My Wounded Winnebago

My old 1986 Winnebago had a bit of a mishap back in November of last year. It was my last campout of the 2012 season. As I was leaving Colfax for the ocean, I stopped at the post office to get my mail, parking along the curb. What I didnt notice was a low hanging tree limb that bashed the right top corner of my baby just as I was pulling out. It broke my heart and was a huge cause for concern because there was a big storm coming in the following day. When i arrived at Wrights Beach (trip photos here) I immediately covered the gash with duct tape.

Turns out the patch worked and other than some tiny drips from the window, which were easily kept under control with a bowl and a towel, I weathered the storm and drove home in the rain without any water damage.

When I got home I went to Home Depot and bought a huge blue tarp to cover it thru the winter. Which worked out quite well. But now that the weather has warmed up and I am planning a trip back to Wrights Beach May 1st, I decided to tackle the fix up project.

One of the key pieces to the repair was finding the curved trim/molding metal piece that went around the corner and was totally messed up. I sent out emails to various RV salvage yards around the country and was lucky to get a response from Arizona RV Salvage in Phoenix. They had a whole bunch of these pieces with a cost of only $75 …. plus $120 shipping, gulp. Anyway.. I was thrilled to have found the part.

Since this is an old RV not worth a lot of bucks, I couldnt see spending a fortune to get it back to the original state but instead just really wanted to secure the shell so it was weatherproof and looked decent enough. I talked to a Paramount RV in Reno and they suggested all I would need is to use ProFlex caulk on the two big tears in the fiberglass combined with putting on the new trim piece. This was great news. However… when I removed the duct tape I saw what kind of mess had been covered up all this time. Totally shattered fiberglass in the corner.

When I took out the shattered pieces of plastic I found I had a big hole fill. Foam insulation worked well for that. Finally I made the decision to cut out the really bad area, replace it with a piece of aluminum, screw it in place, and caulk the torn areas.