Free Motorhome! Will it run?! Saving a 1972 Barth RV

hi I'm Alex Archbold and I've been buying and selling antiques since I was nine years old from basements to scrap yards I'll look just about anywhere I can to find lost antiques and collectibles and sometimes I'll go big and buy everything I never know what's going to happen or who I'm going to meet this is our life this is our adventure and this is curiosity Inc [Music] hi everybody and welcome to today's episode um well last week I got an email from a viewer one of you at home that said they had an old RV it was stored at their friend's place and the friend had sold the property and the thing had to go now there were a few hours of two and a half hours or three hours away from me so kind of wasn't something I was really looking at doing and then they gave me the magic number they said if you can pick it up you can have it for free so um that kind of Justified the expense of getting it towed today and as we speak as I'm on my way back home right now I have not seen this vehicle I've only seen a picture of it from maybe uh 10 years ago or something like that but I know it's been stored in a quonset I don't know what condition the interior is in never seen pictures of the interior so this when I'm filming will be as much of a mystery to me as I'm filming as it will be for you guys watching but there should be an interesting episode so I'm hoping I can get home before the tow truck does but if not I let my kid know where it needs to get parked so let's go find out if it's there uh if not let's go watch it get offloaded and see what exactly I got today follow along today's episode when I get a free motorhome let's go check it out okay well let's see if there's any action happening around yield Homestead see a truck in the driveway uh oh no I think that the it might already be dropped off for me we'll have a look it well I just got home that's the tow truck apparently he just I just missed him dropping off let's go see what it looks like hey guys what's going on down here I feel like I just I just missed all the action were you climbing on the roof already oh okay it was he said it's it's light like he didn't even notice it really on the back of his truck well it's all aluminum yeah so this is it um it's not bad let's see last plates that were monitor from 2012. so that's a while ago 11 years ago at time I'm filming this uh front suspension looks a little low you guys are okay yeah so this jumbo thing was free now you might be looking at it going well it's kind of a lump uh but is that what you're thinking did you guys look inside of it yet yeah I went in there's a surprising oh I bet what is it mice uh well there for sure were mice well I know they said that there it had mice at one point I've not seen the inside but what this is is a uh I think it's a 72 or 74. I'll have to double check but it's a Barth motorhome which at the time was one of the highest and motorhomes akin to like getting an Airstream or something the Barth was a deluxe motorhome at that time it's a full aluminum or if you're fancy aluminum uh better shape than I thought like on the yeah it's not all beat up I mean we'll have to get the pressure washer to it I wonder if the awning is still up there so they were going to haul this off to this I think it was destined for the scrap yard or they were going to leave it behind on the property oh they took the drive shaft off to tow it but right but they didn't put the drive shaft back on well that'll make moving it extra fun um I guess I'll be dealing with that okay well it smells mousy they've removed some of the flooring in this area it's not terrible honestly it's better than I thought it would be you've got this little uh bed area up at the front so the mice have chomped their way through so I have to get that reupholstered carpeting will need to be redone the engine and this is actually up at the front here and you've got like your uh Captain's seat and I imagine these probably swivel yeah they do so you've got like a little extra seat here an eight-track player let's see 57 000 miles on the odometer showing a full tank of gas well let's hope that's true so yeah I don't know how I'm gonna I guess the uh the seat was eaten a little bit this one had a cover on it still not much better seats will need upholstery but overall oh I see one of the cupboards fell from somewhere oh up here one of those that clip didn't hold and we got a busted cupboard so not terrible it has a stove a little gas stove four burner sink a little hood range we got the bed in the back so there must be yeah curtains right here so that turns into a two bedroom unit floor feels pretty solid am I brave enough to look in the bathroom it's got a little sink very 19 uh 70s all right thankfully there's there's something you should probably not do on camera oh look it even has a uh a radio it's a little transistor radio toilet paper holder so you could listen to the radio while you do your business I'm guessing this is a fridge too bad I mean it is in better shape than I was expecting I was expecting the floor but I mean the cabinets aren't terrible it was it was free um I'm gonna have to dress a couple things right away though first off being this drive shaft situation and I guess I'm gonna be having a crawl on the grass to get that sorted out but look we've got uh looks like dual air conditioner units in the roof rooftop AC and lots of Febreze Don't Mind If I Do because it's a little stinky oh that's even like an old uh Diner Style straw dispenser I'm gonna just unload this Febreze in here if you were here and you've ever been in a vehicle that's had mice in it that's that's the smell that's what we're dealing with and as you can see my paperwork is above there they've got the uh bill of sale and stuff waiting for me so before I even try and start this thing I had to figure the drive shaft situation out so yeah well not much fun but I got the drive shaft on and I don't know if you can see there is only enough room for me to to squeeze my way underneath this I don't have uh I'm on grass right now and I don't have a dugout so I am doing this wiggling my way out a little space right there well I'll admit that was a bit of a nightmare very easy job like really it's just four bolts to get the drive shaft on but when you're climbing on the ground and it's raining which it is today and you barely fit underneath the thing um it was a bit of a nightmare anyway drive shaft is on the reason why that's important is that if I'm to get this thing running be able to move it around the property can't really do much without a drive shaft so now the drive shaft's on if I can get this thing to start and run well there's a hope that maybe I can actually just kind of drive it around the yard and move it when I need to do things to it uh next step I got to figure out where the battery goes probably in one of these hatches down here or under the engine compartment I don't really know we're gonna try and find out okay what's behind hatch number one [Music] um nope actually don't really know what that is probably uh well that's probably stuff to suck here your septic out but that looks like a little starter of some kind interesting okay spot behind door number one see if I can figure out where the battery goes is it in the compartment here let's see um oh yeah right there okay well that wasn't so bad and I just so happen to have a battery left over from when I was working