Rotted out under-tub Caribou 8

[silversand]

Just a heads-up to those with Outfitter Caribou units with wooden tub: there is some kind of very cheap furniture veneer under the entire tub glued to the floor XPS foam and aluminum beams. This has absorbed water between bed of camper and rubber bed mat, and completely rotted away. I just found it this morning. Another to-do (after I found a section of wing under battery compartment) completely rotted out on this camper last Fall. This repair will be about 20 hours this Spring. LOTS of wood on these campers. Ours is 9 years old this May.

Thank God this stuff is only cheap veneer and not structural, so I can glue a ~2 sq foot sheet of 1/16th plastic FRP to the aluminum frame and XPS. I wish could remove it all, but the glue in some places is still tenacious with veneer. Expected time of repair: ~12 hours (including a run to the hardware store, pre-prep, and clamping the new FRP section under there.

Suggested mitigation: never let your Caribou (or, wood-framed tub camper) sit directly on your truck's bed; place inorganic spacers under the tub, to elevate off truck bed, and allow air circulation !!!



S-

[sleepy]

silversand wrote:
Just a heads-up to those with Outfitter Caribou units with wooden tub: there is some kind of very cheap furniture veneer under the entire tub glued to the floor XPS foam and aluminum beams. This has absorbed water between bed of camper and rubber bed mat, and completely rotted away. I just found it this morning. Another to-do (after I found a section of wing under battery compartment) completely rotted out on this camper last Fall. This repair will be about 20 hours this Spring. LOTS of wood on these campers. Ours is 9 years old this May.

Thank God this stuff is only cheap veneer and not structural, so I can glue a ~2 sq foot sheet of 1/16th plastic FRP to the aluminum frame and XPS. I wish could remove it all, but the glue in some places is still tenacious with veneer. Expected time of repair: ~12 hours (including a run to the hardware store, pre-prep, and clamping the new FRP section under there.

Suggested mitigation: never let your Caribou (or, wood-framed tub camper) sit directly on your truck's bed; place inorganic spacers under the tub, to elevate off truck bed, and allow air circulation !!!



S-

Silver

I have been thinking hard about your problem.

I think yhat maybe you just have a water damaged dust cover... that is why it is just a veneer... it has nothing to do with structure.

Is your floor solid?

Is your framework good?

How many pieces are damaged? Are they all the veneer plywood?


Repair the leak

Replace the plywood

If the battery is a lead acid type and isn't in a containment box you might do that or get a AGM type

See if you can add baffles or something to eliminate water in the trucks bed if it's from rain... (Or, repair leak...#1 priority anyway)

go camping... it will be OK!

[sleepy]

I have used a product called "Get Rot" that can be painted on wet wood and it soaks in displacing the water

All of my appliances are in good shape... mystove and oven have never been used... but we have only slept in the camper 1081 nights

I'm at the point of using aluminum tape on a place.

In February of this year I tried to get Lance to completely replace all of the Filon siding material on our camper... we finally came to a price of approximately $15,000... and I understand why.

It is 11 years old... I'll soon be 74 years old

Do I want to plan another 15 years of TC ownership by purchasing a new one? being realistic? I couldn't do the modifications again.

Another thought that passed through my mind was to... move every thing to a shipping container on aflatbed... or install it in a BIG van

Vigilance and tape....

preying for you... yes, I spelled it correctly

we are prey

and...

Iknow how particular you are... how much effort youput into everything

I'm sorry that you have to go through this.

Sleepy

[travelnutz]

silversand,

That is what I was afraid you'd find. More and more rot and where will it end? Your time is precious and not having much is free time so selling may make a lot of sense. It hurts but in the long run just might be the best scenario for you. Your time is worth so much to your happiness as your summers are so short anyway where you live which also means the winters are so long. A TC can be replaced but not the time and nerves exhausted fixing the rot and hoping it just won't continue and always be concerned about its structural integrity. Not cheap for you but your Outfitter is already 9 years old and it won't get any younger. Buying a new TC means starting over with no rot and gives new TC'ing/RV'ing life but it does come at a cost. Unfortunately, buying used can be a c__p shoot as who knows what real issues are hidden under the surfaces you see? Good luck with your decision.

[Freedom_49]

Sorry to hear about your problems. Over the years I have been extremely impressed with your knowledge and how well you maintain your camper. Can you imagine how many RVs out there have hidden problems if an owner like you finds one? Makes me want to go out and look over my camper right now.

If you do decide to sell, somebody will be getting a great project that can have an excellent outcome.

Best of luck.

