74 Trillum 13' Leak

[Barry Konkin]

Raya, I agree 100% with you, and I'm glad that to have actually met my match as far as doing things right, and then some. My understanding is the original seam itself was done by just layering some sort of thickened fiberglass paste over the gap and metal clips. But a lot of people would have just gooped it up with silicone, so I think this here is all good, whether you use cloth or paste or epoxy as long as you don't make a mess that you can't clean up.

Daniel / Raya:

I too like to do things right. When I pulled off the belly band, it was full of black silicone - my wife asked why i was scraping it out because we were covering it up again - my reply was "I'll know its there...I need to take it out..."

I bought the rivet gun last night, and aluminum rivets 1/8" daimeter and 1/4" long - the 1/2 inch sample rivets it had were way too long - they tick out about 1/4" into the trailer

So Friday is the big day for riveting and fibregalss, for at least one portion of the trailer, with the rest next week.

I'll post some photos of the end result.

Barry

[Daniel V.]

I bought the rivet gun last night, and aluminum rivets 1/8" daimeter and 1/4" long - the 1/2 inch sample rivets it had were way too long - they tick out about 1/4" into the trailer

You may or may not need this, but you can also get matching rivet washers for the rivets to hold into on the inside. It allows you to reuse the same holes without necessarily getting bigger rivets, but it does mean you need them to be a tad longer. The extra length just gets scrunched out when you pop the rivet, and shouldn't be visible anyway if you don't glue the ensolite over that depressed area and just "bridge it" as Raya said.

[Don N]

I think the sealed rivets you were talking about are used on buses when they repair them. The centre holes gets sealed up when it is popped.

[Raya]

I think I found that they are called "closed end self-sealing" rivets. One would probably have to get them from a specialty place, but with mail order that's not so bad.

Sounds preferable to sealing the hole or capping (to me anyway).

R.