# Vintage RV Restoration, Structure First > Vintage RV restoration is staged work, not a single repair order. Budget about $5,000 for a contained panel and seal project to past $120,000 for a full frame off restoration. The controlling variables are wood framing rot you cannot see from outside and parts that stopped being made decades ago. | | | | --- | --- | | Business | OCRV Center | | Service area | Westminster, Orange County, Southern California | | Facility | 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887 | | Phone | (949) 799-3387 | | Email | info@ocrvcenter.com | | Typical range | $5,000 to $120,000+ | | Source | https://ocrv.online/vehicles/vintage-motorhome/ | Vintage RV restoration is the most honest work we do, because there is no way to price it accurately from a walkaround and we say so on day one. Owners from Westminster bring us riveted aluminum coaches, early fiberglass units and wood framed bodies where the outside looks tired and the inside of the wall decides the budget. The approach that works is structure first, staged authorizations, and a clear stopping point defined before we start. ## Riveted Aluminum Is a Different Trade A riveted aluminum coach is built like an aircraft fuselage: panels lapped over a frame and fastened with hundreds of rivets, each one a potential water path once the sealant behind it fails. You cannot bondo your way through this construction, and you cannot weld it the way you weld steel. Panel work means drilling out rivets, forming replacement skin, treating the frame underneath, and re riveting with sealant in the joint. The upside is that this construction is extremely repairable when someone knows how. Aluminum skin can be sourced in sheet, formed, and fitted. A dented panel can be worked or replaced section by section. We are not dependent on a coach builder who closed in 1978, which is exactly why these coaches survive when contemporaries with molded caps do not. Corrosion is the thing to watch. Aluminum skin over a steel or wood frame with fifty years of moisture between them produces galvanic and rot damage in the same place, and it hides completely behind an intact looking exterior. - Drill out rivets rather than grinding heads to save the frame - Bed every new fastener in fresh sealant, not just the seam - Isolate aluminum from dissimilar metal at the frame - Form replacement skin rather than filling a stretched panel - Inspect the frame under every panel you open, not just the damaged bay ## Wood Framing and the Rot You Cannot See Most coaches from the sixties through the eighties use wood framing in the walls, roof and floor. Wood is easy to work with and it lasts a long time when dry. It also fails completely and silently when wet, and the failure is usually along the bottom plate, at window openings and at roof penetrations, exactly where you cannot see it. This is the single biggest reason a vintage estimate is a moving target. We can meter and probe and give you a map of what we expect, and then a panel comes off and there are six more feet of soft plate. It happens on most of these projects and pretending otherwise sets an owner up to feel misled. So we handle it with staged authorizations. We open a defined area, document what we find with photographs, price the next stage, and get your approval before continuing. You always know what you have spent and what is next, and you can stop at the end of any stage with the coach in a sound, sealed condition. ## Obsolete Appliances and the Parts That Are Simply Gone Original refrigerators, furnaces, water heaters, ranges and converters from this era mostly have no replacement path, and several are not safe to keep in service. Owners face a real choice: preserve the original for authenticity and accept it as non functional, or fit a current unit into the original opening and keep the coach usable. There is no wrong answer, but there is a wrong process. Cutting a modern unit into a vintage cabinet without accounting for the different venting and clearance requirements is how a beautiful restoration becomes a hazard. When we fit current equipment, we build the opening, the venting and the mounting to the new unit's requirements, not the old one's. The same applies to twelve volt and shore power systems. A fifty year old converter and its wiring were sized for a very different load than a modern coach carries, and rewiring is usually the right call rather than adding to what is there. - Decide early: preserve as display, or fit current equipment - Build venting and clearances to the new unit's requirements - Replace era wiring rather than extending it - Source glass and trim from donor units where fabrication is impractical - Photograph original layouts before removing anything ## Fabricating What Nobody Sells Anymore For a vintage coach, fabrication is not a fallback, it is the normal path. Compound curved corner panels, bay doors, trim extrusions, window frames and interior cabinetry are all things we build rather than order. We work from the original part where enough of it survives, and from measurements and photographs where it does not. Fabricated parts cost labor rather than material, which changes the shape of the estimate. A door that would be a $900 part on a current coach might be twelve hours of shop time at $210 on a vintage one. It also means lead time is scheduling rather than shipping, which is often faster than chasing a discontinued part through the used market. Curved and tinted glass is the exception. Some of it genuinely cannot be reproduced economically, and the honest answer there is a donor unit or a redesigned opening. ## Knowing When to Stop Part of this job is telling an owner that the numbers do not work. A coach worth $18,000 restored that needs $60,000 of framing and skin work is not a repair decision, it is a personal one, and it deserves to be made with real numbers rather than optimism. Where the coach has meaning beyond the market, and many do, we lay out a phased plan with a defined end point for each phase. Structure and water integrity first, so the coach stops getting worse. Then shell, seal and paint, so it is presentable and protected. Then interior and systems, which is the phase most owners spread over several years. A worked example of a common first phase: rear wall reframing on a wood framed coach with skin removal and reinstallation, roughly 55 to 90 hours of body labor at $210 for $11,550 to $18,900, plus $2,000 to $5,500 in framing lumber, skin, fasteners, sealant and refinish materials. Any authorized stage above $2,000 carries a 50 percent deposit. