completely tear-down and restore/customize my 1985 Komfort Travel Trailer

I’m looking for a picture of a good fresh water hook up. Mine got tore up when I got a flat tire at 65 mhp. Picture of my junk with broken hoses. If you could send picture of what it’s suppose to look like I would greatly appreciate it… thanx Scott

I brought the trailer home tonight. Not too much weight on my truck. I will take some pictures and post them when I have a moment.

Hello tygrhaus, hello everybody. I’m inheriting a Komfort 16 trailer that is in need of some help. It’s seems to be opening at the seams outside at some points and you can see the wood inside is rotted, from what I understand to be over two decades of sitting in the sun and rain. Apparently the previous owner’s (original owner’s), bought the trailer in the early 80’s, took it to the beach once and never used again after that since they didn’t like it. It is our family’s first so we’d also like to take on the task of restoring it since we cannot afford to purchase a brand new, or even a decent used one at the moment. We like to go camping a lot so it will be fun to have once we bring it to towable condition since the (ORIGINAL) tires have rotted due to mother nature and some of the outside compartment doors hanging loosely (road hazards). I just sent a message to Komfort asking for an owner’s manual but I didn’t think to see if they would send me the diagrams or blueprints. Did you have to pay for them tygrhaus? I will put some pictures up once I get it home and begin restoring it slowly, hopefully be able to use by next summer when we do most of our camping. Talk to you all later.

I finished my degree, job-hunted, and finally got a good job that’s going to pay a good salary, so now I have money to fix the things that are broken, and buy the parts, and even, TA-DAH! Money to afford to go on the camping trips in the first place.

The last time I had any money to go on vacation was in 2002 when my daughter was 2 years old. I may have had tons of free time, but not one cent to pay for a vacation.

Well, now I have less time to go, but the money to do it when I want to, and as previously mentioned, the money to work on the trailer and make it nice.

because when I got the tent out of the trailer to use THAT, it was hosed. Hey, the poor thing is probably at least 30 years old, and covered with mold. Eyewww. When I put it in the washer, it disintegreted. Took me hours to clean out the washer. THEN both my daughter and I got really sick, and when I called my aunt to talk to her about it, turns out she and my uncle were really sick as well.

So, camping trip postponed. I have a deposit rain check from the place (Casini Family Ranch, in Duncan Mills, up above Santa Rosa and almost on the coast in Northern California), so I have time now to really clean out the trailer and fix some things up.

Add to all this I might be pregnant. THAT’s going to make everything so much easier, all the cleaning and rebuilding I wanted to do.

Why is nothing ever easy?

because the trailer is a bit too messy to use – needs to be bug-bombed because there are Black Widows the size of baseballs at my in-laws’ place where I’ve been storing it, and I don’t have time to clean it out before Monday, which is when my aunt and uncle called to say they’d be here and did I want to go camping. So it looks like I’m going to have to bust out the tent, of all silly things, when I’ve been dying to use my trailer for almost three years.

ACK!!! This sucks!!!

But at least I’ll get to go camping!

Cassandra, the wonderful lady at Komfort, dug into her files and copied complete wiring/gas/water/electrical/construction diagrams for my 20+ year old trailer! Woo hoo! Everything just got easier.

There’s so much to be done – the floor has soft spots and there are old leaks, since repaired, that have almost certainly left behind dry rot. The inside paneling has water damage and has to be removed, the cabinets, hardware and all, need to be updated, the beds all need baseboards, the curtains all need replacing, I want to see if I can install some propane lights like the old Shasta trailers to save on electricity while I’m dry-docked, and I want to put down new vinyl flooring and replace all the cushions. AND if I can afford it at all, I want to add some solar panels for running things while drydocked. It would be nice to increase the size of the black water tank, again to increase the amount of time I can dry dock, and I probably need to replace the tank sensors and the readout unit. Oh, and the gate valve for the waste tanks is leaking, so I need to figure out what’s up with that.

Add to that my (almost)complete lack of experience, and it all gets a little overwhelming, but I figure everybody has to start somewhere, right? So I just have to be ready to make a few mistakes. Still cheaper and a lot more fun than buying a new trailer. I honestly like the look of the older ones anyway…

At least the majority of that

20’ Komfort Lite Bunkhouse. I saw one on Ebay a few years ago and loved it for it’s small size and the twin bunks. Driving through Fremont a year after that, I actually saw one for sale. I ploughed on the brakes, took the number, met the guy – and I’ll admit I got taken for what I paid because it had so many things wrong! Then I got take by the repair guys, but that’s another story.

Now I’ve gotten into the idea of fixing it up, but of course this is going to be pretty complex because it has water damage and the floor is saggy. Right there, that means I’m going to have to pull off the sides to replace rotted framing, and then take out all the insides to repair the floor. Holy cow.

But my husband and I want to buy some land and build our own house, so it occurred to me that the trailer would be good practice for some basic carpentry, wiring, plumbing, whatever. It’d be like a miniature, less complex house.

Seeing that I will have to rip out a lot of the interior anyway, I was thinking about ways to customize it. I want a dedicated bed, and the trailer doesn’t actually have one aside from the bunks, which are claustrophic to me. I’ve hit on the idea of adding an overhead area – see the trailer pictured – with a pull-out shelf as a bed. I can then leave my table intact because it doesn’t have to be a bed every night, AND I don’t have to make my bed every morning in order to eat…

So we’ll see, won’t we?