My Blog of Caravan Repairs.......Scroll down to read

I will make a continuous post by just adding new stuff to the bottom of this page, so just scroll down to read the newest stuff.

Our New Caravan Purchase.......

"Elsie" the Elddis.

This is our caravan when we bought her from a family friend.  It hadn't been moved for many years. We decided to call her "Elsie".  She is such a cute small thing and only weighs 730kgs so almost every car can tow it, even my little car.  She was a mess when we went to go and buy her.  Luckily the owner was selling her and everything to go with the caravan that's needed; eg. awning, water and waste carriers, even cutlery and saucepans.  Also a caravan cover, which obviously hasn't been put on the caravan for many years....... What a real shame.

 

 

We washed and cleaned it.  It cleaned up very well considering the state it was in.  We used a high pressure hose which you're not supposed to do on caravans, but the green algae wouldn't even come off with a sponge and soap, so a high pressure hose was the only way we could clean it.

The damp was because of this crack in the front panel.

Here is the crack closer up.  As you can see it's pretty big. Almost half a centimetre across. 

 

The nightmare begins - taking the front window frame apart.......

I started taking the front window apart. Well luckily the rotten front wood was less worse than what I thought.  It was literally only the front frame around the windows and both the shelves above and below the window. 

 

You can see the rotten area between the right and middle window.

These are the two metal rails above the front windows that need to be taken off in order to remove the wooden frame from the inside.  The upper one in the picture joins the aluminium roof to the front ABS plastic panel.  The lower one holds the hinge for the three front windows. Both have sets of screws that screw into the front window frame. 

The side on the right is OK but the wood still needs replacing.

 

The left side isn't too bad either.  However I will still replace the wood.

Now my garage looks like a crime scene from an arson!

The cracks in the ABS front panel.......

 

After taking all the wood away from behind the front "ABS plastic front panel", the crack can clearly be seen.

Behind the large crack.

 I found another crack but its smaller.

These are the front struts between the front windows.  They are made form thin aluminium and covered in matt black vinyl.

 

This is the top of them.

 This is the bottom of them. 

 

Making the "ABS plastic glue".......

 

My next job will be to repair these cracks and also reinforce the front window frame area of the front panel using the "ABS Acetone" method to make "ABS Plastic Glue". 

I made the ABS glue today in order to fix the crack in the caravan ABS plastic front panel.  I made it with some small bits of a cut off from a small waste pipe and put it in a glass jar and covered it in acetone. I bought the acetone from a woman's nail and hair shop.  You need the clear acetone, not the coloured ones.

 

I have left cut up pieces of ABS household bathroom sink waste pipe and left it in a glass jar soaking in acetone ready to fix this.  (The plastic turns liquid and thick making a glue).

As you can see on this 40mm waste pipe it says ABS clearly written, "Pipe Building Products Ltd. 40mm ABS. 

 

This is the fantastic stuff that makes the ABS plastic into your own glue!

 

 

This is after leaving the cut up white ABS plastic pipe soaking in acetone for 24 hours

  

 

I also bought a few bits of ABS plastic from some plastic manufacturers.  The small piece here is pure white.  The A4 sheet is an off-white colour which I am very pleased to say almost matches the colour of the front panel of my caravan.  Well it matches better then the white.  It would be almost impossible to get a correct match.  However, I would of course prefer the crack to be repaired rather than worry about the plastic colour being matched.

 

I will leave some cut up bits of this off-white ABS plastic in a glass jar overnight too in order to fill the crack from the outside of the van so there is a good colour match.  This will be of course after I have reinforced the back with part of the smaller white piece for strength.  

  

I have finally finished fixing all the front panel repairs of all the cracks.  I found a few more than the two I have pictures of.  I also opted to reinforce the entire whole of the surround of the windows of the front panel as I really don't want to have to take it all apart again should another crack appear in the future.  I thought that more time and effort spent doing it now will save me time later in that I took the time now to reinforce it all, hoping that cracks won't appear ever again because of this.  I'm hoping all this effort will pay off preventing it getting any further future cracks.

Using the ABS waste pipe was better than buying bits of A4 ABS plastic as I couldn't find a local company to buy them from and didn't know how much I needed.   Above is a picture of all the repairs to the cracks and also the extra reinforcement.  I decided to do the entire window surround becaus otherwise some areas of it would be different thickness and I imagined that this would cause me problems at a later date. 

 

Here is a close up of the inside where the huge crack was.  It's behind that left square.

 

It looks a bit of a mess of a repair but there is no need for it to look pretty.  It's all there to totally fix and reinforce the window frame part of the front panel.

