How To Repair Fold Up Camp Crankshaft 1995 Camper

Do y'all accept a pop up camper with a water damaged roof? Unfortunately, the roof of the camper we bought was beyond repair and rotting away. Nosotros figured out how to set up it by removing all of the water damaged wood, and so rebuilding the roof structure and reattaching the aluminum skin.

When nosotros purchased our 1993 pop-up camper, I knew there was water harm to the roof. What I didn't know, however, was how all-encompassing the damage actually was. We were able to rebuild the roof and now have a like-new camper, but the amount of time it took to complete fabricated it quite the projection.

After figuring out how bad the harm was on our camper, I searched the cyberspace for videos and posts on how to set water damaged roofs, and although I found some helpful videos, I struggled finding detailed posts that walked through the procedure on how to completely rebuild parts of the roof. Hopefully this postal service will be helpful for others that notice themselves overwhelmed by the procedure of fixing a rotting roof on a camper like I did!

Part 1: Removing the Popular Up Camper Roof and Assessing the H2o Harm (you are here)

Remove the Exterior Trim to Appraise Damage
Detach the Canvass and Remove the Roof
Remove Rotted and Water Damaged Forest

Part 2: Rebuilding/Repairing the Roof and Making information technology H2o Tight

Rebuild Roof Structure with New Wood
Reattach Roof and Canvas to Camper
Seal Upwardly Holes and Seams to Forestall Hereafter Leaks
Cosmetically Repair the Ceiling

Remove the Outside Trim to Assess Impairment

In society to unscrew the trim, the first step is to take out the vinyl trim insert that covers the screws. If your camper looks anything like mine, the vinyl trim is probably croaky, broken, moldy, or all of the above. This trim should merely pop out every bit y'all pull on it.

Then, information technology's time to remove the screws. Equally I was taking out the screws, this gave me a adept idea of where the water damage was on the camper. Some of the screws came out rusted, and in some cases, completely rotted away, which signaled that area of wood was probably rotting away likewise.

For the screws that were completed rotted, the screwdriver patently didn't take anything to grab on to, then I ended up using a combination of a pry bar, pliers, and some swearing to get the spiral pieces out.

Afterwards all of the screws were removed, I used a metal putty pocketknife/scraper to remove all the sometime, gunky, viscid butyl tape. This process was boring, to say the least. Later most of the putty tape was removed, I used mineral spirits and a fine mesh steel wool to remove the excess gunk.

At this point, y'all tin can easily elevator upwards the pare to meet the condition of the wood of the roof. As I unscrewed the trim screws, some of our camper roof but started falling apart because the whole perimeter, and most of the top frame, was rotting away.

Y'all can get a better view of the amount of water damage in this video. I have the finished camper reveal, as well equally the other steps in my roof rebuild process, over on my You Tube channel. I'd beloved for yous to caput on over, check them out, and even subscribe if you'd similar to see other popular-up camper projects in the future!

Detach the Canvas and Remove the Roof

If you find, like we did, that you'll need to replace a good corporeality of the woods on your pop up roof, information technology's fourth dimension to detach the sail and and then remove the roof in order to rebuild it. If your water damage is minimal and the woods is nevertheless structurally sound, yous might be able to skip ahead to Part 2 – Seal Up the Roof to Foreclose Time to come Water Damage.

Obviously, in that location was not a chance nosotros could relieve some of the wood on our roof, so we set up our plan to rebuild it, which required us to remove the roof.

Start, we unscrewed the sail from the within of the camper. Basically, the canvas is attached to metal strips that are so screwed into the sides of the roof. I made certain to have pictures of the brackets effectually the unabridged inside perimeter of the roof so when it was time to put everything back together, I had a visual model to aid me.

After the canvas was detached, I unscrewed the four lifting brackets from the sides of the roof frame. Ours were attached with bolts and basics on the within of the camper, so they were piece of cake to remove. We used 2 x 4s to hold the roof in place while we detached the other lifting brackets.

After everything was disconnected from the main body of the camper, nosotros took off the roof and put information technology on top of ii sawhorses right next to the camper.

For a better look at our deconstructed roof, sentinel the video beneath.

Remove Rotted and Water Damaged Woods

In the video higher up, you probably saw but how rotted away some of the forest on our camper was. This thing had clearly been taking a lot of water for a long time. We opted to completely remove all four sides of our roof, also as replace the outside border of 1 x 2″ framing.

At this betoken, if the water damage is all-encompassing enough, you lot have the pick of completely removing the skin, the foam, and all of the framing lumber and rebuilding information technology from scratch. (If you need to become this route to rebuild your roof, I'd recommend checking out The Pop Upwards Princess, and they just rebuilt a popular upward camper roof and decided to replace everything.)

If I had remembered to take a picture of the roof turned upside downwards before we started to repair it, here's what it would have looked like.

We decided that instead of completely taking apart the entire roof and replacing all the cream and framing, we would only supervene upon the pieces of wood that had taken water and were no longer structurally sound. In the video, I mentioned that we thought we were going to continue some of the 1 x 2″ frame, but instead we decided to only replace all the 1 ten 2s along the edge. Thankfully, nosotros didn't need to supplant the interior ane 10 2″ frame, and therefore we could keep the skin and foam attached.

To remove the 1 ten two pieces that were still attached, I used a minor, four-1/2″ meaty circular saw to cut from the bottom right along the edge of the 1 x 2. The only thing that was property those pieces in identify was that the interior ceiling was yet attached to them. Information technology'southward important to make sure you lot don't saw deep enough to go right through the aluminum skin! This will add a lot more piece of work to repair the skin in order to proceed out those water leaks.

More than on how we rebuilt the roof frame and sides in the next step, which you'll discover in the second post in this serial.

Part 2: Steps to Repair and Rebuild a H2o Damaged Pop Upwards Camper Roof and Make it Water Tight

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You can discover all of my other pop upwards camper remodel projects here.

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