14 Nov 2020
Aarrrrrgggghhhhhh!
There was a little sprinkling last night I got 1/8" of rain in my gauge. So I checked my new to me Trop top to see that my leak repair had worked. Well, it had on the drivers side but the passenger side was wet when I put my fingers inside on the drip rail.
Later in the afternoon I checked it out and upon investigating I found a poor rivet job at the right front corner right at the seam.
Check it out and then subscribe to my blog! Wink, wink.
The ends of the rivets didn't catch the skin!
I used a dentists teeth cleaning probe to check the gap, the first pic is to let you see the scale and the rest to show how far it would go in, without force I might add.
So I drilled out the rivets to 3/16" since that is the size of the pop rivets I have then used the probe to scrape out what I could from under the skin. Next out came my old stash of duct seal from Scotty and I rolled a small length of it, about 1-1/4"l x 3/16"w, and starting at the rear I jammed it under the skin with a flat screwdriver. Once that was all in I rolled up another piece and pressed that into the next section, I did this 3 times, hopefully sealing the gap.
After I had most of the duck seal pushed in I got the idea to heat it up so it would go in easier. I used an electric heat gun and heated it from the underside so I wouldn't peel the paint. Vise-grips makes a "C" style clamp and I used one of these to hold the skin down to the drip rail while I placed the 2 pop rivets. This action also squeezed out excess duck seal.
Then a real C clamp was used to flatten out the pop rivets best I could and cleaned up the excess seal.
Now it's going to rain again this week so I'll find out how I did.................
17 Nov, 2020
Well it rained today and sure enough the roof leaked right where I affected my repair. Following is a link to my youtube video of my detecting the source of the leak.
https://youtu.be/o9FSUKcKm5A
I used my air hose to blow gently under the skin to see water and bubbles in the drip rail. Then I heated up some of my duckseal to make it more malleable and cram it into the gap and make a seal. The good news is that where I had just put this did not leak. There is/was a good 2 more inches in the front and some sporadic leaking behind the seam.
It was difficult to get the seal to stick since all was wet so I crammed what I could in and called it quits until it dries out in a few days.
Here is what it looks like for now;
24 Nov 2020
Well it dried out more and then I used a hair dryer to be sure. Then I took out one of the solid rivets and replaced it since I didn't like how it looked.
The air hose was used to check for water and I didn't see any. So I made an executive decision and I used shoo goo on the seam of skin/rain gutter. I put it on thinly and along the edge of the leak and past it by a couple of inches.
Next I got down on my knees and said a prayer that this time the FRELLING THING doesn't leak!
It will take a bit for me to be confident it is not wet on the inside and there is no rain in the forecast, soooooo............................................I wait.