 

I used squares and rectangles of 3mm ABS plastic.  I made these from the same white ABS waste pipe that I made the glue from.  I cut lengths of the pipe and then cut it once to open the pipe, and then melted it open and flat using a heat gun.  I made it progressively flatter by continually using the heat gun gently and flattening it on the concrete floor of my garage with a large chunk of wood.  A long process, however it was totally worth it as a 3 metre length of this pipe was £5, and a sheet of ABS was very expensive and I could only find it from suppliers in a sheet of 8ftX4ft which was far too much.  Also, any local firm wouldn't sell me a smaller sheet or indeed sell me any off cuts.  Also a number of companies said they charge a minimum of £50 for any offcuts, so I never bothered.

I smeared my home made "ABS acetone glue" all over these little ABS repair/reinforcement panels and stuck it to the inside of the front panel.  Then when that had dried,  I smeared the same ABS glue all over the joints for extra reinforcement.  The front panel is also 3mm, so now it's obviously thicker and as a result more firm and robust.  

One piece of advice with this is that you must use small repair panels.  I used one that was about 30cm wide and 10cm high, and it took a short while to smear the repair panel with the ABS glue.   As a result, when I pushed it onto the back of the front panel, the part I first started smearing the glue onto wouldn't stick to the font panel as it had dried off a bit too much.  However I quickly recovered it by going outside the caravan and pouring neat Acetone over the glue on the repair panel which seemed to reactivate or melt the glue again and it stuck well.  I made all the other repair panels smaller after this minor mishap.  

 

 

Here is the inside of the opposite side where the smaller crack was.

 

 

Here is the repaired front panel large crack from the outside.  I have sanded the area flat with a hand held sanding machine, but there were a few tiny areas not perfectly filled with the ABS Glue, so I put a bit more on to fill these holes.  I will need to sand it again slightly to make it totally smooth.

 

 

Here is the crack closer up in the centre of the picture.

 

As you can just about see in the picture above I drilled a set of holes each side of the crack, about half and inch and one inch away.  I did this in order to extra reinforce the repair.  I also countersunk these holes on both sides of the hole and I did this because I wanted it to be a bit like a plastic rivet so it's really strong.  Basically so the plastic couldn't come out of the hole as the countersinking means the plastic on the outside is larger than the hole so it can't slip out.   I will need to sand the front panel again in the above picture in order for it to be totally smooth. I am not worried about it being scratched from the sander because I intend to cover it all in matt black vinyl anyway.  So for this to cover and stick properly, the panel needs to be smooth and flat.  Covering the whole area is for a couple of reasons; One, to cover the mess of the repairs; Two, to have the total area that is under the edge of the windows to be black, as these areas can look unsightly with dirt under the edge of them.

 

 

Making the new top and bottom shelves.......

 

Here is the new top shelf constructed.  I need to cover the top and bottom of it in Fablon and also cut out two large round holes at each end where a plastic insert goes into it that holds a screw to screw it to the side of the caravan.  The new shelf obviously is the one left. There was a 30 degree angle on one edge of this shelf which I assume matches the front angle of the caravan.  This was quite difficult to get right.

 

Here is the new bottom shelf constructed.  All I need to do is glue the beading fancy moulded edge to the the new shelf edge and then cover it all in Fablon.  Again on this, there was a 30 degree angle on one edge of this shelf. 

 

Damp front corner.......

I removed a part of the wallpaper to find damp from above and below and some parts of the side window frame rotten.                                                  

 

I tried to source the wallpaper or the wallboard but couldn't find it anywhere as this caravan was from 1994  which is over 20 years old already. 

 

Therefore I had a genius way of getting some. Steal some from another part of the caravan.

 

Behind the seats were two boards keeping the back cushions off the actual caravan wall. These were the same wallboard. 

 

Here is the finished board behind the seats after I stole the board to use for wall board to use in that front corner of the caravan. I deconstructed these as they had a small wooden frame on.  I bought some plywood the same thickness and made some new boards for behind the seats and covered them in fablon in oak wood colour.                                                  

Here you can see the little wooden fram behind the board that I had to put back after stealing it to use as the wall board.

I  took off the awning rail on that side and as expected it just fell off as the mastic/sealant had had its day, hence the side being rotten inside.

I needed to replace that piece of wallboard, however the wallboard for this caravan is now obsolete. Therefore I decided to replace the wallboard on that wall with one of the protruding panels that sits behind the back of the seating area.  I took the panels carefully apart; they had a small wooden frame on the back of them.  I cut this acquired piece of wallboard to size and glued it to the wall.  I then replaced the seat back panels with plywood, and glued it back to the original small frame and then covered it in Fablon wood-style.  You can see my replacements in the two pictures below.  I think I did a really good job of them, and was very pleased with myself.

 

Constructing and installing the new front window frame.......

 

Here is the new frame constructed in pieces ready to install.  I decided to make the frame more robust than was there before.  I also elected to give the joints only a half join into the top and bottom parts of the new window frame, so that these top and bottom parts of the frame were kept stronger as a result. The old frame had the joints all the way to the top of the wood.  In my opinion this would have weakened the structure. 

