I recently purchased a 1999 Citation truck camper which has a small soft spot in the roof. I used rope to outline the area that has been affected by water. Within this area, there are two very soft spots, each about 6"x6".
I probably could have just resealed the roof and let it be (as several local shops recommended), but I wanted a more solid fix ... so I took off the gutter and part of the front molding, and pulled back the EPDM from the offending corner of the roof.
As you can see from the above photo, the fiberglass has started to delaminate. Fortunately, it's not too bad ... the luan is still solid, and the delamination only goes down about 1.5 inches. It doesn't look like the water got any further than that.
Starting to pull out the bad wood:
Cleaned up a bit more:
At this point, I've removed all of the wood that didn't have any structure left in it. I think I'm going to cut out some more of the water-affected framing, and then treat what's left with some sort of an epoxy. Then I'll splice in some new cross member pieces. I picked up a Kreg pocket hole jig and some clear vertical grain doug fir (overkill) 2x2's at Lowes today. We'll see how that goes ... I'm used to framing with 2x4's!
Stay tunes for updates!
I probably could have just resealed the roof and let it be (as several local shops recommended), but I wanted a more solid fix ... so I took off the gutter and part of the front molding, and pulled back the EPDM from the offending corner of the roof.
As you can see from the above photo, the fiberglass has started to delaminate. Fortunately, it's not too bad ... the luan is still solid, and the delamination only goes down about 1.5 inches. It doesn't look like the water got any further than that.
Starting to pull out the bad wood:
Cleaned up a bit more:
At this point, I've removed all of the wood that didn't have any structure left in it. I think I'm going to cut out some more of the water-affected framing, and then treat what's left with some sort of an epoxy. Then I'll splice in some new cross member pieces. I picked up a Kreg pocket hole jig and some clear vertical grain doug fir (overkill) 2x2's at Lowes today. We'll see how that goes ... I'm used to framing with 2x4's!
Stay tunes for updates!
While I was waiting for the epoxy to show up in the mail, I started playing around with the Kreg pocket jig. Pretty neat:
Laying out the new framing:
The luan plywood that you can see under the framing is laminated to some sort of a vinyl/plastic material that is the ceiling finish in the cabover section. I was worried that the penetrating epoxy that I used to treat the luan might attack the plastic, and it did! Not too bad, though ... good thing I brushed it on very lightly:
Finally making some progress! All of the new and old wood have been treated with the Rot Doctor Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer. Joints are "glued" with the Layup & Laminating Epoxy Resin.
I used mixed sawdust with the Layup & Laminating Epoxy Resin to fill some voids that I had chiseled out. I could have used finer sawdust:
That's it for a few days ... making a trip to Bend, OR for the weekend!
Laying out the new framing:
The luan plywood that you can see under the framing is laminated to some sort of a vinyl/plastic material that is the ceiling finish in the cabover section. I was worried that the penetrating epoxy that I used to treat the luan might attack the plastic, and it did! Not too bad, though ... good thing I brushed it on very lightly:
Finally making some progress! All of the new and old wood have been treated with the Rot Doctor Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer. Joints are "glued" with the Layup & Laminating Epoxy Resin.
I used mixed sawdust with the Layup & Laminating Epoxy Resin to fill some voids that I had chiseled out. I could have used finer sawdust:
That's it for a few days ... making a trip to Bend, OR for the weekend!
Here's everything all cleaned up and ready to have new framing spliced in:
I decided not to remove the 2x2's (there are two of them stapled together) under the seam where the roof meet the front cap. Those boards were mostly solid, and the water damage didn't continue forward under the cap at all. I used a chisel to remove any rotten wood from those boards, and I'll be using some CPES and Layup/Laminating Epoxy Resin from www.rotdoctor.com to shore everything up.
I decided not to remove the 2x2's (there are two of them stapled together) under the seam where the roof meet the front cap. Those boards were mostly solid, and the water damage didn't continue forward under the cap at all. I used a chisel to remove any rotten wood from those boards, and I'll be using some CPES and Layup/Laminating Epoxy Resin from www.rotdoctor.com to shore everything up.
