During my trip to the Canadian Rockies, I encountered a lot of rain. And I encountered a leak in the trailer roof!
A previous owner installed a crank up TV antenna on the roof of the Lo-Liner a long time ago. When I got the trailer, the antenna was long gone and all that remained was the mechanism base on the roof, and the crank on the ceiling above the driver’s side dinette bench.
The mechanism had leaked at some point, so that owner had sealed(?) the whole works with gobs of roofing compound (tar). Just as it does on the roof of a house, the tar dried out, and cracked, leading to a leak right over the place where I wanted to sit. I decided that, whatever the fate of the trailer, I had to fix the leak in a permanent and professional manner.
I chiseled and scraped away most of the roofing tar to expose the mounting base and the screws holding it to the roof. Most of the screws were so rusted that I was concerned about removing them. It turned out that the ones that were too rusted to remove just pulled out of the roof. Removing the mechanism left two large holes and 12 small screw holes surrounded by a lot of roofing tar.
I decided that properly repairing the roof meant a new piece of aluminum cut to size and screwed in place with stainless screws, with butyl putty tape between aluminum patch and roof to seal it all.
But, before I could make the patch, I had to remove as much of the roofing tar as possible. I used a flame spreader on my propane torch to soften the tar so it could be scraped off. Now I have a flat, relatively clean surface to work with.
I made the patch from some 0.025 aluminum, pre-drilled the screw holes, and put butyl putty tape over the holes, so the screws will have to go through the tape. I predrilled the holes in the trailer roof with a 3/16 pilot hole and screwed the patch in place with some #10×5/8″ stainless steel sheet metal screws.
I screwed the patch to the trailer roof with the sheet metal screws and used Tempro 635 polyurethane caulk to seal the edges of the patch.
While I was up there with the caulking gun, I recaulked a large crack in the front left corner where the edge of both side panels was exposed.
I hope all this has solved the leakage problem ;-)