 

Now the frame is fully installed, and I did this by gluing and screwing it all together.

Tip - Always, always drill a smaller pilot hole in both parts of the wood in order to stop any of it cracking and splitting.  If you just screw without doing this, then the thin wood will crack and you may have to start again.   The new window sill/shelf is resting in place all covered in new Fablon.  The front wall is covered in new Fablon too.  I will install the shelf at a later date.  Other things need to be fixed up here first before permanently installing that.

 

You see all the corners of white plastic and also the bottom of the front left and right windows, well these need filling in with wood.  Originally it was a small baton of wood and a little bit of polystyrene. However I just did it with wood as it would be too much hassle for me to do that.  Also the corners of the windows originally had "plastic shaped corners", however again I decided to used wood.  I penciled the shape onto a scrap of wood from the frame and cut them using a ban-saw.  I have now fully done this but forgot to take a picture before I installed the window frame wallboard.

 

Left window pictured here. 

Centre window.

Right window.

  

I also countersunk vertical holes going upwards to screw the upper frame to the structural frame above the window frame.  You can just about see if you look carefully numerous holes doing this in the pictures of the window frame.  

See the gap behind the white front panel at the bottom of the Windows, well this will need to be filled in with more wood.  

Here is a box full of all the left over wood, plus the old window frame and the top shelf all chopped up into bits.  I will give this to dad for his log burning fire in the lounge back at home.

 

Cutting and installing the new front window wallboard.......

 

Here is the plywood wallboard we made for the front window.  We made it by cutting a large piece to the correct size and placing it inside the caravan.  Then from the outside I drew a line round the frame of the windows.  Then we cut these with a jigsaw very, very carefully.  We had to be extremely careful and diligent cutting this with the jigsaw as it was very flimsy once even one window is cut out, especially those very thin outside edges of the side windows.

 

 

I installed the front window wallboard with glue and then staple-gunned it to the frame. Once dry I will use a load of tack nails to make sure it stays in place.  The staples were very good, but I don't think its adequate enough as it was very difficult to get glue in behind the wallboard without it dripping everywhere.  I could have used no-nails in a gun form to squirt it in, but I wanted to use Evostik Exterior Adhesive as I had used on the frame.  This is really good wood glue and had never failed me in the past.

 

You can see round the bottom of the left and right window where the new wooden frame was "filled in" with wooden inserts before the new wallboard was fitted to the window frame.  This is so the new wallboard would fit perfectly.

 

I then covered the wallboard in Fablon wood-effect, you can see this below.  This was really easy to do, but had to be done in little pieces.  Before I installed the window wallboard, I fitted the two side window corner panels and trim.  Luckily this small piece of wallboard wasn't rotten, but had to be glued to firm up the wood in places.  I put a load of loft insulation behind them; originally there was polystyrene, but it seemed pointless as it never even fitted properly.

Next will be to fit both the upper and lower shelves.

Now for my total disappointment.  The repairs on some parts of the ABS plastic frame have bubbled up in a really weird way.  No idea why.                                                    

 

This is along the bottom of the front window  (photo taken looking down towards the ground).                                                  

This photo was taken in the same way as the one above but now looking left at the area that would be below the front middle window. 

And this is looking up towards the top of the front window area looking up towards the roof join.I can't believe after all that hard work repairing the plastic in the method used in this blog, that it has all failed.  I will NOT be defeated.   I drilled a hole in each bible all the way through just in case there were gasses of some kind trapped causing the bubbled and then used a heat gun and warmed the plastic bubbles to flatten them with a metal scraper that was big enough to hold the warmed plastic down until it cooled.  The following photos are after this was done and also sanding of these areas to make the plastic totally flat again. 

This is the front panel sanded down after melting the bubbles flat.  

             

This is the top of the front frame.  I'm so annoyed that this happened.  I filled it in with Soudal Fixall Hi-tack to smooth it over and will cover it up, detailed below how I did it.  As the plastic is totally ruined, I had to think of a way to fix this. I thought that an aluminium frame put over the plastic would be a really good idea.  However it would need to be very hard/thick aluminium to prevent the plastic frame from kicking up bubbles again pushing it out.  For £40 I bought a sheet that was 2mm thick so it was robust enough. First of all I had to make a template from plywood and then cut out the shape on the aluminium sheet. Here is the frame before I put it on the caravan.   

I put the front top rail on the caravan.  It joins the aluminium roof to the plastic front panel. You can see what I used to stick this on with later on (screwed on as well).I drilled holes and countersunk the holes in the aluminium in order to score this to the front frame. The aluminium frame was glued on with Soudal Fixall Hi tack from Screwfix and then screwed on and also held with grippers holding it tight on overnight until it was dry and fully stuck on properly. I then the following day carefully filled in the screw holed with the sealant and also put some sealant round the edges and smothed it off very carefully with a tool to achieve a perfectly level finish as you can see below. I did thismthenwhole what round the aluminium.

