The Before part 2. The duct tape was used to get it home from Oklahoma in January.It is a 2006 5th wheel 32' bunkhouse. Bad repair job from previous ownerThey used close to an inch thick of buytl tape instead of Eternabond tape. The insulation is in pretty good shapeThe damage :(The roofThe worst of the front wallThe water was on the inside of the wall and must have puddled in the tyvek. The wood was still wetYou can only see the damage to the front of the trailer, the roof and sides about 2' back are bad too.Enough work for one day, this trailer demo is harder than it looks on youtube But now that we are started we have to keep going. We don't have a barn big enough to store the 5th wheel so it's under a tarp. It's not like the water wasn't already getting in anyway.Any tips or help would be appreciated. We have had a hard time finding much good information and/or how to videos or websites on doing a massive rebuild like this one. If you know of any send the link!

That is an ambitious project. You will have to keep working back until you reach the end of the rot. Keep taking pictures and measurements as you go, you will save a lot of time once things start going back together. Good luck and keep the pictures coming, this is a great tutorial.

romore wrote: this is a great tutorial.I'm not sure I am a qualified tutor but I do know how to take photos. We will do our best to document it!

Thanks for the pictures. I've always wondered how things looked under the skin.

I repaired a lot of framing and parts of the floor in my rebuild. Don't have too many pictures of the framing repair but it's pretty straight forward, rip, remove, replace. It looks like the two most difficult parts for you will be replacing the top plate on the driver's side and replacing the bad flooring under the corners.I do have pictures in the Hilton thread of how I sistered pieces onto the trusses where they were rotten. The flooring will be problematic because typical construction is to build the walls onto the flooring. You'll need to remove the bad flooring and slide the new under the existing wall. There will be a lot of nail and staple pulling involved. I used a sawzall and sometimes an angle grinder to remove those fasteners that I couldn't just pull.

westend wrote: It looks like the two most difficult parts for you will be replacing the top plate on the driver's side and replacing the bad flooring under the corners.I do have pictures in the Hilton thread of how I sistered pieces onto the trusses where they were rotten. The flooring will be problematic because typical construction is to build the walls onto the flooring. You'll need to remove the bad flooring and slide the new under the existing wall.The interesting thing is that so far the floor is perfectly fine. Not a spot of rot on it in the front where the walls were rotted away. This trailer seems to be build differently than most because the walls were build to the outside of the floor not on top if it. We don't have the sides ripped off yet but on the front that was the case. Today I think we will be up on the roof with a heat gun trying to get the piles and piles of goo off so we can pull back the rubber roof and get the roof joist out.Do you have the link to your rebuild? We used it as inspiration before. But I can't remember where to find it.

5th wheel rebuild from major water damage | Good Sam Community

FurmTC
Explorer
Dec 25, 2014
I'm getting ready to kick my own project off. Have to rebuild front and back. And then tackle the roof.
Not sure what I'm facing yet.
This is an incredible posting, that I plan to review several more times before I actually kick off.
LangsRV2
Explorer
Oct 10, 2014
twins89 wrote:
Give your RV guy a shout out on the forum for those who live in your area. He did a great job and didn't scam you.

Yes we thought the cost was reasonable for the extent of the repair. He specializes in mostly RV interior remodels and is a subcontractor for the name brand RV dealers and shops. They sub out that type of work to him. He has a huge shop big enough for a few class A's We would recommend him for anyone in the Springfield Missouri area needing RV repairs. He even came out to our house to look at the RV and give us an estimate before we hauled it to him for the repair.
His name is Mike 417-350-6026
hawkeye-08
Explorer III
Oct 07, 2014
LangsRV2 wrote:
hawkeye-08 wrote:

regarding the leveling, you can do it in your gravel driveway. It takes some cinder blocks and wedges, but it can be done. You can also use blocking instead of the cinder blocks. Think of mobile homes, they have used cinder blocks and wedges for many years (although many areas now require a foundation support now)..

This would have been GREAT information to have BEFORE we started the rebuild. You don't know what you don't know.
My hope with posting all our issues is that someone else may have an easier time when they start on their project.
Pay it forward you know!

