I had an er accident on a rainy night, the mailbox got away scratch free, I on the other hand!

Here is the shattered tempered glass

After a couple of times with the drill flying off the rivet I found a center punch for denting the face of each smooth rivet.




The beltline and rubrail had to come off to expose the bottom of the window frame.




Rear portion of the rubrail removed.




Using a flat wooden stick to prize the frame away from the body and a screwdriver to keep it open.




Lots of sticky gooey stuff









goo in the corner



Window Frame off





Time for a cleanup






Tools for cleaning the junk off the frame. I won't be using the paint stripper on the coach though, who knows where the rivet holes lead to.



Plastics

The name Lexan is GE's brand name for polycarbonate.

Famous shot of Buzz Aldrin. Notice the polycarbonate helmet faceplate?




Not wanting to have to clean up any more glass or pay outrageous prices for salvaged corner pieces I'm going to use this stuff.


There's a few other things to bare in mind. Regular polycarbonate with the abrazion resistant coating will not bend the 70-80 degrees needed for a corner window. I could use abrazion resistant acrylic, but then this material is not as strong and doesn't come in solar gray. Another thing, when sizing the template you have to calculate in 1/16 inch per foot for expansion of the plastic.

The piece you see below is gray polycarbonate 24" x 48" bought from Plastic Tanks, Plastic Buckets, Plastic Bottles, Labware, PVC Pipe - United States Plastic Corporation ®. These people have awesome customer service, I'd fully recommend them. Some other websites never got back to me, or when I called didn't have answers to my questions or just weren't interested.




I clamped the lexan around the frame and took a pencil and marked the inside edge. The depth into the window frame is 1/2 inch. Compensating for expansion I marked the template accordingly.




Now for a gotcha.

When measuring the window on the good side of my coach I got 22" by 41". I thought a 24" by 48" piece from usplastics would do the trick. However, I found out that when the plastic was laid flat you have somewhat of a kidney shape.

I'm about 1/4 inch short either side, see below. Bummer. This is where I am today, waiting for another piece of lexan (due Monday).

When it comes in I will be drilling through the frame edge and lexan and putting rivets in several places to hold it in from potential blowout, am thinking about two rivets per foot.




I pulled the bumper straight with a heavy duty strap and ratchet.
Just need to call around for a price on a rear banana wrap.




Oh yeah, the blue belt had to go.



The new piece of polycarbonate came in. This time a custom piece from Interstate Plastics - Order plastic sheet and rod online. Plastic cut to size sheets of Acrylic, Acetal, UHMW and many others within 15/1000 of an inch tolerance can be ordered online. Their service all round was a bit shabby, but they do custom cuts which was attractive.

I had pictures of getting the plastic fitted to the frame, but computer gremlins got a hold of them!

Putting the window back onto the moho:

Using some of this,



and the 'polyurethane formerly known as vulkem,'




i prepped the frame, added the tape,




then with 100 pack of olympic rivets, put the frame back into place.


YES, some of them holes didn't line up, what a pain in the ...! If it were glass i'm sure it would have broke by now.

Taking note of a possible blowout, I riveted the plastic inside the frame.



With appropriate portions of vulkem the job is almost complete.





All I need to do now is shave the rivets provide a fine detailng.