Forum Discussion

Hudsoner's avatar
Hudsoner
Explorer
Aug 10, 2016

Need some good advise here

My 2001 Four Winds Hurricane did not come out of the winter all to well. The results show up now. I think I had a leak around the windows (I did do a quick and dirty and placed a bead of silicone around them).
The outside wall has a rather big delamination bubble on the passenger side, and the inside walls are pretty wrinkled in some areas.

I wonder if this causes any critical structural safety for using this vehicle? I also wonder about the best way to fix this. I read here that one can try to re glue the exterior fiberglass sheeting (and that is what my son and I pan to tackle in the fall), but what is the best way to fix the inside? Would it make sense to apply some kind of Wayns Coating over the wrinkly walls, or do I have to cut them out and replace most of the foam with new foam board and reglue new panelling to that?
I would load up some pictures of the problems, but I have no idea how to post pictures here!

3 Replies

  • Gjac's avatar
    Gjac
    Explorer III
    There is a sticky under forum technical support that shows how to post a picture. I assume the bubble is under the passenger window not above or on the side? How large is it? 1 ft in dia? When you push on the interior wall is it soft or just the wall paper wrinkled? Start by coin tapping the outside and inside walls to see how much damage is underneath. A disbonded area would have a thud sound and a good bonded area would have more of a ring to it. From your description the window will have to be removed to seal it properly with butyl tape and allow the area underneath to dry. Once removed you can look inside the skin and see what the damage is.
  • I have seen where others removed all of the INTERIOR damaged wall surfaces, which allowed them to get to the foam, etc, that was causing the exterior fiberglass to bubble out. Once all of this was removed, it allowed them to glue/attache the exterior panel to the aluminum/steel frame of the wall. This took care of the very noticeable exterior bubble.
    Once that was taken care of they could replace the foam and then use some type of wall panel that matched the existing wall panel the best. AT Home Depot there are various prefinished wall panels that can be used. If you have to you can paint them for a close match to the existing walls.
    None of this should hurt the structural integrity unless the aluminum/steel frame is damaged.