Productive Day

Beautiful warm spring day in Missoula, Montana today.

A perfect day to clean out the water damaged ceiling of one's camper. So we did.

 

That was the view from outside and here's what was happening inside:

My role was clean up and photo-documentation.

Here's the next stage:

There was a lot of rotten framing and wet fiberglass insulation. But no mouse poop! Yay.  

David had to take out the cabinets in the front of the camper in order to get the whole ceiling off and also have room to put in new framing.  But we kept the doors. David will be able to make new cabinets (thanks David!)

It's pretty obvious that this little camper suffered a trauma at some point.  

Perhaps a tree branch fell on it.  Check it out.

This was covered up by piece of aluminum trim, and we weren't at all surprised to find it (since you could see the gist of it even with the aluminum trim). 

BUT we have some issues to figure out, including:

1. What is the best way to re-shape (that is, un-crush) the trailer skin/siding? 

It isn't creased or anything, just not totally straight to where the seams line up.

2.  What is the best kind of caulk (a kind of butyl caulk I assume) or other product to fill up the screw holes that we don't want anymore? Someone went overboard with screws at some point.

3. What about this?

Can you see that the drip line (drip rail?)  is broken? In two ways. First, it is severed along its length (so it was probably one loooong piece back in the day; now it is 2 pieces, poorly mended and now unattached again).

The second is that it has come away from the body. That is why you can see sky through a piece of it. 

I'm pretty sure that means it isn't water tight.

So we are trying to figure out if we should buy an entire new dripline or if there is a way to properly repair just the section that was broken.

This thread on a discussion board was helpful,

Although the forum is dedicated to vintage Shasta Trailers, it helped frame the problem. If you have ever fixed a drip rail and have some insight it would be AWESOME if you left a comment.

And final pic of the day: me doing clean up. I really enjoy the big cleanup after a big day of work.