Door Leak - replace or possible to fix well?

shear

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2012
Messages
103
I have a 2005 Eagle and the door leaks in heavy rain through the bottom part of the window. Took it apart yesterday and there's no gasket at all, seems like it either dry rotted away or the "water proofing" is simply from the pressure of screwing the 2 sides of the window seal together.

Anyone have a good fix for this? Is it possible to get a new door? Do the new model doors fit older campers?



Thanks!
 
I suspect you can repair the window yourself with a good sealant then reassembling. For a new door, I'd give Marty at ATC a call. They normally have good info/access to those kind of things. ATC might also have specifics on the repair. These folks are good and reasonable!
 
The plastic door-glass frame-halves do not have a gasket and they were not sealed (at least not on my 2001 Hawk shell).

The glass is adhered to one half of the frame via silicone sealant and its pretty common for that sealant to fail on older campers like ours. It may leak for awhile but eventually the sealant will fail badly enough that the glass will slide down in the frame. Like this:

BackWindow.jpg

It's a relatively simple matter to remove the frame-and-glass assembly from the door and re-do the silicone sealant holding the glass in the frame. (I left the door itself on the camper for this but it's easier to re-install that assembly in the door with it lying on a table, particularly if you are working alone.)

The inner and outer frame halves come apart easily. You'll then see where a bead of sealant was used to adhere the glass to the frame-half. Remove the glass, clean out the old silicone sealant, and re-seal it. Then re-install the assembly in the door. (Note: You may also notice the plastic tabs at the bottom of the window are broken off. In my case, the window glass had broken loose from the frame and slid down, breaking the plastic tabs you see in that area. I put a small hard-rubber block under the glass to prevent it from sliding down again, should the seal fail again.)

An optional step (and one I took) is to also put a very small bead of sealant around both the inner and outer perimeter of the exterior glass-frame, i.e., where it touches the glass (inner) and where it touches the door skin (outer). I first put down two rows of masking tape to define that very small bead and pulled it up right away after running the bead and smoothing it a bit. (Note: The curves of the frame make the masking a bit of a challenge and I ended up having to use an Exacto knife to do some judicious trimming)
 
Clean and caulk with silicone. Tool the sealant with your finger. This will push sealant into the gap. FWC newer campers have rounded doors and frames.
 
I have a newer Hawk with the round door that leaked almost from the beginning but this is what I did. I used cord weatherseal for the inner and outer frames than reassembled. Once assembled I ran a U shaped bead of silicone along the bottom half of the exterior portion of the door. So far so good.
 

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