The Before part 2. The duct tape was used to get it home from Oklahoma in January.
It is a 2006 5th wheel 32' bunkhouse.
Bad repair job from previous owner
They used close to an inch thick of buytl tape instead of Eternabond tape.
The insulation is in pretty good shape
The damage ๐
The roof
The worst of the front wall
The water was on the inside of the wall and must have puddled in the tyvek. The wood was still wet
You can only see the damage to the front of the trailer, the roof and sides about 2' back are bad too.
Enough work for one day, this trailer demo is harder than it looks on youtube But now that we are started we have to keep going.
We don't have a barn big enough to store the 5th wheel so it's under a tarp. It's not like the water wasn't already getting in anyway.
Any tips or help would be appreciated. We have had a hard time finding much good information and/or how to videos or websites on doing a massive rebuild like this one. If you know of any send the link!
It is a 2006 5th wheel 32' bunkhouse.
Bad repair job from previous owner
They used close to an inch thick of buytl tape instead of Eternabond tape.
The insulation is in pretty good shape
The damage ๐
The roof
The worst of the front wall
The water was on the inside of the wall and must have puddled in the tyvek. The wood was still wet
You can only see the damage to the front of the trailer, the roof and sides about 2' back are bad too.
Enough work for one day, this trailer demo is harder than it looks on youtube But now that we are started we have to keep going.
We don't have a barn big enough to store the 5th wheel so it's under a tarp. It's not like the water wasn't already getting in anyway.
Any tips or help would be appreciated. We have had a hard time finding much good information and/or how to videos or websites on doing a massive rebuild like this one. If you know of any send the link!
We finally decided that the RV had won. It was beyond our ability to know how to fix the problem we had created. We had to call a professional.
Knowing how much time we had already put into the 5th wheel we weren't looking forward to a huge repair bill to get it put all pulled apart and put back together. But we just didn't know what else to do. Around here RV repair shops charge $150+ an hour so it could add up to thousands of dollars really quick. Plus we just hate the thought that we had to give up and pay someone to fix it. Something no DIYer likes to do ๐
Also they don't make house calls somehow we would have to get the RV to the repair place while still being torn apart.
Craigslist to the rescue!
We happened to come across an RV repair guy with lots of experience who also made house calls! When he came he said our problem was we were out of square. He recommended we cut back the framing to make it match the angle of the siding. (I should have posted this problem on this board before we made the call as others here have said the same thing)
He assured us that removing this small amount of wood would not greatly reduce the strength of the entire structure. This was partially because there is actually two layers of faming on the sides. The part we were skiving down was glued, screwed and stapled to the wall stud framing directly behind it. He said if it was in his shop that is what he would do. So that's what we did.
The RV pro recommended using an oscillating saw to do the cutting because you could be very precise. Then finish up with a belt sander. Neither tool of which we owned. Our contractor neighbor to the rescue! Side note here, we tried early on to convince him to work on the RV but he basically said he wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole! (smart guy) Thankfully he let us use several of his tools. We feel honored to be good enough neighbors that a contractor will lend us his tools.
Anyway, the oscillating saw didn't really give us the results we wanted, it ended up pretty jagged in some spots. This was mostly because we couldn't get the saw flat enough long enough as there was framing in the way. Perhaps if we would have had a longer blade or maybe not standing on a ladder 6 feet in the air or perhaps being more experienced with said saw. It was so sensitive it had a mind of its own sometimes. Cool tool though, putting it on the list of tools to buy just because we don't have it.
The sawzall wasn't much better. The siding was in the way and we worried about damaging it with the sawzall. So we just did the best we could. If I was doing this again (reality check, NEVER!) but if someone else was to want to do this I would recommend just using the belt sander from the start. It was much easier and gave a better result. Just buy some extra coarse sand paper and grind it all down until you get to where you want to be.
It really did work just as planned! We got the wood to line up with the siding just about perfectly. It looked a little rough in some spots but overall we were happy with the results.
Knowing how much time we had already put into the 5th wheel we weren't looking forward to a huge repair bill to get it put all pulled apart and put back together. But we just didn't know what else to do. Around here RV repair shops charge $150+ an hour so it could add up to thousands of dollars really quick. Plus we just hate the thought that we had to give up and pay someone to fix it. Something no DIYer likes to do ๐
Also they don't make house calls somehow we would have to get the RV to the repair place while still being torn apart.
Craigslist to the rescue!
We happened to come across an RV repair guy with lots of experience who also made house calls! When he came he said our problem was we were out of square. He recommended we cut back the framing to make it match the angle of the siding. (I should have posted this problem on this board before we made the call as others here have said the same thing)
He assured us that removing this small amount of wood would not greatly reduce the strength of the entire structure. This was partially because there is actually two layers of faming on the sides. The part we were skiving down was glued, screwed and stapled to the wall stud framing directly behind it. He said if it was in his shop that is what he would do. So that's what we did.
The RV pro recommended using an oscillating saw to do the cutting because you could be very precise. Then finish up with a belt sander. Neither tool of which we owned. Our contractor neighbor to the rescue! Side note here, we tried early on to convince him to work on the RV but he basically said he wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole! (smart guy) Thankfully he let us use several of his tools. We feel honored to be good enough neighbors that a contractor will lend us his tools.
Anyway, the oscillating saw didn't really give us the results we wanted, it ended up pretty jagged in some spots. This was mostly because we couldn't get the saw flat enough long enough as there was framing in the way. Perhaps if we would have had a longer blade or maybe not standing on a ladder 6 feet in the air or perhaps being more experienced with said saw. It was so sensitive it had a mind of its own sometimes. Cool tool though, putting it on the list of tools to buy just because we don't have it.