[silversand]

Thanks Travelnutz.

I think at this point, we need to sell it to someone who has a month or 3 to devote exclusively to tearing the unit apart. Repairing it ourselves will be a very, VERY daunting task. I think every piece of tub wood needs to be removed and inspected (this means disassembling the entire camper in 2 pieces: the removal of the tub, and upper wall section, using a crane, or building support walls, because some structural pieces are pretty well shot: the under-wings hold up the camper). The most important structural components of our camper are the weakest part of the build: the under-wing and the tub upon which the rest of the unit sits. One lynch pin (about 1% of the camper structure, the material costing about $40) that if it fails, the camper is unusable but perhaps as a guest cabin in back of the house. I found more rot: the vertical tub wall that supports the entire rear end.

My World-view doesn't include building or repairing catastrophic damage to campers. Too many more important things to accomplish.

[Geewizard]

I must have escaped this issue with my Apex 8 because I use the factory plastic bed liner which has ribs and therefore drainage channels. Purely unintentional on my part.

Silver, I hope your repairs go well.

[Hodag1]

Our Apex 9.5 has 2X4s laid flat and screwed on the front and sides(but not the back. This keeps an air space between the plywood and the rubber mat.

[travelnutz]

silversand,

Thanks and you know I'll help you all I can and/or any decision you and Dunes decide upon. You take good care of your things and some do not so your heads up really means a lot and I hope some are reading and heeding.

I'd written a reply on CW rv.net forum portal but the site went down before I could send it. Still down! Came in thru Woodalls.

I sure don't envy you fixing your Outfitter because it's not a little project and you have plenty to fix. Usually with as much rot as you have now described, there is likely a lot of wet or rot beginning in many areas of the floor and walls due to trapped water or moisture. Water flows, wicks, and moisture goes right thru wood etc from one compartment to another. The filon exterior sure doesn't help as no moisture can escape thru it. Unfortunately, you don't have much choice as taking a huge hit selling it won't sit well either. Filled with foam, the closed areas do not ventilate or evaporate at all and if fiberglass insulation, it holds water and moisture in the wool and either way, rot will occur. Some of the areas are a nightmare to get into but how else will you know?

FWIW, I have had great luck using Thompsons Waterseal (the petroleum based not the water based) on wood items (plywood and pine etc) I've used it on and some have been unpainted and out in the rain, snow, sun, etc for over 20 years and none have soaked up water or rotted yet. If you can get the TC truely dried out, I wonder if coating any once soaked area with the Thompsons would prevent any rot or further rotting in the non-rotted must be replaced areas. Only TC we owned over the last 49 years that had rot occur was our Fleetwood Caribou 11'11" big TC we bought new. 6 years later, my wife opened the rear door to go in and the door litterally fell off with only the bottom hinge still attached. rear framing was total rot and we'd not seen any evidence of leaks but it sure was and took a real bath when trading for our first new Lance TC.

One thing to remember is that you can't glue a surface that has been coated with TRhompsons as it doesn't adhere hardly at all if any. If you do use the Thompsons, let it dry thoroughly before sealing/covering the area and the petroleum smell goes away quickly.

[silversand]

Hi Steve:

It sure is. I'd much prefer to have put my time into numerous vastly more productive endeavors.

Cheers,
S-

[sabconsulting]

This is really annoying - yes, what were they thinking to use plywood there?

Yet more work to add to the list for when your winter ends.

Good luck with the repairs.

Steve.

[silversand]

Thanks, Skip! I'll get a hold of our marina, and see if they have this material in stock. Otherwise, I will have to order it via Internet (this stuff may not be orderable by cross-border, depending on its MSDS ?).

will still have to cut the rot out to dry sound plywood (the rot is so bad, when I dig into it, the wood just falls out on its own gravity from the underwing). was up on our roof, and it is rock solid. I planned on Geocel-ing (ProFlex) the roof seams this spring. The 3M product I have used for screw seating and fiberglass seam re-do is: 4200 seam-sealer. It is still qute flexible after ~3.7 years...

Cheers,
Silver-

[skipbee]

Hi Silver,

During our sailing days we used a product called WEST SYSTEM Epoxy. You can saturate wood with this very thin epoxy and it is impervious to water. I think it would be a very useful process for your problem. I know West Marine carries the stuff. Epoxy should be coated with paint or sun screen as it is subject to failure in UV when exposed to sunlight.

Also 5200 when not exposed to sunlight should only be used when you never intend to take it apart. I don't recommend it, there are lots of better more flexible adhesives IMHO.

