Roof seperation from side wall fix?

SCVJeff said:

When it's over I think we'd all appreciate the longhand version of the fix and pix to boot.

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OK, the repair was completed a few weeks ago and I was not able to get pics because we ended up leaving the coach there for the repair and picked up the following week, sorry. I will try to give a verbal as explained to me prior to and after repair (recommend referencing diagram in my op to get a visual). They removed the sealant where the fiberglass roof tucks into the awning rail and cut the fiberglass on the curve at the end cap (since the roof goes on prior to the end cap this is the only way to accomplish w/o removing the end cap). This allowed them to pull up enough of the fiberglass roof to expose the area in which the bolts were so the new ones could be installed. Install new bolts, tuck fiberglass back into awning rail, reseal that channel and the cut/seam at end cap. You can't even tell anything has been done, good as new!

Now upon our thorough spring roof cleaning/inspection this past weekend we have found that a small section on the passenger side is pulling away under the awning and a seperate problem from that, we also have a 4 foot surface crack (back to front) in the fiberglass on the curve toward the rear. Good golly, here we go with the tape, we are in the habit of taping our roof this year, great invention, that duct tape. ;D Not to worry, will give pics and more detail when we catch our breath  .

Dar - have you talked to the dealer about this?

John Canfield said:

Dar - have you talked to the dealer about this?

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Not yet. Probably tomorrow. We did ask them to inspect passenger side when they did drivers side but apparently they forgot and we forgot to verify. Double fail! This too shall pass, or in this case, be fixed.

My 2005 Vectra has developed the same problem that Dar had.  The awning rail on the drivers side is in two parts.  The rear half is coming away from the side of the motorhome at both the forward and rear ends.  In the attached pictures you can see that I was able to insert a pen between the rail and the side wall at both ends of the rail.

The estimate to repair it using the recipe described by Dar is about 6 hours labor.  I talked with Winnebago about this and they offered to pay half the labor as a good will gesture.  I have an appointment to have this repaired locally on Oct 4th--I'll let you know how things turn out.

Nice pen Chris! 

That's a nice gesture from Winnie considering your Vectra is six years old.  On my fall to-do list is to check my roof-sidewall joint.

Chris,

Sorry to hear that it happened to your coach as well but grateful to hear Winnie came through again! If you don't mind me suggesting to speak with your dealer about the sealant they plan on using for the roof-rail joint. I believe I mentioned it in a different thread that our dealership just used clear silicone that ended up resting in the rail by the time we got home. I am attaching a picture of what Winnie is using at this time (or at least the time of the rally) for that joint in case anyone is interested.

Good luck and let us know how it goes! Dar

Last year I noticed a section on my awning rail that needed to be recaulked on my Winnebago Outlook 31 C. It was only about a 4 foot long area. I used ProFlex RV sealant/caulk, but I noticed today that the ProFlex has already separated from the roof and rail! By the way I did clean out the old caulk first.
Guess I'll be going to my local Winne dealer and see what they recommend now or look around for the Stone-Mason caulk as mentioned in the above post.

Scott

My October 4th repair date got moved to October 26th due to delays in getting the replacement screws from Winnebago and scheduling issues, but everything went very well.  It turned out that after removing the caulking along the roof/rear cap where the roof curves over the side of the RV they were able to lift the fiberglass roof up sufficiently without having to cut anything (see first picture below).  It turned out about 3/4 of the screws were broken off--the 2nd picture below shows what they all looked like.  The 3rd picture shows the front of the rail with the roof lifted up for access.

According to Henry, the manufacturer, HE212 CRYSTAL CLEAR ALL PURPOSE PATCH ELASTOMERIC SEALANT is the US equivalent of their Canadian Stone Mason product.  It's available at Home Depot for about $8.50 a tube.  It took a little more than one tube to reseal the entire driver's side of the Vectra.

@cbeierl - In looking at the condition of the screws (little visible corrosion), my impression would be this was a factory error and the screws were over torqued breaking them at the time of assembly.  This could feasibly go unnoticed for years before the seam would give enough to be exposed.

The problem is embrittlement of the fasteners and not over torqueing of the screws.  Winnie received a bad batch of screws from a supplier at that time.

