Roof repair advice - hole in roof 1956 vintage

[casaalumina]

Hello,

We have a 1956 spartan ... please pardon me for crashing the airstream site ... but it has similar aluminum aircraft construction.

Rainy season is coming and we have a 12x15" hole in the roof. Used to be a sky-lite or vent ... previous owner had a swamp cooler up there ... you can see the blue sky right through it.

Best advice to fix this ASAP? We are newbies ... very grateful for recommendations for products and methods.

Thank you for reading and if you reply.

[goransons]

If it were me, and it was a place that was ok for a skylight I'd go to an RV shop and get a retangular skylight, trim the opening to the appropriate size, reinforce the opening if needed and install. Only reason I could think otherwise was if you were going for a total stock look.

[guy99]

Many people find a fantastic vent to be very useful additions to even vintage units.

[Janets Husband]

Originally Posted by casaalumina

Hello,

We have a 1956 spartan ... please pardon me for crashing the airstream site ... but it has similar aluminum aircraft construction.

Rainy season is coming and we have a 12x15" hole in the roof. Used to be a sky-lite or vent ... previous owner had a swamp cooler up there ... you can see the blue sky right through it.

Best advice to fix this ASAP? We are newbies ... very grateful for recommendations for products and methods.

Thank you for reading and if you reply.

Try this site and you may see what was there originally. Spartan Aircraft Trailercoaches
They had great lines and I have seen many restorations. Good Luck

[casaalumina]

Originally Posted by goransons

If it were me, and it was a place that was ok for a skylight I'd go to an RV shop and get a retangular skylight, trim the opening to the appropriate size, reinforce the opening if needed and install. Only reason I could think otherwise was if you were going for a total stock look.

How to trim and reinforce? I would like to install the fan-tastic vent fan from vintagetrailer.com but it measures 14x14.
How to make that work with 12x15 hole? I imagine a hack saw for the small side and riveting on more aluminum to the large sides??? Or is there some better easier way to get the 12x15 hole to accept a 14x14 vent-fan?

thank you to all who offered advice.

[goransons]

can't say I know exactly what your situation looks like, for instance when we cut the opening for our AC we had to keep the outer and inner skins from crushing since there was no ribs at that location to support the unit, so we added aluminum c channel inside then riveted the skins to that which beefed up the opening.

I just did a quick search, would be good to shop around, but PPLMotorhomes have a 14x22 rough opening model and a 18x24 rough opening model available here:

RV Skylight for sale at PPL

I suppose depending on how you do it you could put a patch to resize it, but a bigger skylight might be a better looking repair.