Window leak, where to start?

[wacnstac]

Have 31' Soverign. After finding wet floor took a peek inside the lower (small) window shround and found it wet. Where to start in sealing this back up? How do I break the rivets loose around the shroud without breaking shroud and how do I re-revit?

[Zeppelinium]

what year?

I found a leak in the large opening window, the one above your "leak." It turned out the leak was from the vista view window above that one. Water tends to run along the outside of the inside skin (inside the shell) and come out in the darndest places.

You might have the same problem--a leak from somewhere above where you think the leak is coming from. My first bet is that it isn't the frame, so you don't have to drill out the rivets. It's the glass. Even if it is the frame, you can get some vulkem from vintagetrailersupply and do a small bead around the periphery.

If your window is double pane, you can remove the inner retaining ring and pull the whole thing apart from the inside without taking anything else apart. Sorry, don't know about construction of the single pane windows.

I decided the double pane vista views are more pain than they are worth. I've got my inside skin off and will take out the window frame and patch over it (in an attractive way).

[wacnstac]

It's a 1979 with single pain windows. Up have no upper level Vista windows. How can the glass leaK? Are you saying the leak occurs between the glass and frame? Is this where you use the Vulkum? How do you determine exactly where the leak is?

[Zeppelinium]

I stand ready for other, more knowledgeable/skillful inputs.

Vulkem is for frame to skin and skin-to-skin joints. Great stuff.

For glass, you need to take the glass out and put in a seam of plumber's putty--same stuff you'd use to install a disposal or sink at home. You can get it in tape form from several RV supply places, or roll your own straw-sized "snake" to put between the glass and frame. Make the snake big enough that it will squish down (a technical engineering term) to fill the total width of the interface between the frame and glass. Then you trim off the excess around the visible part of the glass with a piece of plastic, like a plastic motel key.