Started on stripping old sealant today. Some tutorials I found on resealing window leaks involved taking the whole window out. I didn’t think I had the current skill set for that yet so I decided to follow this process:
So I’ll be using a combination of metal putty scraper, plastic scraper and a utility knife to remove all the old sealant from all the windows and a few spots where there are little openings on the outside (like where my shore power cable comes out).
From what I can tell, previous owners added both some old sealant (crumbly and white) as well as silicone sealant (SO difficult to remove!!!). And there’s also a lot of old butyl tape that’s kind of gunked out that I’m cutting or scraping away. And a lot of it was put on very poorly and smeared all over the van.
The photo above shows my shore power opening with half the now black sealant scraped off. So old!!
Next steps will be to clean it super well (once all the old sealant is gone) and then recaulking it all! I saw a blog somewhere that suggested using some painters tape to help the sealant apply more cleanly so may try that.