Knocked it out of the park yesterday! I was in bed by 8pm, I was beat!
Ross V. and his wife dropped by for a looksee on their new purchase. This was that very clean 1976 coach we did late model window rubbers on. Always garage kept the coach is in really nice shape but man does it have water leaks! All that sealant over the years has shrunk, let go, etc. to where we could not pull it outside after the leak test….. it was a positive test… yes, it does leak!
Pulling the top rails we find as we thought 1 row of butyl tape put in when it was new. 
The top rail is not a seal rail… it covers the high elastomer sealant under it. Taking the rail off you can see the original aluminum etching paint (green) and the vestiges of the old sealant 
Cleaning out the inside of the rail you can see the slot with the screw holes right in the middle of the groove 
On the passenger side, the Zip Dee awning is unwound and rolled up onto the top of the coach to access the rail under it. 
Note the row of screws above the rail. That means once the coach had an A&E gosh aweful awning. The later Zip Dee has it’s rail installed 2″ above the rail. We will remove those leaker screws installing new steel shank, aluminum blind rivets in each hole. These “blind” rivets do not have a hole through the middle of the rivet. The back is sealed. Having a steel shank an air riveter is needed to pull it up. The steel shank makes the aluminum rivet body really pinch up hard on the aluminum sheet metal… If there was a leak there it’s gone!
A fresh 3 beads of Bond-n-seal and the rails are again sealed and not leaking. 
Miss Piggy represents the last pile of stuff from the old shop. My “nearly new” department is under the tarp waiting for time for us to sift through the last vestages of that Unobtanium I’ve been keeping around 
Hey, it’s tough after compiling this stuff to just cut it loose… call it intervention… Sorting my old grill collection some just have to go 
Only 3 were good enough to think could be repaired and reused 
. We have some high hopes to use the 1989 P-30 Chevy chassis… 454/400 with 87,000 miles… Has the Goodyears trailing wheel stabilizer system… has great possibilities… the Pace Arrow body rotted off 
Stay tuned to see what our Skunk Works comes up with…
OK, it’s an awesome day here in Florida… a good day is ahead and I can’t wait to get into it.
Oh yeah, yesterday I had good successes with the drawer and door front installations on Fandango 
. Should finish that out today and it will be then back to “Savoy Brown” to finish up those doors and drawers… stay tuned. 
We’ll see ya tomorrow and thanks for the support….
In trying to remove my top rails, some of the screws do not want to come out, even after applying and allowing Kroil to soak in for days. Can I safely use a torch to heat them or do you have other ways (drill them out?) to remove the rail? I wondered if JB Weld could be used to seal a hole in the rail if I do need to drill out the screws?
Jim, may or may not chime in. I asked him this once, they drill out the screws, and re-tap the treads by hand each and every one of them usually. it is normal for the screw to break off or not come out.
there is a specific taping oil to use that works better on aluminum. I would NOT use a torch, too much chance of the foam to start on fire below.
Thanks for your advice! Once the weather gets better up here, that will be my next project.