WEST SYSTEM can be blended for several types of application. I also was steered to a neat product for our TC Roof. Liquid Roof is a liquid rubber product we have painted on seams. It was easy to apply and so far has stood up well. Our Lance dealer referred it to us.

Love to all,

skip

[silversand]

Hi Woodhog! Our "plan" was to keep this camper "for life"; this would have been another 15~20 of camping, then reconsider something more comfortable. I did some very in-depth investigation into CampLite's full aluminum line (with Azdel). VERY enticing I'll tell you. We do a lot of camping in salty marine environments, and after backing out all our screws on camper exterior, re-seating in marine adhesive, then driving back in, I had not seen any electrolysis entre the steel screws and aluminum framing. IF we sell this camper (with 100% full disclosure of repairs and findings), we will take a VERY hard look at CampLite/LivinLite 8.6 !

Travelnutz: you ARE one of my 3 structural/materials mentors from RVnet. You have been SPOT ON with MANY (no, not many, I should say: all) structural, materials and assembly "situations" out there in RV manufacturing land. When you speak, I LISTEN 100% ! I have been EXTREMELY impressed with the newer Lance line-up (full 100% aluminum/Azdel non organic structure, with LanceLock (r). These Lance camper are very difficult to find in our region (I've only seen one 2013/14 in stock, personally: however,it was for a short-bed truck). We will look very VERY closely at any long-bed 2014 Lance units that find their way nto our region, for sure.

Your intuition was absolutely correct on the "source" of the water! I removed my temporary under-wing patch (put there last October, after discovering the marine plywood rot under-wing (marine plywood ROTS VERY quickly, as you had warned us all years ago!): I cut all the rot out with a grinder fit with a diamond cutter, then screwed a temp "plate" over the hole till spring). It appears that water had indeed infiltrated into the battery box (steel insert) via a very cheap door design: the rubber seal around the hatch frame is actually gapped about 1 full inch at bottom, and the rubber around the hatch door spanning this gap at the bottom apparently does NOTHING to stop infiltration. Even worse, the box insert has very insufficient caulking to the hatch frame, where water infiltrates INTO the hollow aluminum framing through the end cut (and, I suspect: some screw penetrations), filling up the aluminum tube with water, and like a series of filling cups, just moves from tube to tube, spilling out FAR away from the leak region (like ~7 feet distant....so far discovered!).

With this Travelnutz intuition, I checked the only other steel insert box on the camper (the propane steel insert), started probing this morning, and my finger went RIGHT THROUGH the under-wing plywood under the steel propane box! I probed along under the propane box access hatch (the hatch has a huge gap, too, along the bottom under the lock, where, incredibly, no rubber spans!), and my finger(!) went right through the plywood along a 4~6 inch span: completely rotted out. All this marine plywood will have to be ripped out, too (another 10~15 hours of work??), then cleaned, and epoxy, then cover. On edit: more rot under the wing! The leading edge at front of camper under driver-side jack (about 12 inches from propane box) 5 inches of it along the camper trim (water filling the aluminum tube and migratng to front corner, spilling out of aluminum beam end cut, and soaking plywood???). Jeez. From inside the camper cupboards, I can't see anything under the batter box, there is almost no gap under the battery box and camper cupboard shelf. I have to rent an flexible inspection camera, but even with that, there seems to be plywood spacers under the battery box blocking ANY avenue to inspect under the battery box. This is turning out to be a nightmare. All the wood wing could be compromised at this point on the driver-side of camper.

Whaz:

This is a good idea under the camper tub. I def. will consider it! Now, the problem with the wooden structure (the entire tub verticals and wings are structural wood, however I can see that the verticals are sound, but the wings may be shot with terminal cancer), that we may only have ~2 years left on this camper, maybe 3? before all the wings need to be replaced (and then again in 3, 4, 6 years?) There appears no way to replace the entire wing structure without MAJOR structural dis-assembly. Just, like a WW-II sub under attack and leaking from depth-charges, plug the holes as the rot (leaks) show up, then decide at some point to part out the camper (or sell to someone who has the desire/time/interest to repair it continually/yearly till it dies).

Well, we have 9 good years with it thus far. maybe 2 more? For 11 years and about 100 hours of preventive maintenance over 9 years (the total lifespan of this particular camper, IF it is stored in a heated climate-controlled facility over winters since the day it is pick up brand new).

[whazoo]

Hey hey Silver, that job looks like a lot of work. Sorry for your troubles. Could a sheet of aluminum be screwed to the bottom, caulked and sprayed with a bed liner material wrapping up and covering the whole tub?