1st Time Camper Owner with work to do

[knighth001]

Hey everyone,

My name is Sean and I just bought an '84 Uhaul CT 13 for our little family. I'm excited about being able to take it out this fall. I'll probably have lots of questions but looks like a lot of you know the answers.

After the buckets of rain today leaky windows and weather stripping for the door look to be my biggest problems but I'm optimistic I can fix it up.

Looking forward to meeting folks and happy to have such a great resource at hand!

[Thomas G.]

Welcome. The UHaul is a great little trailer - engineered and built for rental service. I think that you will find that once you catch up on maintenance, it is an easy trailer to camp in and easy to keep in shape.

Ask away here and on the UHaul Camper forum. Joining and getting access to the archives over there is worth the price of admission.

[Robin G]

Welcome, Congrat's! Pic's?


Lot's of archived info on leak control. But sometimes just asking works just as well, cause so many have been through the stuggle of finding and repairing leaks. You can search from the forum, but another hint would be google, leaky windows fiberglassrv and for some reason it is faster to find the info your looking for. Faster than searching from the forum, in my opinion.

Works for any question as well as long as you put in fiberglassrv

[mary and bob]

Welcome Sean: I'm still fixing leaks on our Uhaul. Since owning it we have replaced tires, rewired the lights, installed a Fantastic Fan, modified storage, added 110V lights, removed the furnace, removed the ice box to install a mini fridge, replaced the rear and one side window. Just today I ordered a new power converter. The Uhauls are a unique little trailer, but have their own quirky problems. We will be on Jekyll Island with ours, December & January, how far from there are you? Bob

[Richard Hayes]

I use the last box down in the Search panel - the Google Custom Search - works like a charm for me..

[Donna D.]

Hi Sean, welcome to FiberglassRV... we're glad you're here

[knighth001]

Originally Posted by mary and bob

Welcome Sean: I'm still fixing leaks on our Uhaul. Since owning it we have replaced tires, rewired the lights, installed a Fantastic Fan, modified storage, added 110V lights, removed the furnace, removed the ice box to install a mini fridge, replaced the rear and one side window. Just today I ordered a new power converter. The Uhauls are a unique little trailer, but have their own quirky problems. We will be on Jekyll Island with ours, December & January, how far from there are you? Bob

Hey Bob, Jekyll is nice! I'm up in Athens so about 4 or so hours to Savannah from here.

After today's monsoon I have to fix a couple major leaks before I haul the family out in it. The back window leak was pretty steady and the door has a major issue. carpet is soaked at the door. I think I need to replace the weather stripping around the whole door, including whatever is supposed to be at the bottom of the door that appears to be missing from mine.

I'll look through the forums to see if there are any info on where to get the door weather stripping unless someone hear happens to know or have a recommendation.

Thanks all,

[Kevin A]

Welcome, Sean! We also had a leaky back window on our UHaul VT (the big brother of your trailer). I cheated and used a flexible black butyl caulk to seal the edges at the sides and bottom until I would have time to do a complete repair. I also made sure the bottom weep holes were clean to let rain drain out of the bottom channel. That bottom channel fills up and the water wicks over the worn out felt to drip inside. My butyl caulk fix was 5 years ago and it's still holding.

For the door, I don't know if there ever was a bottom piece of weather stripping. Ours doesn't have it. The rain just drips off the bottom curve outside the trailer. For the main weather strip, we bought a length of weather stripping that fit perfectly from Michael J at a camper rally. He got it from Perfect Fit and it did just that! I'll see if I can find the part number for you. The only problem is that it comes in long rolls and you'll have more than you need for now. You can sell the rest or save it for later. In the meantime, before I had the new stripping, I put some lengths of sticky foam insulation like you use around windows on the inside edge of the door so that it closed tightly on it. I also put a plastic rain gutter over the door to divert the main flow. Even with the new weather stripping, I left the gutter on and it still works.

[knighth001]

Thanks Kevin, I saw rain gutters mentioned somewhere else. Is this the kind of gutter you used? This looks simple to work with.

Off-White Gutters

hoping it'll be dry this weekend and I can tackle some of this.

[Kevin A]

I copied one of my earlier posts that have links to the products I mentioned:

We just cleaned off all the old weatherstripping and other gunk around our door and put up a new gasket from PerfectFit.com. Michael J had a long chunk of this that he provided for us at a gathering in Indiana in May. It slips right over the edge of the door opening and does a great job of sealing out the rain. (Trim Seal- Vinyl Quick edge with round rubber bulb on the side.)We also have an "EZE RV Gutter" made out of flexible plastic over our door to channel rain away. (Essential Products RV & Marine - EZE RV Gutters.)

Because of your extreme wind/rain conditions, you may also want to carry a section of clear plastic or plastic tarp. You can wrap the door from the inside out and have any stray leakage run down between the tarp and the inside of the door, right back to the bottom. Yes, our door bottom doesn't fit quite tight so the water can run right back out! ( Keep the top of the tarp barely above the door opening so as not to catch more rain.)

If you need window channel replacements, too, PerfectFit.com also carries those that fit the UHaul windows. That will keep you from having to use the dreaded silicone!

Good luck! You'll love the trailer! Your link to Off-White Gutters is the same stuff. The smallest piece is 10 feet, so maybe you want to put some over the back window, too. Or just save it/sell it/give it away.

[mary and bob]

I bought the stick on gutter from Camping World, I think it helps a little but didn't completely solve the problem. I replaced the rear window with a new one from Scamp, it will fit with a little modification to the opening, replaced one side window with a lot of modification necessary. Check Vintage trailer supply for rubber weatherstrip, I think they have a "D" shape strip in a couple sizes that may work on the bottom of the door. JC Whitney has some rubber weatherstrip too, but not the right one for the windows, too bad because they sell it in shorter lengths. I used something similar on the hatch of our teardrop trailer. Since we haven't solved all the leakage problems yet, we set up a canopy over the trailer if we are camping for a while. Last December at Jekyll for 3 weeks it also kept acorns from banging on the roof all the time. We have one of those Shelterlogic peaked roof canopies from Northern Tool.There is some good info here on rebuilding the side windows, along with what weatherstrip to use. I disagree with the part # to use based on the trailer wall thickness, but looks like I'm the only one to think that way, so use your own judgement on that. On our Uhaul there is a leak by the solar panel in a real heavy rain, and around some of the marker lights too. Leaks have been the most annoying of any of the problems with this trailer, but we really enjoy it otherwise when not using the teardrop.

[knighth001]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I've ordered the weather stripping for the door and hopefully can pop the back window out this weekend and fix it. It looks pretty simple compared to the side windows.

Thanks again!

[knighth001]

I think I may have fixed my back window without having to take it out. turns out the rubber surround that holds the screen in was not in correctly and was blocking the window from fulling closing. I reseated the screen all the way around and the window fully closed. Ran a hose over it for a while and no leak. based on how much water was coming in during the rain yesterday, I should've seen something with the hose today but it was dry. So I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for another rainy day before I take it camping just to ensure.

hopefully the rainy day will hold off until after I can fix the door seal though. that's definitely the biggest leak by far. pulled up the carpet today to dry it out.

Thanks again for all the suggestions, I will definitely get to the side windows at some point. they have minor leaks.