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Click on pictures to make them bigger.

Here's how i did a front , body to roof , rail reseal .

First remove the rail end caps.

Pretty yucky behind the end caps , sealant is poor as well.

Next remove the rail trim.

Note the poor quality mastic ( some was silicone sealant , it was a right pain to remove , don't use it for external sealing use the right stuff ).

Now remove the rail screws.

Where screws couldn't be removed ie chewed head , a drill bit was used to drill the head off the screw. ( note i found these screws very hard to drill into and had to sharpen my drill bit a fair few times ). Another way to remove screws that have chewed heads is to use a dremel cutting tool , and cut a slot in the screw head and then undo with a flat blade screw driver .

Once i'd sorted the screws the rail was lifted away. ( important note , these rails are very soft and bend very easily so becareful when removing , they only need gentle leverage once they are coming away . They can also get stuck on screws where the heads have been drilled off so be aware of this when removing ).

Rail removed.

Time for a clean using a plastic scraper to remove the old mastic.

Nows the time to remove any screws where they had the heads drilled off.

Cleaning was finished off by using white spirit and a rag. Note dry the area well after using White spirit , then clean with Meths ( methylated spirit ) , the reason is that any residue of White spirit stops the mastic sticking properly .

Due to the bad gaps that appeared when the rail had been removed and when i pulled at some of the silicone sealant , i decided to also remove and reseal the front lower awning rails both sides.

Note the extra piece of roof panel added , reason unknown.

Started off as usual removing the trim from the front lower awning rail.

YUCK.

Remove screws next.

Now lift away the awning rail , remember they BEND very easily.

It's hard not to bend it at all when removing it , but if your careful you can gently bend it back into shape.

Note half the rail didn't have any mastic on it at all ( also have look at the picture foreground ie where the rail had been on the caravan ).

Nice and clean now.

Taped up incase of rain ( Which it did 10 minutes later ).

After a break of a few days the reseal began , the rails were cleaned using a cloth and white spirit , then they were cleaned again with Meths ( methylated spirit ) , the reason for this is any residue of White spirit stops the mastic sticking properly ( but white spirit is good at removing old mastic ).
I placed the cleaned rail back on the caravan and drilled some extra screw holes in the rail and then using a smaller drill bit followed them through into the body ( note the smaller drill bit was only used to drill through the skin and not right through the wood behind ).

Next the roll mastic was applied to the rail , note i had to cut the roll mastic to go round the bends of the rail .

A few screws were screwed into the rail ( so they stick through a bit ) this helps when placing the rail back on the caravan .

Extra screws added ( probably over kill , but my rail won't be falling off ).

Mastic was added to all screw heads .

The finished rail.

Some Notes .

The top rail was finished in the same way as the side rails.

I did the opposite rail to the one shown in the picture above first , i had bought some Seam Seal CV £2.36 a tube , so thought i'd just run it down the rail edges to get a really good seal and also improve the look . Well not only is Seam Seal very messy but it stays soft , so when it rained hard it actually allowed water to get forced under it's skin , so i've now worked out that's not what it's supposed to be used for .
For the other rail i bought some Sikaflex 512 Caravan sealant to do the same job as i had tried on the other rail , now this stuff is good , a bit costly £7.95 a tube but well worth it . It forms a tuff but flexable skin and the colour is a better shade of white . I fact i've been so happy with the results so far that i'm using it to reseal the rest of my caravan , as well as using roll mastic . So far i've resealed the awning light fitting , the rear marker lights , the toilet door and frame , a washroom vent , plus some other fixings .

Note , you can use just roll mastic or just Sikaflex for resealing ( you don't have to use both ) , some roll mastics are grey and some are white , i used sikaflex aswell because mine was grey . Another good tube mastic i have used is called Tigerseal , you can find it on ebay and probably good caravan shops.

atb

Wizard

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