather not go this route.

An alternative option is to leave the bottom panel and cabinet as is, cut out wood plugs for the tether holes, epoxy them in, sand them flat, and re-vinyl to cover things up. Certainly seems like a much simpler and less destructive solution but I’ve never done this either so if anyone has experience with this option and could provide advice / guidance, it would be appreciated.

Thanks
Brad


They are not too hard to take apart but damage it certainly possible if not somewhat likely. I rebuilt an '87 on cabinet for my '86 a few years ago and made a number of modifications (custom plenum in the cabinet) that required extending the cabinet farther forward. I just used new ply for the bottom and bought the brown (in my case) laminate from GW to cover it. Worked fine and they do have it in grey as well. Not a big deal, but you'll need a router with a laminate trimming bit (<$10).
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MarkWard
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 12:22 pm    Post subject: Re: Rear A/C cabinet refurb question Reply with quote

Our 82 is much older and does not have the AC in the rear cabinet, but I uploaded this picture for another thread about replacing interior vinyl.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Looks like new? It's not. I removed all of the pealing vinyl with a heat gun, but took a piece to HD and had them color match it. With minimal prep, I painted the boards with latex Kiltz right over the old glue and all. I then painted the panels with my color match latex from HD. The paint actually picked up the texture of the old glue and vinyl and tricks the eye into thinking its actually vinyl.

It's held up great.
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khughes
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 9:51 pm    Post subject: Re: Rear A/C cabinet refurb question Reply with quote

MarkWard wrote:
Our 82 is much older and does not have the AC in the rear cabinet, but I uploaded this picture for another thread about replacing interior vinyl.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Looks like new? It's not. I removed all of the pealing vinyl with a heat gun, but took a piece to HD and had them color match it. With minimal prep, I painted the boards with latex Kiltz right over the old glue and all. I then painted the panels with my color match latex from HD. The paint actually picked up the texture of the old glue and vinyl and tricks the eye into thinking its actually vinyl.

It's held up great.


Mine was originally the laminate material, not vinyl - same formica type stuff as the rest of the cabinets so I went that route. Not tough really. $40 for the 4' x 4' section from GW IIRC.
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bself
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 2:24 pm    Post subject: Re: Rear A/C cabinet refurb question Reply with quote

bobbyblack wrote:
I've hand my headbanger out a couple times now. I didn't correlate the staples with the wood joints, although they certainly did run in the same directions. I thought it was something to do with keeping the wallpaper in place. My task on the second removal was to get the wallpaper glued back down to the bottom as it was peeling/crawling. Heat gun was super important on that job.

Per your task at hand, that very same heat gun may be one answer in finding out how badly this can go. I know for sure that the joints are glued, if in addition to the staples.

In my head, I would plug the holes with whatever process you decide on, sand it and paint it with rattle can similar color as other cabinets W/O wallpaper. I have also seen some very clever folks put in a sheet of plexi on the bottom, and insert a map of their travels, plans to travel to, etc. Then, while lying down, you can look up at a better thing than a boring wallpaper..

One bit of advice on your headbanger cabinet though: cut slots up from the holes the drip tubes go through. Get all that plumbing nicely in place prior to reinstalling the cabinet. You will thank yourself so much the next time you have to take it out, and the ease of installing it this time will bring a smile to you. Hooking up the plumbing after you install the cabinet is extremely frustrating.

-bobby


Thanks Bobby. Great info and much appreciated. I decided it was much easier to plug the holes rather than pull the box apart to replace the bottom panel. Once I saw all the staples and realized how difficult they would be to remove I knew chances were probably high that I'd just end up destroying the cabinet. Now I'm just waiting for a section of vinyl from Sewfine to deliver so I can cover everything up.

Ps - those scrape marks bottom right are from me trying to pull/scrape the old vinyl off w/ a paint scraper. That's when I figured out the heat gun made the job a lot easier and less damaging... Wink

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.

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