Ceiling rotted, now what?!

[MooseMan-HILO]

This spring we bought a 1986 21' Funsaver. It has taught me some very valuable lessons about buying a trailer - mainly how to assess the roof / walls for rot. Needless to say - I made a poor assumption about the roof of the trailer and later found lots of little holes in it. Most of which I have patched.

Bottom line though is that the ceiling and left wall are rotted. Right wall I'm not sure - but a previous owner tacked pine board over the veneer - not sure if that was a cover-up or not.

The good is that the underbody is in great shape (no rust) and that everything works. We bought for $2500 and added tires, wheel bearings, camping supplies, equalizing hitch, registration, etc - so all in we are about $4k. We had a great summer with it and put about 4,000 miles on it.

Now I need to figure out a plan - I guess here are my options - but I'm looking for some thoughts.

• Sell it outright - see how much of the $2500 I can recover (anyone have sense on price?)
• Part it out, sell all the good stuff - 40# propane tanks, fridge, range/oven, AC, water pump, tires, etc and take it to the dump
• Save up some $$ and see if I can find a handyman who can take on a top half restoration during the winter (I could; but don't have the garage space and don't want to lose the time with my kids at this stage)

At the end of the day; there are 2 adults, 2 kids and 2 dogs, and the camper is a bit small for our "show" anyway.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance!

 

[campthewestcoast]

This spring we bought a 1986 21' Funsaver. It has taught me some very valuable lessons about buying a trailer - mainly how to assess the roof / walls for rot. Needless to say - I made a poor assumption about the roof of the trailer and later found lots of little holes in it. Most of which I have patched.

Bottom line though is that the ceiling and left wall are rotted. Right wall I'm not sure - but a previous owner tacked pine board over the veneer - not sure if that was a cover-up or not.

The good is that the underbody is in great shape (no rust) and that everything works. We bought for $2500 and added tires, wheel bearings, camping supplies, equalizing hitch, registration, etc - so all in we are about $4k. We had a great summer with it and put about 4,000 miles on it.

Now I need to figure out a plan - I guess here are my options - but I'm looking for some thoughts.

• Sell it outright - see how much of the $2500 I can recover (anyone have sense on price?)
• Part it out, sell all the good stuff - 40# propane tanks, fridge, range/oven, AC, water pump, tires, etc and take it to the dump
• Save up some $$ and see if I can find a handyman who can take on a top half restoration during the winter (I could; but don't have the garage space and don't want to lose the time with my kids at this stage)

At the end of the day; there are 2 adults, 2 kids and 2 dogs, and the camper is a bit small for our "show" anyway.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance!

I so feel your pain. Our 97 21ft Tow-lite needs to have the entire lower rail of the top section rebuilt and some of the walls. Good ole dry rot. We don't have the space to work on it. We are considering whether purchasing a newer model is a better option.

 

[dirtfan]

Sit back and take a good look at the damage and ask yourself can you fix it? If not dump it, if you choose to fix it start tearing it apart, there will be more damage then you think there is, it's real easy to tear it apart, it's not that hard to replace the walls and the ceiling, resealing the roof isn't that much of a challenge either, just a little bit of knowledge and some hard work and when your finished you'll be very proud of the end result, I have started to put mine back together today and hopefully it'll be done by next week as I want to take the kids out for a night very soon

Check this out and decide

 

[MooseMan-HILO]

Sit back and take a good look at the damage and ask yourself can you fix it? If not dump it, if you choose to fix it start tearing it apart, there will be more damage then you think there is, it's real easy to tear it apart, it's not that hard to replace the walls and the ceiling, resealing the roof isn't that much of a challenge either, just a little bit of knowledge and some hard work and when your finished you'll be very proud of the end result, I have started to put mine back together today and hopefully it'll be done by next week as I want to take the kids out for a night very soon

Check this out and decide

Thank you for posting the pictures - those are actually really helpful. I was trying to get a sense of the sub-structure. Did you have to replace the flashing where the top and bottom parts meet? Also - I can't quite tell from the pictures but what do the cabinets mount to?

What I might do is try and nurse it through next season then find a garage where I can work on it throughout the winter. I'm now just balancing time and money and time with the kids. I think they call that life

 

[sam-HILO]

Hiloneeds work

I feel your pain. Our HiLo needs wall replacement. Try and sell as is. If that doesn't work then sell the parts. Don't feel bad we were novices when we bought our HiLo. Don't know if it had bathroom shower wall delamination and delamination in other places. Did it just get worse under our ownership. You also mentioned that the HiLo is too small for the four of you. We could start a "rotted HiLo club" We are going to start restoring ours this fall. I'm sure we will find more dammage than we care to deal with. We don't have any garage to, work in. Ours is stored off site with no electric. Some times you just have to cut your loses and move on.

 

[MooseMan-HILO]

Thanks for the insights guys. The pictures of the rebuild are exactly what I was looking for. Gives me a sense of what we're up against.

I was talking to the war department (wife) last night - we're going to try and nurse another season out of it. It'll be tight but that way we'll get a little more out of our "investment" before we need to scrap it, and perhaps we'll have a better picture next year of if/what we can afford to replace it with.

Ultimately a bigger camper brings a bigger problem - the tow vehicle. Our '97 Expedition does all it can to drag even the Hi-Lo around - no problem on the flats but we live in Colorado; meaning it's floored most the time (some of the passes are 1st gear 25 miles per hour)! Yikes!

 

[MooseMan-HILO]

Ok - in the interest of finances; we are keeping this guy for another year or so. Other than the fact that I "know" the rot is there; it is fine. That's aside from the cabinet over the sink which is starting to pull away.

I think I can secure the cabinet by drilling right up through the roof and bolting it into place with some sealant

Perhaps in the future options will present themselves (better TV, more $$, bigger trailer, etc).

 

[dirtfan]

Mooseman, mine is an 85 and nack than they still used metal in the framing, the top of the cupboards are drilled into the frame on the roof, as for the flashing i'm trying to seal up the bottom part of the upper structure, ran into a little problem last week and snapped a darn bolt off for the lift cable, had some work done on the house last weekend so had to out it on hold but I drilled out the old bolt and retapped the threads tonight so all I need to do now is get the right bolt and finish off what I was doing last week and than start back on the inside, I hope to use it this weekend

Thank you for posting the pictures - those are actually really helpful. I was trying to get a sense of the sub-structure. Did you have to replace the flashing where the top and bottom parts meet? Also - I can't quite tell from the pictures but what do the cabinets mount to?

 

[MooseMan-HILO]

Mooseman, mine is an 85 and nack than they still used metal in the framing, the top of the cupboards are drilled into the frame on the roof

That's good to know - seems that my cupboards were either remounted or screwed into wood, I can't hit metal no matter how much I push up on it. Anyone have suggestions for how to find the metal rib?

 

[retiredcamper47]

Try a regular stud finder like they use with drywall. Find the nail, find the stud. It should find the metal rib with no problem - in theory.

Bob