After spending an hour or so taking key measurements of the inside and outside of the caravan and sketching the dimensions out, the next step was to take the roof off and take stock of damage.

The roof has rails along the inside of it’s length on both sides.  The two end walls have runner wheels attached that move inside the rails.  Removing the roof was a case of removing some rubber stoppers from the ends of the rail and letting the roof slide right off the end walls.  Covering the caravan with a tarp is critical at this stage, as it is open to the elements.

It then took me a good hour to clean enough of the accumulated grit off the fiberglass (mostly moss and algae) before I could see the sort of shape that the fiberglass was in.  The outer (gelcoat) surface has many small areas of mostly cosmetic damage, but nothing that I can tell that really needs structural repair (see the photos below).  Because of that i’ll be leaving the repair until the final stages of this renovation. as I don’t want to re-damage the gelcoat after putting hours into restoring it!

The next step will be making a jig to support the roof as I work on it. Most of the time the roof will need to be upside-down, and without some sort of jig the fiberglass could very easily be structurally damaged.