On my way to a campground in Grand Teton National Park the leading edge of the curbside wall of my trailer delaminated and was flapping in the wind. The wall was quickly secured with Gorilla duct tape and that repair has been intact for the past six weeks.

I have a 2006 Fleetwood Gearbox 220FB. This is an 11,000 lb GVWR bumper pull toy hauler. The model years prior to mine had significant problems within the first year of ownership with delamination. Fleetwood supposedly corrected the problem such that it didn't affect the 2006 models. Fleetwood declared bankruptcy in 2009 and stopped making trailers.

I don't think I'm going to find a single point of failure that caused the delamination. But I have ideas of a few items that contributed to the problem. 2019 has been a very wet year in the Denver area. As of early June, we have more precipitation than all of 2018. There is evidence of a leak in the bathroom ceiling. The bathroom is located on the curbside of the front of the trailer. The ceiling panel above the shower is rotted. The worst spot is at the front corner, next to the wall. Above that spot, the roof, front nose and sidewall all come together. I resealed the roof last year with quite a few tubes of lap sealant. But maybe it was too little, too late. The way the trailer's roof is sloped, any water that doesn't go off the sides will go to the front of the trailer.

While inspecting the delamination damage on the curbside of the trailer I noticed a large delamination bubble on the streetside of the sidewall. Both delamination areas on the sidewalls are within the first three feet of the front. While creating an estimate, the RV body shop technician pointed out that almost the entire front nose is also delaminated. The final estimate, which was a worst case, was $5,000. A second estimate was lower, but not by much. Due to the high cost of the repair, and that the trailer is worth about $7,000, I'm going to do the repair myself, with help from a few friends.

Over the next few posts I'll document this project.

The plan is to fix the sidewalls first. The walls will be relaminated using the West System Epoxy Resin.

Today I started removing objects from the front of the streetside wall. Here is the metal corner molding before I started working on it. Every screw was rusted from the head to the tip. Only a couple of them were actually holding on to a solid piece of wood. The OEM molding does not support a vinyl insert. I think that a vinyl insert would have helped keep most of the waters from coming in past the screw heads. The new molding will have a vinyl insert.



This is a view of the molding from the side. The moliding is about 1" wide on the front nose, but only about 3/8" wide on the side fiberglass.


This is the metal molding from the prior pictures. It has been pulled off of the trailer. What I found is that the butyl tape seemed to cover the fiberglass on the front nose, but not on the sidewall. The sidewall lip of the molding is about 3/8". The new molding will cover about 1" of the sidewall and I plan to use a much wider strip of butyl tape. The butyl tape that was there was brittle.




Here I'm holding the sidewall away from the trailer. The Luan underlayment in this section is no longer attached along the edge. So far, this is the worst section.




This picture is the same sidewall, about 4' lower than the prior picture. The Luan is still intact here.



Close to the front corner is an 8"x8" door that has a water hose behind it. This is a hose for cleaning off toys. This picture is the front of that opening.




This is the same opening, but looking toward the rear of the trailer. It's in better shape.



08/14 Update
Yesterday I put an air pump (for a blow up mattress) in the trailer and routed a hose from it up between the outer fiberglass and the Luan. Since the pump is battery powered it didn't last 24 hours. I put in new batteries tonight and added hoses at the corner to promote more air movement. The tape I removed from the corner was quite wet where it was exposed to the Luan.

 

Phase I is complete! With the incredible assistance of four friends, we relaminated the two side walls today. We used different approaches on each side.

The street side wall (3rd picture) had very warped substrate and it was in bad shape. I peeled back the fiberglass and cleared out as much of the Luan as possible. A skin of Luan remained on both the rigid foam (on the wall) and the fiberglass. The adhesive they used on that was still intact. A new section of 1/8" Luan was installed using contact cement to affix it to the wall. The fiberglass was attached to the Luan using 3M Marine Adhesive/Sealant Fast Cure 5200. If I were to do this again I would not use the fast cure version.

The curb side wall (2nd picture) had less deterioration of the substrate (1/8" Luan). Both sides of the Luan had delaminated however. We used West System's two part Epoxy. I think our batches were too large, about 300 ml. We had 150 ml syringes, so a single batch was enough to run a syringe twice. I think we used a bit more than 1/2 a gallon of the part A. The area was about 18 square feet.

The epoxy was very messy, especially at the bottom where we started. The fiberglass wasn't attached to the trailer and the epoxy went in a few inches above the bottom and came right out the bottom. Once we got the bottom board clamped on it reduced the spillage.

I had 120 shims on hand and we could have used another 40.







Installation of the corner molding. This new molding is wider on the side wall than the old molding by a good 3/4" (actual dimensions are 1" x 1 1/4"). That makes it difficult to conform to curves. At the top (not pictured) I had to put in three relief cuts to get it to bend right.

