Camper Roof coating on top of old Coating?

SDTacoMan wrote:
Hello all!

Me and my girlfriend just picked up what we thought was a nice move in ready camper, but to our dismay it had a decent leak on the front wall of the camper. We are both lacking a lot of knowledge on RV's, although I have worked a lot of maintenance jobs in the past and I'm a bit of a handyman, so we are trying to make this livable by ourselves.

After pulling the inside wall out I believe I have narrowed the leak down to the outside front corner moldings which I have removed, cleaned, and am going to apply dicor corner tape to the sheet metal and butyl-tape back on then finish it off with some pro-flex RV caulk.

While pulling the corner moldings off near the roof I found that an old coating (the previous owner claimed it was 'just' re-coated) began to peel off with the trim piece.

We were planning on coating the roof with dicor extended life 100% silicone elastomeric roof coating, but we were just going to coat on top of the old coating.

TL;DR

My question is, should I begin trying to peel the old roof coating off (as it seems to be peeling off ok here) or should I leave the coating and just apply on top of it. I don't believe I have any roof related leaks at this point of time anyways, so I'm not sure I want to go for it if it's going to cause me a ton of work.

Here are some pictures of the current roof coating:




and here is where the corner trim piece was covered by the coating, and began peeling away as a consequence of its removal:

Stop, recoating over top something that is easily pealed off is just wasting your money and time!

The previous owner failed to properly prep the old roofing leading to poor adhesion. The next coat you put on is only going to stick as good as the coat that the previous owner put on. In a nutshell it will eventually all peal up..

Your roof is pretty much done, the stuff that was slathered on is so thin that the BLACK of the actual old wornout roof is showing through.

Technically, you NEED to replace the roof unless you want to play wack a mole game of repainting and touching up the slathered on liquid fix in a bottle paint every year or two.

Sorry for the bad news, I have zero faith in those miracle roofs in a bucket for reliability over time. They ARE a quick fix if you want to sell the RV for top dollar to the next unknowing owner.

And YES, I HAVE tried those miracle roofs in a bucket, mine lasted less than two years and it was splotchy and cracking.

All is not lost though..

There is a product called "Peel and Seal" with aluminum foil covering which was recommended by several RV dealers. Comes in up to 36" wide by 33 ft long rolls. See HERE



This stuff is ultra sticky and you must be careful to not let it touch anything other than the roof surface you want to cover.. It will stick to it's self also.

The downside is you will NEED to remove ALL of the slathered on coating that is not well adhered the previous owner put on to ensure you are not going to have any adhesion issues.