So how shot is my roof?
98 Prowler. From what ive been reading the roof is a EPDM rubber roof. These roofs are in two layers, a top white layer and a bottom black layer. Its looking to me like the white layer is about 80%+ g...
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Welp. Bad news day for me. I got up early this morning and drove out the the storage lot with a ladder. It is not mold or dirt on the roof. It appears to my untrained eye that the weather proof white coating has almost completely worn away. It seem its now just raw deteriorating rubber. As soon as I touched it my fingers turned black. I sprayed it with some cleaner and this is what my paper towel looked like.
All of the roof coating instructions say that the roof needs to be throughly cleaned. How can I even do that if its deteriorating and falling apart this bad? I'm worried to hear the answer. When I pushed on the dark areas between the very obvious rafters it was kinda springy. Not spongy like rotten wood, but like you were pushing on a piece of weak plexi glass or something. Is that normal or should it be totally stiff? While the rubber does seem to be in bad shape overall it was smooth with no signs of crack or patches or low spots. The caulking around the vents is cracked and obviously needs replaced, but it didnt seem to be coming up or have any large gaps.
Link to full resolution roof shot
But when I inspected the front edge and rear edge more bad news. The caulking is very cracked with some exposed gaps. The worst being the rear right as spotted in the first image in the thread. It looks like the roof has actually separated from the edge rail. I was able to grab the edge and simply lift the rubber roof up.
So after the horror of this I went searching the back wall inside. While there is no water staining I pushed around all over the wall. There is water damage for sure (obviously) even though there was no staining I found a few inches of soft wall near the ceiling. I am hoping that with the dry weather where its stored (outside palmdale california on the edge of the mojave desert) that the water damage to the inside of the wall has been minimal.
So. The question is. Now what. I'm a younger guy with limited budget and I was just looking for an adventure base camp to park up in the mountains. Replacing the roof with new EPDM is somewhat out of the question. I'm hoping that stapling the roof back down and covering with eternabond and then liquid rubber can save my roof. But if not I might have to just try and find a buyer with more money to take over this project and ill just have to take the hit on selling it for whatever I can.
All of the roof coating instructions say that the roof needs to be throughly cleaned. How can I even do that if its deteriorating and falling apart this bad? I'm worried to hear the answer. When I pushed on the dark areas between the very obvious rafters it was kinda springy. Not spongy like rotten wood, but like you were pushing on a piece of weak plexi glass or something. Is that normal or should it be totally stiff? While the rubber does seem to be in bad shape overall it was smooth with no signs of crack or patches or low spots. The caulking around the vents is cracked and obviously needs replaced, but it didnt seem to be coming up or have any large gaps.
Link to full resolution roof shot
But when I inspected the front edge and rear edge more bad news. The caulking is very cracked with some exposed gaps. The worst being the rear right as spotted in the first image in the thread. It looks like the roof has actually separated from the edge rail. I was able to grab the edge and simply lift the rubber roof up.
So after the horror of this I went searching the back wall inside. While there is no water staining I pushed around all over the wall. There is water damage for sure (obviously) even though there was no staining I found a few inches of soft wall near the ceiling. I am hoping that with the dry weather where its stored (outside palmdale california on the edge of the mojave desert) that the water damage to the inside of the wall has been minimal.
So. The question is. Now what. I'm a younger guy with limited budget and I was just looking for an adventure base camp to park up in the mountains. Replacing the roof with new EPDM is somewhat out of the question. I'm hoping that stapling the roof back down and covering with eternabond and then liquid rubber can save my roof. But if not I might have to just try and find a buyer with more money to take over this project and ill just have to take the hit on selling it for whatever I can.