The corner as it was after the wall was relaminated.




The same corner with butyl tape crammed into the gap to ensure that there is no void.




This is the molding with 1" butyl tape on each leg of the molding.




The corner with the molding installed. I ended up using coated deck screws. I needed screws that were longer than the originals that would be a lot less likely to rust. This picture is before I cleaned up the butyl that had oozed out. I still need to insert the vinyl trim to cover up the screws.




The top of the molding on the same corner as the above picture. I had to put three relief cuts in the molding to get it to make the bend. The cuts present an opportunity for water to get in, but there's quite a bit of butyl under the cuts and I'll cover the cuts with caulk, just to make sure.




The side wall on curbside corner was sticking out beyond the front fiberglass.




I looked at the side wall for a few minutes and decided that it need to be trimmed flush - or close to flush - with the front fiberglass. If it wasn't trimmed then the corner molding wouldn't sit properly or would need a lot of butyl tape to fill the gap. After trimming, I sanded the corner edges so there were no sharp edges that might poke through the butyl tape.




The corner molding went on well. There is plenty of butyl tape under the molding. As with the other corner, I used butyl tape on each side/leg of the molding. I didn't put the butyl tape on the trailer. Instead, I put it on the molding and installed the molding and butyl together. I'll caulk the edges next.

 

Teaser picture for Phase II of the this project. The entire front fiberglass is delaminated. The only thing holding the fiberglass on is the molding on the four sides. The substrate looks like cardboard and it's very deteriorated. Many of the staples used to secure the fiberglass have torn out or have rusted out. On the top, the Dicor lap sealant was holding the molding to the EPDM and the fiberglass.

Here's what I'm dealing with on top of the trailer where the front fiberglass is secured.
1. The molding should have gone closer to the edge of the roof. It's short by a good 2".
2. The molding doesn't have anything to screw into at this end of the picture. I tried a 3" screw and there wasn't anything solid for it to get a bite on. If they had put the molding 2" to the right there is a wood crossmember that should have worked just fine.

 

Reserved Post #3

 

Reserved Post #4

 

Love the giant clamp!

I have used that 5200 sealant on a boat. Good stuff, takes weeks to come off your hands!

 

I still think an elephant on each side of the trailer would have been easier than the huge clamp.........

Looking good Jim

 

Have used the same process on one of our towables in the past. Means either great minds think alike or we were both gluttons for punishment, but it is labor intensive.

So in the for-what-it's-worth department having seen this problem dozens of times on a variety of makes and models, when shopping for an RV of any type, if you haver the option, choose one with a front cap that rolls completely around and seals on the sides rather than one the has the aluminum molding running down the front. Manufacturers run the molding down the front to save construction costs and it is dramatically more susceptible to water penetration and ensuing delam. If you do not have that option, watch the front like a hawk and keep it sealed religiously.

My two cents

 

One thing I found was that the amount of butyl tape under the vertical molding was woefully insufficient. The fiberglass used to cover the front of the trailer had very bad vertical trim lines and it was very sharp. I suspect that the sharp edges cut through what little butyl tape was there. Any time the trailer traveled in the rain it forced water past the molding and butyl tape.

Front caps that wrap around would work a lot better for sealing the trailer.

 

A common problem and one that is important to address for nearly everyone. As soon as the caulking breaks down around the molding water simply funnels in.

 

The clamps came off today. Both sides are nice and solid. On the glue/contact cement side, there is a small section that sounds hollow. I suspect we didn't get the glue spread well enough and there is a small void. I don't think it's going to be a problem.

I didn't do enough preparation work. I should have used plastic to mask off the entire area where the clamps were. When I removed the clamp on the epoxy side some of the boards took small chunks of the fiberglass with them. I'm going to find an appropriate sticker to place over that small area.

 

That is Funny..... I have done that.....

 

Man, I tell you. I don't care how carefully you work with that stuff, it is just a "B". For a very Small area that is easy to access, not so bad, but the degree of difficulty and the time involved goes up exponentially after that! On my fiver the manufacturer short sheeted the rubber roof and back wall delamed. I order the wallboard and redid the back wall and it came out great. I sealed and left the exterior back wall for not and intend to completely take it off and replace it when I get around to it. Only damage on the entire camper and never would have been if the manufacturer had not done "jack leg" work.

 

Epoxy goes where it wants to go. Or stays where it wants to stay. Here's a funny one. I placed masking tape over the hole to keep the epoxy from leaking out the holes. I'm not sure how I'm going to get to the wires for the marker light. I'm tempted to put a light there but not wire it up.

 

Here's one of my mistakes. The side wall leg of the corner molding is either 1" or 1 1/4". It's too wide to handle much of a bend. I should have put a relief cut in the apex of the curve so it didn't bend.

The molding will have to come off for Phase II, so I'm not too worried about it.