Secure and Sealed

It was a little scary what I found when I started addressing the roof leak on Fred.

Honestly. I do not know how the roof stayed on as long as it did. It was also leaking badly enough that I did not want to do any more washing on it until the leak was taken care of and I dang sure didn't want it to go through another one of these Alabama rains.

Most of the screws were the original self tapping ones, a lot shorter than I would have thought they would be. They were not too bad rusty but where they made contact with the van the body had rusted enough that the screws turned loose and were just sitting there holding nothing. Most of them you could grab and pull out without using a screw driver. A few had a little bite to them but not much.

The screw here in the picture looks like a drywall screw. There were several of these around the top loose in the holes in the body. I had to pry them back with a flat tip screwdriver while unscrewing with a Phillips.

The original self tappers had a square hole. Fortunately I had the right sized driver in the shed. I had to buy it to change some lights on an '89 Aerostar van back in the early 90's. Most of the screws on the passenger side had been replaced at some point with slotted hex-head screws. That 5/16 socket on a nut driver worked best since the slots on the screws had gone screwy.

All new stainless screws now. Just short of 100 of them. They are a bit larger in diameter to compensate for any size increase in the original holes caused by rusting. All the new screws snugged up good and tight.

I used a siliconized acrylic caulk to seal the aluminum trim to the fiberglass top and it is labeled to adhere to both. It came in a few choices of colors. Brown suited the color of the van. I was going to use Lexel but one of the things I noticed on the tube was that it was not paintable. White or clear were the color choices. And clean-up had to be done with mineral spirits. The siliconized acrylic is paintable and cleans up with water until it has cured. The tube said it has a 40 year durability. We'll see about that.

Silicone products, and a lot of other things, are hard to get off your hands once it dries.

A little trick I learned way back there was to use WD-40 on the belligerent stuff once it sets up on your hands. Spray your hands good. Work it a little. Wipe it off with a cloth. No need to carry go-jo on the road. Not when there's a can of WD in the tool box.

I think I'm going to fill the little rain gutter with the same siliconized acrylic. I do not want to take a chance on water backing up and seeping in from the bottom side. Sealed from the top. Sealed from the bottom. There will simply be no way for the top to leak.