New to the site

[CreekWalker]

Hello~  I'm happy to have found you guys! I've been doing this kind of thing on and off for years mostly short term living and/or long term camping and road trips, but have recently jumped in full time.

Before moving out of my old place, I had to give up an 88 dodge that puked and burned too much oil. I  grew to love how reliable that thing was and wanted another one with the 318 v8 rather than the v6, but found out quickly that it is not as easy as it once was to find decent old vans cheap. Long story short, time ran thin and I was pressured by other commitments to jump on a van that in other times I would have passed on. It is a 94 dodge 250 conversion van (no high top). It is in good shape mechanically and has a straight, decent body and paint job.

I had to move in quickly, so temporarily set up the same platform bed (split in the middle to fold into the walls) I had in my old rig, but had planned to rip out the interior this summer and start fresh. Mold/mildew in the carpet (live in the PNW) caused me to jump start the project. I have had to do all work while boondocking and so far it has worked out surprisingly well. I'm working with a 100 watt solar set up and using ryobi tools and have so far ripped out all old interior except door panels and cockpit, built insulated plywood floor, cut off and old lugggage rack (was leaking at antenna) and patched holes, installed fan and insulted and paneled the ceiling. All is/was going great until last week when I noticed that there is rust developing on the bottom edge of the big side windows (conversion windows with small sliders). I knew already that I was going to have to do some leak prevention, but now i see that I should pull the windows and stop the rust before it gets bad, but get queasy thinking about attempting to pull and reseal all those big windows..

Does anybody here have any experience with this?

Should I use butyl tape to reseal then caulk the edges?

If there is a better place to post this question, let me know and I will repost.

Thanks!

 

[Almost There]

Hi and welcome!

The 2002 GMC Savana I bought has side slider windows in the fiberglass hightop, only one of which leaked.

Truthfully, I chickened out and had an RV dealership do the re and re for me and I'm ever so glad I did. There's some things in this world that I like leaving to the pro's and this was one of them. They only charged me $50. to do the job including material and I was in and out in less than an hour.

I got to watch the whole process because it was a smaller parts and repair dealership and they did it in the driveway for me because the big bays were tied up with large RVs!

First off, it takes two people to remove the window - the inner window frame is screwed into the outer frame so someone needs to be inside unscrewing it and someone else outside to hold on to it when the last screw comes out. Mine was solidly seated and so it had to be pushed out rather firmly.

It was cleaned up around the inner edge of the outer frame then butyl tape run around the outer window frame and reinstalled the same way - two person job. Then the tech trimmed the excess butyl tape on the outside and applied a silicone sealer as well.

Your windows may come apart a different way but in any case it's a two person job.

If you want to tackle it yourself, find a friend with a garage. You're in the PNW and getting a couple of days together with no rain so you can repair the rust while the windows are out might prove to be the biggest challenge of them all...