Dealing With Sunrader Water Damage

[ranger6350]

I recently got an 85 Sunrader 21' with rear dinette. The previous folks had it sitting for a year with a leaky back window. Wood in rear storage area on driver's side, especially, is rotten. If it's not structural; i.e., plywood that should be attached to the middle flooring to provide side support, then I can just dig out the rotten wood and put in another piece of plywood in that section. However, if it needs to be attached to the middle as a support then I guess I have to pull the carpet and replace all the rear plywood. Anybody know about that?

Also, although the back wall is in good shape, what they had covering it was some thick cardboard stuff with a cutout for the window. My plan is to put a piece of insulation board there and then cover with something, probably a piece of paneling. Would it make sense to glue a couple pieces of 1x2 or some such up the back first, to add some firmness to the fiberglass? The foam board would add some, as well, but thought perhaps a couple wood pieces going vertical up each window side would keep the window from unsealing again.

Plan to seal the window with window urethane; if there is a better option somebody please let me know. Thanks!

[mulwyk]

Good morning Ranger. I'll try to answer some of your questions:

You can remove the entire wood interior on a Sunrader and the fiberglass shell will remain standing. But you'll find it quite flexible...that is, the wood interior adds necessary stiffness to the structure.

There are various methods of replacing the paneling on this website. 1x2's with paneling over will be too thick (your window frames won't fit), but 1/2" plywood strips with paneling are about right. Save your old paneling to use as a pattern for the new stuff.

That said, I used two layers of 5/16" = 8mm cedar T&G. I'll try to post something about that in the "improvements" section later.

[xtioga]

I have a 21' sunrader that is gutted to the fiberglass and bare plywood floor, the windows interior mount ring will hold a 3/4" thick piece of ply just right, i cut strips of this and glued them to fiberglass and then stapled the paneling to it. around the back wall area, the floor is plywood over cork with some exterior membrane/layer on the outside and yes the fiberglass is grafted to the ply in some areas around the floor, i would just remove as much rot as you can and use bondo to fill the area, a belt sander can smooth things over nicely, if its really bad a ply patch in the hole and bondo to fill gaps or cover the area with ply, just remember your standing room is shrinking as you build up the floor. sunraders are cool