Today was a good day working on Willy but poor Pamela spent almost all of it with the same ole problem - trying to get off all the silicone someone slathered all over Willy. She has tried the "eraser" wheel that can take off a pinstripe, chemicals, razor blades, etc., etc., etc. A wire brush wheel on a drill will take it off, and everything else down to the bare metal. Guess we going to have bare spots. We have to get the silicone off. Pamela did remove the pinstripe that ran all the way around Willy.
I put on the new stink-pipe covers. Even though one of them looked okay, I decided to go ahead and replace both since they only cost about $10. I'm glad I did. When I got down to the flange I found that someone had cracked the flange and didn't bother to replace it. They just put - guess what - silicone over it. What a mess. I filled all of the old screw holes with Bondo. That stuff is ready to sand in 20 minutes. I worked on preparing some of the screw holes on the Willy's sides and then went back, sanded and mounted the new fixtures.
I repaired 27 more screw holes today! Some of them were quite large - 9/16th lag bolt holes. Eight of the holes were large holes used to hold the top part of the awning mechanism. One place the dipstick put a screw right through the awning track. The only thing I could do was to gently hold the track as far away from the trailer body as possible without breaking its seal, and apply Kitty Hair underneath. Kitty Hair is a great product. It gets its name because the filler is full of long strands of fiberglass. It looks like it would be horrible to work with, but it is actually easier than Bondo. So far there have been 7 places with holes large enough to need Kitty Hair.
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| Dinette window out |
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| Left side windows |
Last but not least Pamela and I removed all of the windows except the big front one. I'm just putting that one off because I don't have anywhere to store it at the moment. It is a bit scary because you're afraid of what you might find behind the frame. We were good. There was one frame that had had a leak at some time in the past but the wood was still good. The butyl tape was still doing its job on the windows, but we're glad that we removed them. Painting will be a lot easier without the windows and it would not be nice to have a freshly painted trailer and have to remove a window because it starts leaking.
There is one more product I have to tell you about. It is called Goo Gone. It didn't remove the silicone even though it claims it will, but it did a great deal on all of the other adhesives and residues. I used it to clean the metal of the roof before I repaired the holes and mounted the new stink-pipe vents. You can see how nice and clean the metal is. We used it around all of the windows. Here's a before and after picture. Notice how much cleaner the white is and how shiny and clean the frame is. New screws and it will look brand new.
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| Before Goo Gone |
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| After Goo Gone |
My next goal is to remove the old AC gasket, put the under-seal on the new flanges and give the entire roof a new coat of sealer. Since Willy is getting a new coat of paint, we decided that it was time to replace all of the exterior fixtures - the water drain valve, interior tank fill and electrical compartment door. I can't take the drain valve off until the last minute because I'll lose all of the anti-freeze in the tank, but I can live with that. It only costs $3/gal.
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