Our 1990 Swift has a nasty rear floor corner and, removing as little material as possible, I've stripped out the nasty part before making it good. I can't, for the life of me, work out how the floor and the side wall are originally put together. I can't tell whether the floor should butt up to the inner face of the wall or if the wall bottom edge sits on the floor. There is also some dissolving timber behind the side skirts; is that part of the wall or a separate piece? Can anyone direct me to a diagram of how the joint between floor and wall is put together?
On older caravans, body was screwed to floor through bottom wooden frame member & alloy outer skin folded over bottom of floor. I have found easiest method of repairs to floor rotting on edge of body as described is clear out all loose wood & allow to dry out then fill in gaps by building up layers of Isopon P40 which is glass reinforced car body filler to stick sides back to floor.
It sounds like a bodge but it makes a strong repair. For any large gaps cut out bits of wood & then apply Isopon over the top. The stuff goes off quite quick, you have about 10mins to work with it so trick is to mix up small amounts at a time & apply in layers.
The job can be done in one session because you can build up another layer as soon as the previous layer begins to harden. Leave a day or so to fully harden then rub down a bit with glass paper, job done.
Thank you for that. I'm trying to repair with like for like if possible but there are certainly areas which will get an "imaginative solution" as I can't get at them easily without some serious dismantling. While I'm down there I'm going to improve on the corner steady mountings; the chassis doesn't reach them so they're mounted direct into the floor timbers. I'm surprised they've lasted so long - 25 years! - without wrecking the back end of the floor.
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Topic: Soggy bottom
