Repairing wet propane locker and jack bracket mount
My camper has the old style manual jacks with steel brackets that bolt under the wings of the camper. The front right bracket bolts on immediately below the propane locker.
Last summer I noticed that I could no longer get the propane locker open when the camper was supported on its jacks - the bottom of the locker door now hit the top of the jack. This was not a good sign.
Looking along the side of the camper shows why - the jack bracket has deflected upwards, bending the aluminum siding too:
So it is January 2nd and there is no sign of cold weather - just wind and rain. But I need to sort this out before it results in either a bigger job or even worse a structural failure.
So I get a saw horse and some concrete blocks to support the corner of the camper so I can remove that jack:
Clearly I can't work on this in the wet English weather - so I find an old plastic sheet that used to cover my deuce and a half. Unfortunately the slugs had got to it, so there were plenty of holes, but it was better than nothing - so I cable-tied it to the roof rails:
It wasn't a great working environment under there - water would still drip down through the holes and the plastic whipped around my head in the high winds. I stripped the propane locker door off but then had to rig something to redirect any water dripping down the side of the camper so as not to drip onto the wood I need to dry:
With the door removed:
At first glance the floor of the locker doesn't look too bad. This is a single piece of ply that runs along the wing:
The underside of the wing shows the bracket which is bolted through a plywood spreader. As you can see this spreader has got very wet and has squashed at the outboard end:
The nuts had sized onto the bolts. Usually this is not a problem - you can just shear them off, but these were coach bolts, so after a small amount of force they just rotated - it was a bit awkward getting the angle grinder into the bracket to cut the nuts off.
The plywood spacer was difficult to get off and broke apart in the attempt. Annoyingly Shadow Cruiser had stapled it in multiple places through the aluminum and into the ply of the wing - I hate staples:
I removed more trim from the front edge of the wing and found the aluminum siding had cracked:
With the siding removed the wet could be fully seen:
After drying off the timber:
I cut a replacement for the plywood spacer that came apart. I made it much larger in area to spread the load. I also cut it out of thicker 18mm hardwood ply which I varnished:
I used the same 18mm ply to cut inserts to reinforce four sides of the propane locker and glued them in place. I left a 60w light bulb running in the locker for a week to keep it warm and help the glue dry:
After 2 weeks the plastic sheeting blowing around was reeking havoc with the lawn, but there wasn't much I could do about that:
With all the timber and glue now dry I could re-fix the aluminum sheet on the underside of the wing. I didn't want to use staples again, so I used stainless steel screws, sealed in with Sikaflex 512, and used more Sikaflex to seal the holes left by the staples. The aluminum cleaned up a bit compared to the state it was in when I wrenched that rotten ply spacer off it:
I drilled the top of that crack I found earlier to prevent it from spreading further:
When I removed the siding I was pleased that I could not trace water coming from anywhere else other than around the locker hatch. But looking at the hatch it was clear that water could easily get in. So replacing the timber would not be enough since more water would get in, and when that happened it might also spread further into the structure, not just around the new timber I had glued in.
I investigated the option of painting some sort of waterproof tar or similar into the locker to 'tank' it. At that point a friend came to my assistance. I had not experimented with fibreglass before and had seen some pretty poor fibreglass jobs done in the past, so I had discounted it as a method. Andy is an expert in fibreglassing and was able to convince me that it was the thing to do and that he could come and show me how. I had an image of days spent waiting for stuff to dry, then struggling when it wouldn't - but that wasn't to be.
After chatting about truck campers for a while Andy demonstrated how to trim fibreglass to the right size so it overlaps correctly without leaving a seam, and mixed up some polyester resin. Another critical technique Andy demonstrated was using a small roller to press out any air from the applied resin. Within a short amount of time, aided by a hot air gun to warm the air in the locker, which was not much above freezing, the locker was dry and looked like this:
Soon we were able to mix up gelcoat. Andy demonstrated the different ratio he used for this, especially given the cold weather. After applying the gelcoat had soon cured and looked like this:
Andy was with me around 2 hours - it was that quick, and not long after he left the gelcoat was dry too.
I drilled the holes for the bolts that attach the jack bracket, the tiedown socket and a couple of extra bolts for attaching the enlarged replacement plywood spacer. The corner hole was on a section of fibreglass that sloped upwards slightly, so I used a rubber washer to adopt its shape without damaging the gelcoat:
With all the new stainless steel bolts in place:
With the spacer and the now cleaned and painted bracket bolted in place I could seal around all edges and bolts to prevent water water getting inside - the one exception was the drain / ventilation hole I fitted:
I cut up some rubber matting I had left over from a horse trailer I rebuilt 10 years ago and placed that in the floor of the locker so the propane cylinder doesn't scratch the gelcoat:
I could then clean, refit and seal the locker hatch:
This was quite a long job, taking 23 days elapsed time. But then I was only able to work on it occasionally and plenty of time had to be left for glue and timber to dry.
At least I can be confident this corner of the camper is now strong - especially since the bracket is now bolted to 2 inches thick of plywood with a lot of extra 18mm plywood helping to distribute the forces diagonally to the inner frame of the camper.