 

I then bought some of the sticky back plastic that companies "wrap" vans and cars with.  I bought the most expensive stuff that was rated to last 10 years. 

Then cut off the excess with a Stanley knife.

Here is the wrap stickyback plastic all stuck on completely.  

 

Above is the W4 non-setting mastic being put on the back of the clean window hinge rail. The window hinge rail was then put on and screwed in place. Below I put some Soudall in the gap and under the plastic of the front panel to help seal the gap to ensure the caravan never leaks again and to help keep the front panel structuly sound with the rest of the caravan. The W4 non-setting mastic on a roll will be used behind the awning rail but I wanted the place where the awning rail goes to be totally flat as before this there was a gap.

More damp.......Rear this time

I had to take the rear panel off as there was lots of damp here as well.  This was due to the rear lights and the rear handles letting water in behind them.

Left side where you can see the frame completely disappeared and you can see the holes in the exterior aluminium where the awning rail goes.

The same on the right side too the toilet is behind the wooden panel.  

As you can see the interior ply completely destroyed by damp. 

This is the exterior of the rear lower panel I took off. 

I made a frame and glued it in with Soudal Fixall Hi Tack.  I then used the same to stick on the ply.  

          

You can see the frame here before I glued on the last bit of ply.  The rear frame was glued in with Soudal Fixall Hi Tack.

Rear panel ready to go back on. Getting awning rails ready to go back on I managed to clean up the awning rails after removing them. The W4 mastic on a roll sealant was relatively easy to clean off. However it took forever to get it all off. The sealant that seems like it was Soudal Fixall Hi Tack (or other similar equivalent) that was also used in some places, well this was very difficult to get off. I persevered and got it off. I used white spirit to dissolve the W4 mastic on a roll when cleaning them up. However before adding the new W4 I used Methylated Spirit to clean off the oily residue left behind by the White Spirit. This also has to be done when cleaning the place on the caravan where the rail is going on. The rubber strip that goes on the top and bottom of the awning rail was all broken from the removal off the caravan and filthy with all types of sealant, so I bought a load more online. I had used a screwdriver to aid the figment of this in a few areas on the back of the awning rail, however mostly it just pushed in easy enough.

                      Previously to this I had put Soudall Fixall Hi Tack over the areas where the awning rail was going. Basically where the caravan aluminium roof is folded over the edge of the sides of the caravan. I did this as I wanted to be sure no water could ever get in. Originally there was the W4 mastic on a roll underneath these joints and over time this dries up and becomes defective. So this area has been out in the elements getting dirty while I was fixing the caravan up. It needs cleaning before I put the awning rails back on. I therefore cleaned up the area on the caravan in the same way above with White Spirit first and then afterwards Methylated Spirit.

       

      I then added the W4 mastic on a roll to the centre of the awning rail between the awning rail rubbers. The width I bought actually touched the inside edge of the rubbers so I was happy I bought the correct one. I then added Soudal Fixall High Tack to the back of the rubbers to ensure no water or dirt can get in behind. The old rubbers did not have this behind and as a result they were absolutely filthy and the water and dirt had dried it out and the awning rails almost fell off in my hand when I took out the last screw when I was removing them. Here is me getting the awning rail ready to go back on. 

        Now here is the awning rail fully fitted. All the Soudal squeezed out the edge and in some places so did the W4 mastic on a roll. I cleaned this all off, which took me forever, by scraping with a plastic scraper (it MUST be plastic scraper as the paint is very thin and also the aluminium is very thin). I then rubbed the residue off with kitchen towel from the aluminium roof and sides and also off the new awning rail rubbers. ( I've gone through loads of kitchen roll as this Soudal stuff is very sticky, also the same with latex gloves too; which are needed as you can instantly clean your hands by removing a stick set of latex gloves with a new pair). This was one of the only times when I needed an assistant to help me hold the awning rail away from the caravan as I put in one screw. The otherness had to be held away so that it can be correctly lined up with the old holes. This was an extremely tiring task for the holder and the person screwing. Thankfully I was using an electric screwdriver. I did however use a annual screw driver to turn the last few turns as electric ones tend to go nuts towards the end of screwing in, thus totally chewing up the screw head, and then you're buffered because you then can't remove it or tighten it. So be careful with an electric screwdriver.

 

   

        As you can see the awning rail comes in 2 parts, front and rear. I managed to get both the front left side and front right side ones installed fully today. I will do the rear ones another day. The caravan is literally one or two days away from being in a state where we can use it for the first time. Basically once the rear part of the awning rails are put on both sides then we can use it. Can't wait!

 

End of posting so far, I will add more to the end of this as and when I have completed the repairs.