Before we could or should cut the new hole in the trailer, we did some dry fitting of the old cover to the new heater. This was to get the dimensions for the new appliance- which was the combination of the old cover and the new heater. There was a lot of fiddling in this process so to reduce the likelihood that the styrofoam insulation on the Atwood would be damaged, we removed it.
We flattened out the lip on the front of the Atwood as well as any bends in the Bowen Flange with a heavy hammer and a metal bar-any heavy bar seemed to work. The bar is used as a metal break so it must be harder than the metal we were forming. Not so tough with aluminum! We used a spare hitch extension for this work, you can see it in the picture below. Once this was done the Bowen flange and cover would fit snugly against the front of the Atwood.
After flattening, the larger Bowen flange was snipped to fit the outer dimensions of the Atwood. You can see the initial snips in the picture above, left. We were really amazed at how well this worked! Take a look at the picture below (the intial mating of the Bowen and the Atwood). We used tin snips and a Dremel with a metal cutoff wheel to do the fine fitting. While the Atwood is about the same width its slightly taller than the Bowen. Cutting the Bowen flange and bending the extra bit inward also gave some additional structure to the new contraption so we left the bent pieces.
I am going to give you a sneak peek of how the flange fitting looks finally assembled. We were just amazed that it went together this well.
In the next episode, I will discuss that most terrifying of all…cutting a hole in the outside of the trailer and how we figured out where to do it!