Phew - glad that job's over.
Steve.
Last summer I noticed that I could no longer get the propane locker open when the camper was supported on its jacks - the bottom of the locker door now hit the top of the jack. This was not a good sign.
Looking along the side of the camper shows why - the jack bracket has deflected upwards, bending the aluminum siding too:
So it is January 2nd and there is no sign of cold weather - just wind and rain. But I need to sort this out before it results in either a bigger job or even worse a structural failure.
So I get a saw horse and some concrete blocks to support the corner of the camper so I can remove that jack:
Clearly I can't work on this in the wet English weather - so I find an old plastic sheet that used to cover my deuce and a half. Unfortunately the slugs had got to it, so there were plenty of holes, but it was better than nothing - so I cable-tied it to the roof rails:
It wasn't a great working environment under there - water would still drip down through the holes and the plastic whipped around my head in the high winds. I stripped the propane locker door off but then had to rig something to redirect any water dripping down the side of the camper so as not to drip onto the wood I need to dry:
With the door removed:
At first glance the floor of the locker doesn't look too bad. This is a single piece of ply that runs along the wing:
The underside of the wing shows the bracket which is bolted through a plywood spreader. As you can see this spreader has got very wet and has squashed at the outboard end:
The nuts had sized onto the bolts. Usually this is not a problem - you can just shear them off, but these were coach bolts, so after a small amount of force they just rotated - it was a bit awkward getting the angle grinder into the bracket to cut the nuts off.
The plywood spacer was difficult to get off and broke apart in the attempt. Annoyingly Shadow Cruiser had stapled it in multiple places through the aluminum and into the ply of the wing - I hate staples:
I removed more trim from the front edge of the wing and found the aluminum siding had cracked:
With the siding removed the wet could be fully seen:
After drying off the timber:
I cut a replacement for the plywood spacer that came apart. I made it much larger in area to spread the load. I also cut it out of thicker 18mm hardwood ply which I varnished:
I used the same 18mm ply to cut inserts to reinforce four sides of the propane locker and glued them in place. I left a 60w light bulb running in the locker for a week to keep it warm and help the glue dry:
After 2 weeks the plastic sheeting blowing around was reeking havoc with the lawn, but there wasn't much I could do about that:
With all the timber and glue now dry I could re-fix the aluminum sheet on the underside of the wing. I didn't want to use staples again, so I used stainless steel screws, sealed in with Sikaflex 512, and used more Sikaflex to seal the holes left by the staples. The aluminum cleaned up a bit compared to the state it was in when I wrenched that rotten ply spacer off it:
I drilled the top of that crack I found earlier to prevent it from spreading further:
When I removed the siding I was pleased that I could not trace water coming from anywhere else other than around the locker hatch. But looking at the hatch it was clear that water could easily get in. So replacing the timber would not be enough since more water would get in, and when that happened it might also spread further into the structure, not just around the new timber I had glued in.
I investigated the option of painting some sort of waterproof tar or similar into the locker to 'tank' it. At that point a friend came to my assistance. I had not experimented with fibreglass before and had seen some pretty poor fibreglass jobs done in the past, so I had discounted it as a method. Andy is an expert in fibreglassing and was able to convince me that it was the thing to do and that he could come and show me how. I had an image of days spent waiting for stuff to dry, then struggling when it wouldn't - but that wasn't to be.
After chatting about truck campers for a while Andy demonstrated how to trim fibreglass to the right size so it overlaps correctly without leaving a seam, and mixed up some polyester resin. Another critical technique Andy demonstrated was using a small roller to press out any air from the applied resin. Within a short amount of time, aided by a hot air gun to warm the air in the locker, which was not much above freezing, the locker was dry and looked like this:
Soon we were able to mix up gelcoat. Andy demonstrated the different ratio he used for this, especially given the cold weather. After applying the gelcoat had soon cured and looked like this:
Andy was with me around 2 hours - it was that quick, and not long after he left the gelcoat was dry too.
I drilled the holes for the bolts that attach the jack bracket, the tiedown socket and a couple of extra bolts for attaching the enlarged replacement plywood spacer. The corner hole was on a section of fibreglass that sloped upwards slightly, so I used a rubber washer to adopt its shape without damaging the gelcoat:
With all the new stainless steel bolts in place:
With the spacer and the now cleaned and painted bracket bolted in place I could seal around all edges and bolts to prevent water water getting inside - the one exception was the drain / ventilation hole I fitted:
I cut up some rubber matting I had left over from a horse trailer I rebuilt 10 years ago and placed that in the floor of the locker so the propane cylinder doesn't scratch the gelcoat:
I could then clean, refit and seal the locker hatch:
This was quite a long job, taking 23 days elapsed time. But then I was only able to work on it occasionally and plenty of time had to be left for glue and timber to dry.
At least I can be confident this corner of the camper is now strong - especially since the bracket is now bolted to 2 inches thick of plywood with a lot of extra 18mm plywood helping to distribute the forces diagonally to the inner frame of the camper.
Phew - glad that job's over.
Steve.