The sawzall wasn't much better. The siding was in the way and we worried about damaging it with the sawzall. So we just did the best we could. If I was doing this again (reality check, NEVER!) but if someone else was to want to do this I would recommend just using the belt sander from the start. It was much easier and gave a better result. Just buy some extra coarse sand paper and grind it all down until you get to where you want to be.
It really did work just as planned! We got the wood to line up with the siding just about perfectly. It looked a little rough in some spots but overall we were happy with the results.
AirForceAngler wrote:
I'm also curious about some things I saw and read on the first page. You mentioned that the floor did not have any rot, but from the last few pictures of your first post it appears that the floor did have some rot. At least I think I was looking at the floor. Could this also be part of the alignment problem?
The plywood floor did NOT have ANY rot, not even a speck! I was totally shocked.
I'm not sure if the front end of all 5th wheels are built the same but this one did not have the walls sitting on top of the floor. They are actually completely sitting on supports on the outside of the steel frame. There were/are 2 2x2's stacked on top of each other bolted to the steel frame. The walls, including interior wall board, sit on those "floor plates" bolted to the frame next to the edge of the plywood flooring.
These supports were totally rotted out but because of this design it saved the floor. The water ran down the walls and soaked the wall plates and rotted them out.
I'm not sure if this design is unique to this brand of if all 5th wheels are built this way. One thing this design does besides saving the floor from rot is it does give about 4" more living space in the RV because the walls are not sitting on the floor but outside of it. Structure wise I would think it wouldn't be as strong as the other way around.
Here are a few more close ups you you can see the problem a bit more. The biggest problem was the fiberglass cap not aligning. If it was in position on the left it was way out on the right. If it was aligned on the right it was off on the left.
We pulled the cap off and took these photos to show how the structure is off just a little bit. But it might as well be a mile off because that cap is just not going on.
I'm posting this not to show that we don't know what we are doing but to hopefully help the next person along who is going to attempt a project of this scope. Had we known what to be aware of in the beginning we would have saved ourselves a big headace!
We pulled the cap off and took these photos to show how the structure is off just a little bit. But it might as well be a mile off because that cap is just not going on.
I'm posting this not to show that we don't know what we are doing but to hopefully help the next person along who is going to attempt a project of this scope. Had we known what to be aware of in the beginning we would have saved ourselves a big headace!
I haven't posted for a long time mostly because the "last" step of putting on the fiberglass front cap that should have been easy ended up being a nightmare.
After all the time and work we did on the 5th wheel this one step proved to be just about impossible to overcome. Talk about depressing
From a distance it doesn't look like there is anything wrong. But if you look at the cap along the bottom, the left side is slightly higher than the right side.
From the side you can really see the problem is.
It's only about 3/4 of an inch but that might as well have been a mile.
You can see in this photo of the side that the wood framing extends slightly past the aluminum siding making the front cap not able to lay flush with the siding.
We are not only out of square side to side but also the angle across where the two parts of the front wall meet. They should have been exactly lined up with the siding.
You can also see that once the cap is in place the walls of the RV are about 1/2-3/4 inch wider than the fiberglass cap.
this is the other side (passenger) You can see we have the same problem here, the wood structure was a little better.
Unfortunately that didn't make much difference. Because the entire structure was off the only way to get the cap to sit even somewhat was to have it on crooked. This then makes the area where the bend is to not fit to the angle of the wood structure. It really is a mess.
We tried and tried to figure out a way to get the cap to lay flat enough to get trim on it. But it just would not. No matter what we did it just wasn't going to fit. We even tried to find wider trim but could not. This is such a critical spot for water penetration it had to have trim or we would have water damage.
The only other option we could think of was to take all the interior wall pannels down to expose the studs and try to take it apart and rebuild everything. This would be basically redoing everything we have already done but now instead of the rotten wood it would be new and super strong. Remember from our last posts that everything is screwed, glued, and stapled??? At this point after all the hundreds of hours we have put into the project we just wanted to be done.
We had come so far but now had hit the brick wall. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
Time to call in a professional.
To be continued...
After all the time and work we did on the 5th wheel this one step proved to be just about impossible to overcome. Talk about depressing
From a distance it doesn't look like there is anything wrong. But if you look at the cap along the bottom, the left side is slightly higher than the right side.
From the side you can really see the problem is.
It's only about 3/4 of an inch but that might as well have been a mile.
You can see in this photo of the side that the wood framing extends slightly past the aluminum siding making the front cap not able to lay flush with the siding.
We are not only out of square side to side but also the angle across where the two parts of the front wall meet. They should have been exactly lined up with the siding.
You can also see that once the cap is in place the walls of the RV are about 1/2-3/4 inch wider than the fiberglass cap.
this is the other side (passenger) You can see we have the same problem here, the wood structure was a little better.
Unfortunately that didn't make much difference. Because the entire structure was off the only way to get the cap to sit even somewhat was to have it on crooked. This then makes the area where the bend is to not fit to the angle of the wood structure. It really is a mess.
We tried and tried to figure out a way to get the cap to lay flat enough to get trim on it. But it just would not. No matter what we did it just wasn't going to fit. We even tried to find wider trim but could not. This is such a critical spot for water penetration it had to have trim or we would have water damage.
The only other option we could think of was to take all the interior wall pannels down to expose the studs and try to take it apart and rebuild everything. This would be basically redoing everything we have already done but now instead of the rotten wood it would be new and super strong. Remember from our last posts that everything is screwed, glued, and stapled??? At this point after all the hundreds of hours we have put into the project we just wanted to be done.
We had come so far but now had hit the brick wall. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
Time to call in a professional.
To be continued...
