If you haven't read my other thread about leaks in my Zinger, please check this out:
http://www.crossroadsowners.com/foru...ints-8689.html
In my everlasting search for leaks on my 2012 Zinger, I’ve spotted another potentially serious leak location that everyone should check.
With your slideroom closed, step up either on the dinette seat or a small step and look over the slideout roof. You are looking at the driver's side wall at this point. What you are looking for are rusted staples in the wall board.
As you can see on my trailer there is a row of staples that are all nice and rusty. This indicates to me that there is moisture in that wall causing them to rust. It isn’t humidity as the staples going down either side of the slide are clean.
Right below the line of staples is a white piece of folded aluminum. Somehow this is holding water when it rains allowing the wallboard to soak it up and rust the staples.
I politely asked Crossroads customer service for drawings of how the wall was constructed so I could more easily understand how water is coming above that piece of aluminum. Their response
‘That’s proprietary info and not available to customers’. Thanks Crossroads.
So I had to reverse engineer their build to see what was going on.
This is an EK slideout seal system which consists of a slide sweep and a rubber D seal. The white D seal looks a bit ratty as I tried to spray paint it with vinyl paint to cover the mold (that plan didn’t work as it’s all flaking off). My main question was how does this white piece of folded aluminum come into play on the outside of the trailer.
Pulling off the end section of the D seal from the sweep made it all clear.
That white piece of folder aluminum sits outside of the siding of the camper. As the caulking ages and shrinks, it opens that area totally up to the elements. Rain will simply run down the side of the camper, get picked up by this scoop, and flow right in soaking the wall board.
Here’s a quick diagram of how it’s built:
Why Crossroads didn’t put the siding over this is beyond me.
Just a poor, poor design.
I plan on pulling off the top D seal from the sweep and scrape off all the old sealant. Then to fix it right, butyl tape in the ¼” gap and new sealant on top of that.
Hopefully this info is helpful to others. Water intrusion is a big issue on campers that few people take time to check for.