Rebuilding a 1969 Franklin Mini

[Grandad]

Hi everyone. My name is Jim, I’m new here and I’m rebuilding a 1969 vintage Franklin Mini. I say ‘Vintage’ because it squeaks into the ‘Vintage’ category by approx. 10 months. Some prefer to refer to it as a “Classic” caravan.

However, it has been in my possession for approx. 25 years, but I’ve never actually hooked it up and toured with it. It’s been an off and on bedroom for some of our 5 kids at various stages in their lives.
At some point in the early days, the kids dubbed it “The Pumpkin” and that’s what everyone has referred to it as ever since.
So, allow me to introduce “The Pumpkin”

Here’s a couple of pics of how it was when I finally decided to renovate it. Well, a renovation was all I thought it would need before I really got into the job. The further in I got, the more it turned into a rebuild.





There were a few areas of obvious concern.

Window Frames



Rear wall over the bed. Damage primarily caused by condensation over the decades.



And a vital section of timber only discovered after the walls were removed.
By the way, this was the good side.



Once I crawled underneath, I discovered vital chassis components that had rusted down to barely a millimetre wall thickness, cracks galore and some not very reassuring welds.




I’ll continue on another post.

[T1 Terry]

Welcome to the forum Jim. That is one hell of a project you've taken on there, you must really love these older vans to put that much work into restoring it to its former glory.

T1 Terry & Margaret

[BernieQ2]

Hi Jim . First I would lift the caravan of the chassis .That will give you a better look at what needs doing . But nothing is surmontable that can't be fixed .
Hope to enjoy the journey with you .
Plenty of pics please .
Bernie .

[Grandad]

you must really love these older vans to put that much work into restoring it to its former glory.

Actually, it was all about the $$$$
I priced up several more modern vans. My reaction was inevitably 'You want HOW much?"

I already owned the Pumpkin so it kindof made sense

Jim

[Grandad]

Hi Jim . First I would lift the caravan of the chassis .That will give you a better look at what needs doing .

Give me a minute Bernie. And I mean literally a minute.
You'll see what happened next. And, I did exactly what you're suggesting, so your advice is spot on.

Jim

[BruceS]

Wow! That'll keep you off the streets for a while! (well I'm guessing it DID!?)
I started with a similar aged 18ft Viscount.... took one look at it & turned it into a car trailer to put the Diahatsu Charade on & towed it to Qld a couple of times! (Behind a Bedford bus of course as you do!)
I cut the frame & put 8" in it. Same with the axle so the car would fit between the mudguards.
Tyres look good on yours? Do another 50yrs easily!!!

[Grandad]

On another forum, somebody stated they had never seen an aluminium skinned caravan body successfully removed from the chassis. Well, that sounded like a challenge to me.



Once I could roll the chassis out where I could see it properly I discovered many more areas of concern. In the end, everything you see here was towed down to the recycling centre. I kept the wheels and tyres only because I could use them while I was rebuilding. They too will be replaced before I hit the road.



I built a new chassis a little bit bigger than the original. There were areas fore and aft that had sagged due to lack of support over its 40-year life. So, because I can, I decided to make it a bit larger, and a lot stronger.



A 60 litre water tank and 40 litre grey water tank installed.



Finished chassis ….. with $1000 worth of Alko gear…… ouch!



I’ve added a fair bit of extra weight onto the original tare of 600kg. But, I ordered 1300kg suspension so I’m comfortable with anything up to that weight GTM. The actual finished weight should be substantially lighter than this fully loaded.
There is no frame in this caravan. Franklin led the field in their day building Australia’s first composite wall construction in a brand new factory at Wendouree. Near Ballarat.

So, the first step was removing the rotted inner skin. It came off surprisingly easy.



And, I replaced the little bit of framing around the side windows.



And, ran the electrical cables. The original wiring was just run in grooves in the polystyrene. However, I had learned that some cable insulation reacted badly with some polystyrene. The original cabling had survived nicely but would the new?
Just to be safe, I decided to run everything in conduit. The grey is 12V and the orange (close enough to Red) is 240V



I had to do some research into what adhesives would not react to the polystyrene, (read dissolve the polystyrene) whilst giving a strong bond. So, I experimented with all the suggested adhesives that I had learnt about by gluing pieces of ply onto a cube of polystyrene I had laying around. You know that, “It’ll come in handy for something” scenario? See? It does come in handy sometimes.



