Well, I guess I should do this blog on my way home from work in the car. My normal routine is to come home from work, let Akela out and play with him for 15 or 20 minutes. Then make dinner and feed him and check on the email. Then I eat dinner and read through some of the YouTube comments and watch some YouTube videos, and then I’m ready for a nap. So as a result a lot of these blogs don’t get done when they should get done. So now you know I’m pushing myself to get this done at a time when I really should be getting in bed.

But I really did want to do some explanation of the work I’ve done on the Aliner. My last 4 or 5 videos have been all about Aliner work mostly as a result of a water leak from somewhere. Anybody who knows anything about the Aliner will tell you that it’s best stored with the roof  and sidewall walls up, so that any weather just rolls right off it. Unfortunately I was stuck in a apartment complex for 3 months in the worst part of the fall to winter for weather. During which  a lot of leaves and rain sat on the top of the closed up Aliner. I never really considered it since life at the time was mostly chaos, but a tarp might’ve helped a bit to have it covered. There have been numerous forum discussions about covering Aliners with a tarp separated by pool noodles and various other protective foam to keep the tarp from scratching the bubble windows. My bubble windows are pretty fogged up anyways from improper cleaning and minimum care. I may be able to restore them if I want to with some Maguiars mirror glaze plastic polish, but I’m not sure I care so much for the bubble windows to begin with. When it rains they are like big  bass drums right over the bed.

But anyways I did find some areas of my inner roof that had delaminated from the backer board of plywood. When I poked the wrinkled delaminated portion of the roof water literally ran out. You can see this clearly in the video. (Roof Leak on My Aliner, Popup Camper) So since it had already delaminated and it was soaked with water the only smart thing to do was to remove all the material that was holding in the water and let it dry. Which is what I did, and left it airing out as an ugly portion of the trailer. I’m going to leave it that way for most of the summer season just to be able to show off to people what I think I have finally realized. It appears that the water came in around the edge and just followed the aluminum edge molding. And then it just pooled at the bottom of the roof. The wood of course wicked up the moisture which destroyed the adhesive and caused the delamination. I did a thorough examination of my caulking around all the fixtures and appliances and it really didn’t look very bad. Some sections had shrunk them away from their edges but I find that hard to believe that it would allow quite so much water in to the inner part of the roof. But I suppose if water had pooled on the roof for any period of time it might’ve dripped a gallon or more into the roof.

So it’s a pretty simple job to re-caulk. The basic steps are to clean the area extremely well. I used acetone and a rough cloth. To remove the old caulk, I used a plastic scraper or very carefully used a single edged razor blade scraper at very low angle. In fact for quite a bit of it I just laid the razor blade down on the roof and tslid it along the roof and let it shave the old caulk off. It takes a long time to prep all the areas you’re going to caulk! You can’t take any shortcuts or ignore any imperfections or dirt. Because those will be the first places that will fail and allow new leakage. So I got pretty tired of doing the work and when it got to the caulking portion I really rushed through. So my caulking is not as smooth and pretty as I normally would do, but I feel it’s an adequate seal, so I’m not going to redo it. And again, I will reiterate , to do a nice caulking job requires the area be masked with tape so that you don’t get caulk everywhere because once you get it on it never comes off satisfactorily.  And the tape really gives it a very nice line and edge to any caulk application.

I’m really quite at a loss as to why the corners of the roof have taken on this bend which is causing the side aluminum molding to de-form inward the way it does. I mean I’m pretty sure it has to do with spring pressure on the roof and possibly due to the new Springs. I’m pretty positive that it wasn’t there before I put in the new Springs. But then again it may be a water softening of the roof issue also. In either case I did stiffen the roof quite a bit adding those angle irons of aluminum. (Aframe Camper Popup Trailer Roof Repair).  I probably could have used bigger angle irons and alternated the rivets higher and lower so the angle iron had more effect on the aluminum side drops. But I’m happy with the effect that it currently has and maybe with some activity with the trailer it’ll stiffen up anyways. The caulking job I did on that little modification/repair is really bad. On some boring day when I’m at camp and we’ve hiked 10 miles, I may take some sandpaper and sand down the caulk so it’s a little nicer looking and smooth.

The other thing we did with the Aliner while we are waiting to get it outside as we change the weatherstripping that runs along the back roof for the front roof to lay on and seal out any weather from getting inside. (Aliner Weather Strip Replacement).  The great thing about doing videos about working on your Aliner is I know exactly when I changed that the last time, which was just 2 years ago. So I’m really surprised it only lasted that amount of time for that weatherstripping. This time I’m going to soak it in some Armor-all rubber preservative. I really think Armor-all is the best product made to protect rubber against UV rays and ozone degradation. There is another product out on the market that I guess a lot of the Jeep clubs and groups really like for preserving the rubber fenders and parts on the Jeep, but my understanding it’s the exact same product is Armor-all only half the strength. I think it’s called Protective 303 or 808 or something like that. If you browse through some of the classic car forums and other Internet information sources you’ll see a lot of discussion on it.

Well I’m sitting here trying to push through this when every 2nd sentence is accompanied with a yawn and every 3rd sentence I get this slobbery ball thrown in my lap. So I guess I will finish up here, take Akela out for some ball play, and then go to bed.  I hope this is somewhat helpful. With the new chapter in the new book I’m going to start doing a little better on these and leaving more information about things that aren’t in the video so don’t miss the upcoming blogs.  Subscribe and you’ll get notifications. Thanks for stopping by, I hope to see on the road

Rick & Akela (Caesar 2.0)