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why can you not give me a firm price for a restoration? Because the wood inside the walls decides the budget and nobody can see it from outside. We meter, probe and inspect, and we can give you a map of what we expect to find, but on almost every vintage coach a panel comes off and there is more soft framing than the survey showed. Rather than quote a number we would have to break, we work in staged authorizations: we open a defined area, photograph what is there, price the next stage, and you approve before we continue. You always know what you have spent and what comes next, and you can stop at the end of any stage with the coach sealed and sound. ### How much does vintage RV restoration cost? The realistic range is $5,000 to past $120,000, and where you land depends far more on framing condition than on cosmetics. A contained project such as a rear wall reframe with skin removal and reinstallation typically runs $14,000 to $25,000 all in. A full shell, seal and repaint on a mid size coach is commonly $25,000 to $50,000. A frame off restoration with new framing throughout, rebuilt systems and a new interior passes $120,000. Body labor is $210 per hour, mechanical is $260, and each authorized stage above $2,000 carries a 50 percent deposit. ### Can you make a panel that nobody sells anymore? Yes, and on a vintage coach that is the normal path rather than a last resort. We fabricate compound curved corner panels, bay doors, trim extrusions, window frames and interior cabinetry, working from the original part where enough of it survives and from measurements and photographs where it does not. Fabrication trades material cost for shop time, so a door that would be a $900 part on a modern coach might be twelve hours of labor at $210. The advantage is that lead time becomes a scheduling question instead of a hunt through the used market. Curved tinted glass is the one item we often cannot reproduce economically. ### Should I keep the original appliances? That depends on whether you want to use the coach or show it. Original refrigerators, furnaces, water heaters and converters from this era generally have no parts path, and several are not safe to keep in service regardless of condition. Preserving them as non functional period pieces is a legitimate choice. If you want to camp in the coach, we fit current equipment into the original openings and build the venting, clearances and mounting to the new unit's requirements rather than the old unit's. That last part is where amateur restorations go wrong and turn a nice coach into a hazard. ### What order should the work happen in? Structure first, always. The coach has to stop getting worse before anything else is worth money. That means framing, floor and any structural skin work, followed immediately by water integrity: roof, seams, windows and every penetration. Phase two is shell, seal and paint, which protects what you just paid for. Phase three is interior and systems, which is the part most owners spread across several years. Doing it in any other order means paying twice, because a beautiful interior in a coach that still leaks is a temporary interior. We stage authorizations along these same lines. ### Is aluminum skin harder to repair than fiberglass? It is different rather than harder, and in some ways it is better. Riveted aluminum construction is repairable indefinitely because the material is available in sheet: we form replacement skin, treat the frame underneath, and re rivet with sealant in the joint. Fiberglass coaches from the same era often depend on molded caps from builders who closed decades ago, which forces fabrication anyway. The specific care aluminum needs is corrosion control, particularly where the skin contacts a dissimilar metal frame, and drilling rivets out properly rather than grinding heads off and damaging the frame underneath. ### How long does a restoration take? A single contained phase, such as a rear wall reframe or a roof rebuild, is typically four to eight weeks. A shell, seal and repaint phase is six to twelve weeks. A full restoration is measured in years rather than months for most owners, because the sensible way to pay for it is one phase at a time. We schedule phases rather than holding the coach continuously, so between stages the unit either goes home or, where it is not roadworthy, sits in a defined sealed condition. What we will not do is start a phase we cannot finish and leave a coach open to weather. ### At what point do you tell someone not to restore it? When the numbers stop making sense and there is no reason beyond money to continue. If a coach is worth $18,000 restored and needs $60,000 of framing and skin work, we say so plainly, with the findings and photographs to back it up, before you have paid for a full teardown. Plenty of owners go ahead anyway because the coach means something to them, and that is a perfectly good reason. What we will not do is discover it at hour two hundred and present it as a surprise. The survey and the first stage exist specifically to answer this question early. --- OCRV Center performs all work in shop at 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887. Serving Westminster and Orange County. Call (949) 799-3387 or email info@ocrvcenter.com. Posted labor rates are published at https://ocrv.online/prices/.