The Story so far. Apologies for such a long post.
I fixed my side window with a piece of clear lexan (13 x 29) which cost $15. It wasn't too difficult removing all the bits and pieces, just quite a few steps. I pretty much followed the steps
in this thread. In time I will replace the same piece with solar gray lexan AR2, more about plastics in a moment..
First off was cleaning out the mess
Here is the shattered tempered glass after my, er accident, rather the pebbles than shards.
Big close up of the dent I'm going to have to straighten.
After a couple of times with the drill flying off the rivet I found a center punch for denting the face of each smooth rivet. So many nuggets of information on these forums. Many thanks.
The beltline and rubrail had to come off to expose the bottom of the window frame.
Rear portion of the rubrail removed.
Using a flat wooden stick to prize the frame away from the body and a screwdriver to keep it open.
A few phillips screws and a couple of rivets to remove and inside plastic piece is taken off.
Lots of sticky gooey stuff
More goo
goo in the corner
Frame off
Time for a cleanup
The neighbors kid who shot my side window with the offending weapon in view. I could throttle him, the little s#*t! According to my local rv dealer beebee pellets cause untold upset.
Tools for cleaning the junk off the frame. I won't be using the paint stripper on the coach though, who knows where the rivet holes lead to.
Plastics
The name Lexan is GE's brand name for polycarbonate.
Famous shot of Buzz Aldrin. Notice the polycarbonate helmet faceplate?
Not wanting to have to clean up any more glass or pay outrageous prices for salvaged corner pieces I'm going to use this stuff.
There's a few other things to bare in mind. Regular polycarbonate with the abrazion resistant coating will not bend the 70-80 degrees needed for a corner window. I could use abrazion resistant acrylic, but then this material is not as strong. Another thing, when sizing the template you have to calculate in 1/16 inch for expansion of the plastic within the frame.
The piece you see below is gray polycarbonate 24" x 48" bought from
Plastic Tanks, Plastic Buckets, Plastic Bottles, Labware, PVC Pipe - United States Plastic Corporation ®. These people have awesome customer service, I'd fully recommend them. Some other websites never got back to me, or when I called didn't have answers to my questions or just weren't interested.
I clamped the lexan around the frame and took a pencil and marked the inside edge. The depth into the window frame is 1/2 inch. Compensating for expansion I marked the template accordingly.
Now for a gotcha.
When measuring the window on the good side of my coach I got 22" by 41". I thought a 24" by 48" piece from usplastics would do the trick. However, I found out that when the plastic was laid flat you have somewhat of a kidney shape.
I'm about 1/4 inch short either side, see below. Bummer. This is where I am today, waiting for another piece of lexan (due Monday).
When it comes in I will be drilling through the frame edge and lexan and putting rivets in several places to hold it in from potential blowout, am thinking about two rivets per foot.
When that parts done I'll be there with some vulkem and sealing strip (not sure what to use yet), and should be good to go. Hope the holes line up!
I pulled the bumper straight with a heavy duty strap and ratchet, couldn't find a suitable mailbox to bend the other side to match.
Just need to call inlandrv for a price on a rear banana wrap, providing they're in stock and then it will almost be like before.
Oh yeah, the blue belt had to go.
Will post when it's done.
Linear Mode