on that uh um on the 57 Chevy so I'm gonna see if I can get this to stay up it looks like this has stays yes it does I'm gonna go grab that battery and put it in and see if anything happens wish me luck IE dokie here's the battery right there only used once to start a Chevy and we'll see if this will make it go okay who knows if that'll I just want to see if it cranks I don't know that I'm gonna actually be able to start it probably not a great thing to do with the vehicle it's been sitting a while but let's see if it does anything at all okay this is what's happening right now starter is not engaging now I don't think that's a sign of a I don't think it's a sign of a blown engine but it could be a sign of a starter that is stuck so I might be able to get on that starter and give it a couple good whacks and free it up surprisingly that trick usually works so off I go to find a pole or something to whack a dude wackadoodle ding dong Dandy that starter in hopes that it frees back into position as I get things closed up here I notice a few interesting features on this vehicle one it has a winch built right into it and I tested that that seems to actually work so that's kind of cool fog lamps and look at this cable TV hookup look it's got a little spot where you can it's got a jack for cable television so if you really want to have a good time at the air at the uh RV site some of this what looks like Mac attack is peeling off the aluminum it's like yeah it's Mac Tech that's all it is sticker probably a good pressure washing would peel most of this right off this one area the rest of it actually looks like it stood up all right there's this one spot got worn off okay well I'm gonna figure out that starter situation and uh see what I can do it's worth mentioning that this RV came stock with a 402 which is big block Chevy engine kind of a cool thing in fact some Mopar based RV units like that have hemis in them and big engines big block engines so a lot of these get actually scrapped out just for the drivetrain for muscle car builds but um this one won't be good for any of that unless I can get it started okay to try and figure out maybe what's going on I tried tapping the starter with no luck I did find the original paperwork for it Barth so different you have to experience this exciting New Concepts and even the price list and you wouldn't believe this thing brand new brand spanking new was 14 500 U.S in 1972 and they added on another thirty five hundred dollars in options um it's got uh these are the extra options on this it's got the uh it's got a generator built-in uh air conditioner two air conditioners AM FM radio monomatic toilet I don't know what that is but it sounds fun spare tire wheel and mounting pull out on Lounge trailer hitch privacy curtain water purifier two power TV shelf antennas It also says that it has a bar um so I don't know let's go let's go explore and find out the generator is going to be well this would be the spare tire that was an option but if I follow this cable and we look inside it has it's locked right now but it has a generator that is so cool there's a generator built on board here this is a pretty Deluxe unit okay let's let's have a look and see if we can't figure out what's going on on the inside okay we've got I did hook up the uh what is this fire extinguisher oh no is it no that's a Seltzer bottle look at this rum Rye scotch and gin so exactly how this works they have another release to let go of the bottom maybe that little thing there I don't know but yeah look you put your glass right there and you've got on board alcohol which I'm guessing somehow that bottom part looks like it's meant to open and we'll figure this out but that's pretty cool feature to have on a vehicle as for the uh starting well I figured something out one still getting that click right but cobwebs off let's try to that you hear that so I'm probably gonna have to Prime that carburetor but that is that's an engine that wants to go so I'm gonna run out and grab some gas we'll dump it in the carb and see if she fires up well I just got back with some gas and just in the nick of time too because the Sun is going down and I don't want to be doing this in Pitch Black I'm gonna make sure the battery's connected and we'll throw a little gas in there yep battery still connected I can't remember if I did or didn't put a little gas down the carb and see what happens okay put the gas down herb I'm closing that all up because well in case there's some backfiring happening I don't want to have a flame shoot up right at crotch level here okay make sure because you don't want a surprise here we go let's find out I hear it listen that oh come on okay okay it did start I'm gonna prime it again see if I can stay running this must be how mummies feel when they bring them back to life in those horror movies like I was dead why are you trying to bring me back to life already stay running okay well I know the engine actually sounds all right right now what we're having is a fuel delivery issue but that's not so bad I think it's a good start for today the Sun is going down I'm gonna call it a night [Music] well it's the next morning and I don't know if you can hear this or not but it's running and not only is it running it's running off the tank off of 10 year old gas but with the tank being full that actually is a good thing because it wouldn't have had a lot of chance for air to get in there so it might be all right I'm gonna let it warm up for a minute and see if I can actually move this thing a little closer to the front of my house wish me luck okay I just put it in Drive have no idea if the Transmissions work probably hasn't uh turned a wheel in a while so far nothing okay I've got absolutely nothing with it running it's not switching to gear probably a sign of low ATF which I can probably access through this panel here I'm gonna go grab the ATF and see if I can fill it up okay I just finished putting a little fluid in the transmission let's see if she'll go foreign you can do it okay look at this oh it moved but it stalled so for the last little while here I've been struggling trying to get this thing to start I didn't understand you know I'd Prime the carburetor it would start um but then it would instantly stall and I found out that the gas gauge is actually optimistic it's always reading full and so it was just out of gas now watch this let's give this another try there we go put it in drive and look at this windshield's a little dirty but she's moving in a grooving and there's Melissa watching carefully oh the brakes are a little touchy well I shouldn't say touching they're a little non-existent but success and with that with that we have a running uh Barth motorhome 72 Barth motorhome uh next episode I'm going to start tearing through the interior and getting the mouse eaten carpet taken out about to take the seats out I'll get this floor strip down and basically start uh cleaning and getting this thing looking a little bit better so guys stay tuned for the next episode I hope you enjoyed this one so far I have a running driving and somewhat stopping free motorhome thanks guys subscribe so you can catch the rest of the episodes as for me I've got work to do we'll see y'all soon and as always bye for now

Channel: Curiosity Incorporated

Views: 68,160

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Id: -hArrpKEPOY

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023