Exterior Fiberglass Crack

Question

Hello All,To start off, I do not personally own an RV, the one in question belongs to my General Manager. I have been tasked with finding solutions to problems, yay me. The current issue is that he has a hairline crack on the fiberglass exterior. I assume the best fix for this would be to use fiberglass tape, sand, paint, etc. For the foreseeable future though, he has asked me to find a high strength tape in beige/tan that will withstand rain and the summer texas sun for a reasonable amount of time (6months+).Now I am not sure such a beast even exists, but if it does I implore the minds of you, the RV DIY masters, to lead me to it.Any help is greatly appreciated and thank you in advance.Jared BeasleyMoved to Tech Issues forum from DIY.

genecop · Answer

Is the fix about repairing the crack or making the crack disappear? There are several products that will cover the crack and prevent water infiltration,, to make it look like the crack was never there is a very different process.

genecop · Answer

Also a photo would help, does the crack go all the way through? How wide and long is the crack?

the_bear_ii · Answer

Sometimes drilling a hole at the end of the crack will keep it from spreading. Use a drill bit that is a little bit larger than the crack. With a hairline crack I would use a 1/8 in bit. Just drill through the fiberglass not the wood backing.

Bondo makes a fiberglass bondo that is easy to use but then you would have to paint the area.

Gorilla tape is supposed to be really good but I'm not sure if it comes in colors.

jbeasley0252 · Answer

It is more about the aesthetics at this point. I found 3M 4411n which is translucent and paintable which he is good with. I cannot get a picture of it currently unfortunately. I did check Gorilla tape but all I found was white and black.

genecop · Answer

Depending on the length and straightness of the crack one approach would be to use a dremmel and actually open up the crack a little more, drilling a small hole at each end is also helpful. So now you have a small hole at each end and a wider opening in the crack. Run Blue painters tape along each side of the crack, fill with a paintable Caulk, flatten out running a small putty knife over the tape flattening out the caulk, remove tape. After everything is dry tape off each side of the filled crack, go a little wider than the actuall crack, I am talking about 1/16". Spray with best matching paint, remove tape.....

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Exterior Fiberglass Crack

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