Day 119 / 2016 - Maintenance and that Can of Worms

Maintenance... its one of those activites we really don't want to spend too much time or money on (unlike modifications which are much more exciting). Fixing a problem is almost never straight forward you start to work on what you think is a simple fix then so many hidden problems start coming out of the woodwork (many house renavators would attest to that). What starts out as a straight forward job then ends up costing you more time and money.

Take the grab rail on the rear of our van. It runs along the full width of the back and is held on by five fixing positions called posts, two on the left, two on the right and one in the middle. A few months ago at a free camp in outback Queensland we noticed rusty water stains on the wall under the right hand side bottom post. That doesn't look right we thought so concluding water must be trapped we cut the silicone around the post to see if we could release it. To our suprise the bottom post popped out with rusty water flowing out.

Fast forward a few months our long term stop in Walkamin seemed like a good opportunity to try to repair the post's mount. We had sent an email to Retreat as we had no idea how it was mounted initially we had assumed it was all siliconed on. Retreat sent back an e-mail with some description on how to remove it but to me it didn't make much sense (untill I read the email again after we removed the rail). Looking on the internet we found similar types of grab rails and from the technical spec we realised the chrome flange attached to the wall were actually concealment caps and the mounting plates attached to a wall by self tappers were under that. According to the diagram the flanges are twist caps but because they are so full of silicone the only way I could remove them was to pry them off with a screw driver.

Eventually getting the cap off we could then see the mounting post had become separated from the wall mounting plate. Looking at the internet diagram we could see the posts are actually attached to the mounting plate by a single threaded screw. We could see the mounting plate was still firmly attached to the wall but the screw attaching the post to the plate seemed to have had come out. When we removed the mounting plate from the wall and retrieved the screw discovering that the screw itself had rusted away.

Once we had removed all the other concealment caps we then undid the self tappers and remove the bar from the back of the van. One thing we were thankfull for is we couldn't see any real damage just some staining to the caravan wall where the plate with the rusty screw was mounted. I compared the rusted screw to another one and you could see how much had been eaten away. One of my pet gripes with caravans is the component manufacturer always seem to use some sort of inferior part during manufacture. In this case why on earth did they go to the trouble of making rust resistant stainless steel barwork only to use standed rust prone iron screws to put it together.

Now here comes the worms out of the can bit. While cleaning all the silicone off each of the mounting plates we noticed the one from the centre had white gunk which looked like corrosion. Inspecting the caravan wall we could see a small scratch and the bare aluminum exsposed had started to corrode. A bit of prodding with a screw driver a small hole developed allowing us to see the polystyene insulation sandwich between the inner and outer walls.  This worried me a little as how long had the corrosion been there and had enough of the wall integrity collapsed allowing the water to seep into the frame.

We're not quite sure how the scratch got there we assumed it happened during the installation of the grab rail proberbly wasn't even noticed. Once paint is removed exposing the bare aluminum to the atmospere corrosion would start. I though there was a lot of corrosion for only three and a half years so I deduced that water was being trapped behind the concealment cap. The mounting plates have nickle in them so where both the nickle mounting plate and bare aluminum were in contact together and in water electrolysis would have occured and the aluminum wall of the caravan would have become the sacrificial anode depositing corrosion onto the mounting plate.

We posted what had happened onto the Retreat Owners facebook group and was surprised the number of replies from other owners who had noticed a similar rust stain starting to appear. This may be a common problem we were happy to share our experience so others may be aware and resolve the problem before it becomes major for them. As they say forewarned is to be forearmed.

What to do next. I tried to get a price on a replacement bar from Retreat but at this point in time have not heard anything from them. I though of completely doing away with the bar and purchasing new grab handles for the left and right sides then put something in the middle to seal and hide the hole. The concealment caps have also been damaged and we are not sure if you can buy them as spares. My latest thought is to clean up the bar, mounting plates and concealment caps as best we can. Purchase stainless steel screws to re-attach the mounting plates to the posts of the grab rail. Seal the hole in the middle with silicone and get something I can use as gasket to go between the mounting plates and caravan wall to act as an insulator and provide addtional sealing for the hole.

Will let you know the outcome.