I agree, we all learn and glad you shared your experiences. My wife and I have always done as much as we can ourselves.
LangsRV2
Explorer
Oct 07, 2014
hawkeye-08 wrote:

regarding the leveling, you can do it in your gravel driveway. It takes some cinder blocks and wedges, but it can be done. You can also use blocking instead of the cinder blocks. Think of mobile homes, they have used cinder blocks and wedges for many years (although many areas now require a foundation support now)..

This would have been GREAT information to have BEFORE we started the rebuild. You don't know what you don't know.
My hope with posting all our issues is that someone else may have an easier time when they start on their project.
Pay it forward you know!
twins89
Explorer
Oct 07, 2014
Wow, what a transformation. Most of us would have just sent to the parts junk yard. So pleased you got it done. Hopefully it won't have any issues and keep up the caulk and roof. Best wishes. Keep a journal of the fun times now! Give your RV guy a shout out on the forum for those who live in your area. He did a great job and didn't scam you.
hawkeye-08
Explorer III
Oct 06, 2014
Glad this turned out okay. Great job, you got it done.

regarding the leveling, you can do it in your gravel driveway. It takes some cinder blocks and wedges, but it can be done. You can also use blocking instead of the cinder blocks. Think of mobile homes, they have used cinder blocks and wedges for many years (although many areas now require a foundation support now)..

I am glad you got it done and had the bearings and tires taken care of. You should have some great camping memories now to add to the rebuilding ones.
campinghut
Explorer
Oct 06, 2014
Great to see you are finally enjoying all your work!
Shadow_Grey
Explorer
Oct 06, 2014
Looks real nice! One would never know about the repair unless you showed them pictures...

Happy Camping...again!
LangsRV2
Explorer
Oct 06, 2014
Sorry to have taken so long to get these new photos posted of the "finished" product. We got distracted with actual camping!!! It kind of felt like a miracle that the RV actually got put back together enough to actually camp in. There is still work to do until it is closer to perfect (mostly on the inside) but it has come such a long way!
The RV repair guy had to get the RV completely level and do a little more sanding but was then able to get the front cap back on nicely. Being out of level was our main problem with gettting the fiberglass front cap back in place.
Note to anyone trying this at home MAKE SURE YOUR RV IS TOTALLY LEVEL BEFORE STARTING!!!!
We thought it was good enough sitting basically level in the gravel driveway. THIS IS NOT OK when rebuilding! Leveling could have saved us zillions of hours of frustration and $$$ if we would have known this before starting. We may not have been able to fully fix the problem at our house because our only spot to work on the RV was a gravel drive. But it certainly would have been better.
The repair guy said they use floor jacks to jack up the RV all around in different spots to get it totally level BEFORE they start working on them. MAKE SURE AND DO THIS FOR YOURSELVES!
Overall it looks pretty good. Up close you can see there has been some work done to the RV but thats OK it works!
In case you are wondering the RV repair guy charged us about $600 to complete it and put it back together including putting the cap back on and hanging the interior cabinets over the bed.
We also had him pack the bearings, and put 4 brand new tires and replace the hubcaps and check the breaks on the trailer. Lastly he had a bugger of a time getting the gooseneck adapter off. It was welded on and the installers had cross threaded the bolt so it wasn't coming off easy. We had to pay for an hour of labor for that one. Worth it for us because we don't want to crawl in the bed of the truck to hitch every time. We really like a 5th wheel instead of a gooseneck. We will get the adapter retapped and sell it.
Total bill from the repair center for repairs and new tires etc $1166.92
LangsRV2
Explorer
May 18, 2014
Now the framing is sanded down just perfectly to match the original shape of the siding. Everything looked perfect so we were excited to get the fiberglass cap put on and get finished.
However...it didn't fit.
You can see from the photos that on the left side framing is showing on the right side it overlaps. No matter what we did it just would not sit properly. The angles just would not match up on both sides at the same time.

The RV repair guy had told us that if after we sanded the framing down if it still didn't fit it was because the RV was sitting unlevel.
We had the 5th wheel sitting as level as possible at our house. However we only have a gravel driveway. No cement no asphalt. Nothing it truly level here. We also do not have enough heavy duty large jacks that we could use to jack up the trailer to make it perfectly level. Lastly we have run out of patience on this project and with this final setback that is pretty much impossible for us to fix on our own we finally threw in the towel and decided to haul it to a professional RV repair shop.