Winnebago is fully aware of the problem with the fiberglass coming out of the J rail. They say that the one piece fiberglass roof edge is not part of the roof so even if you are within the 10 year warranty they will not cover it. There is no sealant on the edge from the factory on my 99 cheiftain. My fiberglass popped out of the J rail and they said it is due to the lack of inspecting and maintaining the sealant. Sealant is not a bonding agent, it is not an adhesive. I talked with Rod in customer relations at Winnebago, and he said the real problem is the adhesive only holds up about 10 years then fails, he said since my 99 made it over 12 years I should feel lucky. He admitted this is a problem that they are fully aware of but feel they still have the best product and still put the roofs together this way on the 2012 models too. With load securing laws the way they are, if a chunk of this fiberglass were to come off at 55mph and scare someone enough behind you it could cause injury or even possibly death while trying to dodge it. That concernse me and should really concern Winnebago. After talking to them they dont seem concerned with this. After I told them that there is no sealant on either side of my fiberglass roof where it tucks into the J rail they even went as far as to tell me, that someone went to alot of trouble, time and expense to remove all of it. WTF, really. They seem to have spent a bit of time theirselves training their reps on how to avert the blaim back onto the coach owners for this happening. Sad to see such a large company skirt around such a serious problem.

amzbrady said:

..There is no sealant on the edge from the factory on my 99 cheiftain...

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Welcome aboard!

That joint should be inspected every six months.

amzbrady said:

Winnebago is fully aware of the problem with the fiberglass coming out of the J rail.

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Yes Winnie is aware that if you "neglect to maintain that seem" then the roof will come out of the channel but that is actually a separate issue from the topic I started here. Unfortunately it is one of those maintenance items that you need to read in your manual or find out from some place like this that it needs to be done. It is really no different than any other caulking point on your coach, it needs to be inspected and replaced when necessary.

amzbrady said:

There is no sealant on the edge from the factory on my 99 cheiftain

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Your coach is 13 years old so after that long it could be completely disintegrated. We redid our joints at 6 years on our Adventurer and they actually probably could have been redone at 5.

Sorry that you found out the hard way but now you can say "now I know" and you can add it to your semiannual (or monthly) roof inspection. 

When I talked with Rod he said that all the sealants should be inspected every 6 months. This is not something that would be inspected due to there not being any sealant installed at the factory. I asked Winnebago to suggest an authorized repair facility for Winnebago and had a rep out today to look at it. He inspected both sides and determined there was NOT EVER any sealant installed from the factory. He said no matter how good you are you could not remove all the sealant from the J Rail even after pulling the fiberglass out. The rep will now be contacting Winnebago for me. He mentioned the coach may be a friday night special. I have no idea how he would know what day it was made, but this could be the start of a serious problem for coaches around this age. I have other items I would rather spend the couple thousand dollars on to have maintained.

Thanks for the update.  Have you owned this coach since new, or did you recently purchase it?

had that happen to me in a winter rain storm in baker, calif.  had to go into the shop over new years weekend.  they had to re glue the top fiberglass skin to the roof.  $1000 bill to insurance; i paid deductible.  headliner stains and all that goes with a roof leak in the rain. 

Welcome!

So, if this was "screw embrittlement", did they only replace the screws that broke or ALL of them.  This seems like a disaster waiting to happen and really makes me cross Winnebago off the list of coaches I'll ever own.

topdownman said:

So, if this was "screw embrittlement", did they only replace the screws that broke or ALL of them.  This seems like a disaster waiting to happen and really makes me cross Winnebago off the list of coaches I'll ever own.

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From what I have heard they have been replacing all of them (at least at the back half) which it only seems to be the ones at the rear half that have been effected. My understanding is that it was only some coaches effected for two years of production which didn't show up until some time later. (You can't fix what you don't know is broken).

I have to admit I was a little disconcerned at first when it initially happened to our Adventurer but once I contacted Winnebago and they explained the situation and took care of it for us my confidence in them was amplified which is why we are on our 2nd Winnie. IMO you can easily run into issues with any manufacturer but it is how they follow through that counts. If you are not confident out the gate with a manufacturer then you will be looking for and/or expecting problems so by all means cross them off if you have doubts.

By the way, the embrittled screws and the sealant discussed above are two seperate things. The sealant is a maintenance item that is listed in the manual and sealant call out sheets, the embrittled screws are an ooops.

Dar said:

...the embrittled screws are an ooops.

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Yup - an oops from the fastener supplier!