24 hours later I prised the pieces off again to see which one held best. As it turned out, The Best, really held on well. I had to get some leverage under it to succeed.



I then levelled a work surface as accurately as I could and came up with a clamping system.



Once done, I sanded back the horrible 70’s woodgrain and primed everything.
Here, all stacked neatly away in my garage,

[Grandad]

New window frames fabricated from 100 year old Red Gum.



Once I had all the separate components ready, I decided to make two mini stud walls to act as guides to hold the two walls upright while we fitted the roof. This also allowed us the ability to jiggle things around on clamps only until I was happy everything was square.



The day the roof went on and the old girl was once again 3 dimensional was a celebration day. I sent this pic to my daughter and she sent a text back, “The Pumpkin is back!!” Yeah, that about summed it up.
The original construction front and rear were just a piece of 7mm ply and then the aluminium skin pop rivetted to the walls. I decided to add some ribs this time around as this area supported the bed.



Plywood lined both inner and outer with 25mm of new polystyrene in between. Remember that condensation issue I mentioned? This should hopefully stop it.
You can also see the supports for the bed frame on the side walls.



One thing I thought I would do was installed two lengths of 100mm sewer pipe. You know how we often see this used on the rear bumper bar or over the ‘A’ frame to store annex poles and the like? Well, I thought this would be neater and leave cleaner exterior lines.
Here’s the inside…



And where they exit outside….



Bed frame installed…



New overhead cupboards… There were none in Franklins original design.



At this point, I tarped the whole thing up with a new blue tarp as winter, and the rains that brings was not far off. I busied myself with some interior house renovations and put all work on The Pumpkin on hold until the following summer.

[Grandad]

When I picked things up again some several months later, this is what I discovered had happened to the roof.



The blue tarp was about as waterproof as toilet paper. The roof panels, (marine ply) had buckled and bowed. When I then realised how much work would have to be undone before I could continue, I rather lost heart in the project. So, I bought a much better-quality tarp, tarped it all up and didn’t touch it again for over a year.
Just last month, I decided to bite the bullet and fit a new roof. As it turned out, the rear most panel over the areas of the van where I had started the interior work wasn’t so bad, so I just replaced the front two panels. \
And this time I had the overhead cupboard over the kitchen and what used to be the wardrobe and was now the fridge cupboard and pantry
Not only are these two components vital to the bracing of the van, but they helped to keep the curve in the roof ply into the centre of the van.
The section of the kitchen cupboard with the coke bottle door is where all the 240V and 12V circuit breakers, ELV and various battery monitoring devices will be housed.




Oh, and this time, I’ve also applied several coats of bitumised rubber to the top of the roof. It might be a while before I can fit the aluminium.
Next to come are the lower kitchen cupboards and the seats for the dinette. But I’ve got some serious planning to do here as this is where Terry will someday be installing the lithium setup.

At this stage I’m thinking a fold down door outside with a slide-out for the cells. But I still need to work out how to provide easy access to the other gear stored near the battery such as solar regulator(s) and Terry’s BMS system.
I have a few ideas going through my head but nothing set in concrete yet.
I will have numerous questions to ask this forum in thre coming months.
Which is, the primary reason for this thread. It will help people wanting to assist if they can picture the whole job.

Oh, one last pic.
Not mine, obviously, but another finished Mini which is very close to how I hope mine will eventually look.

[T1 Terry]

You aren't restoring this van, you are building it the way it should have been built the first time
I hope you are doing instructional videos that you can sell as a training package on how a caravan should be built. Cabling conduit , you'd have to show them what each item was and how one goes inside the other before they could understand that innovation. The modern method seems to be to locate the cable with a misplaced screw or line of staples so it can't be removed and replaced. Aluminium frames with the cabling run inside but the nylon grommet not secured into the hole resulting in the grommet sliding down the cable and the aluminium chewing through the cables. The list goes on as you may have seen on Cabcars photo thread of horrors.
That completed van would certainly help with the motivation to get your project completed. I'll post a few photos on the Avida Stuff thread of how I did Vic's slide out battery and cabling through to where all the electrical stuff lives, might give you a few ideas.

T1 Terry