Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Camper repair question

My sister has a camper that has been sitting around unused for several years. She offered to give it to me but she told me it needed some work.

The main issue is that the exterior - whatever you call it - siding? panel?, the hard textured plastic panel has separated from the subwall so it bubbles out.

Kinda hard to explain but my BIL said it gets particularly bad when it gets hot.

I don't know if you can remove an entire wall? My thought was that I might be able to dremel a cut the height of it, peel it back and get some industrial adhesive to glue it back, then seal the cut with whatever.

below in the picture is where its come unglued. The subwall underneath is solid

any thoughts on how to do it?

Gorilla Tape ! 😜

I was reading up on those r-pod campers. They aren't particularly known for their high quality construction standards

I mean its free, so you get what you pay for but I could see myself cutting and glueing on this thing all summer trying to get it right

How pretty do you want it afterward?

Real easy to redneck that repair! 🤣

I'm not interested in spending more than a couple of hundred to repair it.

OP old campers are old campers never gonna make them new again. Iron spit it out pretty good. I've seen that same problem on a lot of different brands but they don't show hail like a metal sided one. Mb

Piano hinge with a flip up table . Bolted through to a backing plate! Effectively sandwiched the siding, and gained a latern stand. Don't cobble it and it would look factory!!

The most expensive camper or boat you will ever own is one you get for free.

took me a minute to visualize what you meant. That would be ideal if it was a horizontal bubble. This is more vertical.

But maybe a white metal strip screwed into would one way to address it.

Nice campers require maintenance and troubleshooting every single trip out.
That is not a nice camper.
Read that again and laugh at your sister.

yea, I'm thinking that might be right

Delamination!

According to my camper dealer/service center, there is one cure. Cut out the delaminated portion of wall and replace it. Yes, the entire thickness of the wall.

The work can easily exceed the value of the camper after repair.

My advice, let Sister haul this one to the dump and look for a rig in good shape. Unless you just want a place to keep the rain off and cook a meal for a couple years until it completely comes apart.

How much does it bubble out?
Can’t see a bubble inthe pic.

Are you certain the roof and roof/wall juncture is water tight?

A: that's a camp trailer, not a camper

B: why the blue tarp over it? Does it leak somewhere? Could that be helping cause the "bubble", as in water damaged "wood" under there?

C: I'm with some of the other fellas here, if it's free and suits your needs and keeps you dry, screw it back on, glue it if that works, built the table thingy, and use it till it falls apart.

Goddam bought a 1979 lastrada for $200 🤪 no schit.
Maiden voyage was good times until a hellish thunderstorm rolled in caught a drip on my back the moon roof above.No problem🤔some duct tape and a garbage bag 😃3 hrs later all that schit drowned our ass 🤪fun times

'
The blue tarp most likely indicates that it's leaking.
If water is getting into that side panel, combined with the hot sun (read blister) could be causing the delamination just like a paint blister on a house.
Saving it depends on the overall condition of the camp trailer.

A pattern of stainless steel fender washers and screws might be enough to hold down the blister if the wood underneath is not rotted.
On the cheap. use plated washers.
Paint the screw heads and washers first.
Put them in a straight pattern evenly spaced so they look like they belong there, not in a random pattern.

Call R-Pod, try to get a shop foreman and ask about how they do their wall construction.
How would they fix an exterior blister ?
Wood studs, steel suds ?
How long of a screw can I use ?
Etc, etc.

Free?? Hell, get some stainless washers, some 1/4” stainless bolts, squirt some adhesive between the layers as best you can, and run 8-10 bolts through from one side to the other.

Go buy two cans of Flexseal, a tube of caulk, and go to town on the roof.

Take it on a shakedown run, or two. If any serious issues arise, put it on FB marketplace for $500, and get it gone.

Unless the inside is trashed, it’ll likely beat sleeping in a tent.

Small stainless steel carriage bolts and fender washers to flatten the bulge- - - -holes drilled all the way through to the inside and a plywood reinforcing panel a few inches wide on the inside wall. Then give the roof a HEAVY coat of Cool Seal to plug up any leaks. Recoat the cool seal every couple of years to keep the leak from getting worse.

The reality is that won’t be the only place in the future that let’s go. I would put a piece of steel that runs Horizonte like a molding . Bolt clear through. The inside you could use a wood strip for looks. You might end up doing both sides down the road.

KFWA;
Good evening, I hope the weekend behaved and this finds you well down in Ohio.

With the understanding that I don't have any direct experience with R-Pod specifically, but did spend 27 odd years in a cabinet production shop where a large part of our work was supplying various RV manufacturers with cabinet doors and furniture and in so doing I became reasonably familiar with their construction.

The hard side constructed units are typically glued in one piece on a vacuum table using whatever blend of polyurethane glue they've had blended for their production line and equipment.

The upside of polyurethane glued panels is that they're reasonably stiff and resist shaking loose like some of the older methods of RV construction.

The downside is that if the panels delaminate, well they're not super easy to repair.

In theory one could drill access holes into the panel, get some polyurethane glue shot in there and then clamp it, but it's the clamping process that will take some creativity.

If that's the only issue, then perhaps it's something you'd like to attempt.

It appears from the photo that the unit might need more maintenance and as mentioned by other posters, even the RV's in good shape need some maintenance with each outing.

Some need some more...

Older ones always have electrical and wiring issues. The fridge's and inverters are often items that don't last more than a decade, if that.

It's your call and depending upon what the intended use would be and how far you'd want to take it, it might be worth your time and effort to repair it - or not.

Hopefully that was useful to you or someone out there.

Good luck with the project whichever way you decide.

All the best.

Dwayne