Well, at times my enthusiasm for getting something done over rides a thought out solution that would have been a better alternative.
Since I am now doing smaller random projects, mostly small projects that I have been avoiding. I have come to the point that the tedious time consuming projects, both in thought and time, need to be taken care of.
I am to the point where the front and back caps are almost ready to be installed. But first, I needed to clean up the bottom rails of the steel end frames. These rails were covered with surface rust, both from water leakage at some point, and chemical reaction.
At least with this 2007 year model, HiLo used aluminum rails for the side walls and steel rails for the end walls. On the end walls they also used their 1”x 2” aluminum box tubing for stiffeners. One at the lower frame level and a second one 2” up and held together with 1/4” plywood on each side of the aluminum box tubing and then fastened to the steel frame. (The 1/4” plywood between the aluminum tube and steel kept the two pieces separated.) That in turn creates the box for the rubber ‘P’ bulb seal on the upper half.
Well, in order to box in the rectangular tubing along with the 1/4” plywood, HiLo used aluminum ‘L’ flashing to tie the frame to the tubing under the walls and up inside which has the ‘P’ bulb stapled to it. This process worked so-so on the side walls but on the end wall fastening aluminum flashing, coupled with a little moisture, to a steel frame created a real corrosion type mess. Some of the aluminum had disappeared into powder. All of this was under the end caps and hidden from view.
Needless to say, I have been avoiding this repair. But the time had come. Forgetting just exactly how the sidewalls came apart, or at least not really thinking, I looked up from underneath the rear edge and it looked like the flashing went up to the ‘P’ bulb and stopped. Oh, this isn’t so bad, I will just pull the flashing off so I can get good access to the steel frame to clean it up and cap it off a different way.
So, I went into demo mode and thought, “This is crazy! This is crazy!” In a few minutes I had the flashing ripped out, along with it came the ‘P’ bulb and the 1/4” plywood that was stapled about 153 times to the two aluminum box tubes. I just stood there looking at the mangled partially corroded flashing which had the ‘P’ bulb stapled with at least 200 staples though the half rotten 1/4” plywood.
Hmm, now what? All I wanted to do was to clean up the steel frame and prepare to install the rear cap. I had lots of time to think about my plan of action while I was reaching up between the bottom and top walls pulling steel staples out of the aluminum tubes. Some staples looked almost new, some were starting to corrode and others were almost nonexistent.
The challenge I now faced was how to recap the framework, attach the ‘P’bulb and fasten a 1/4” piece of plywood to the two tubes. I decided on regular building corner and gable trim steel (the 5-1/4” x 5-1/4” size) cut down to the same measurements of the piece I brutally removed. I figured the steel flashing will be stiff enough to forgive me for not replacing the 153 staples that I removed. (Another victory for me, because I saved this trim for years! And I finally got to use it!)
But, I still needed to figure out how to protect everything from everything that was dissimilar. The flashing at the bottom needs to be really thin to allow the cap to fit, so anything bulky is out of the equation. I thought about duct tape on the flashing and on the aluminum tube to keep them separated. I also thought of a few other ideas, and one was that I wished I had repaired it like I did the side walls. But do I really want to go that route at this time?
What I did decide on was a strip of leftover Filon siding cut to length. I glued it to the flashing, it is waterproof (just in case of a leak someday) and it is thin (1/8”). After attaching the ‘P’bulb and the 1/4” panel to the flashing the next step will be to shove it up in there and fasten it.
Be sure to stay tuned!
