Rear Window Rail

Plan of work: Remove end caps, window retainers, plastic trim then rail screws. Slide out the windows. Take off the rail. Prepare rail and caravan for new mastic. Re-attach the rail, windows and trim.

This is the window rail to re-seal.	The windows are prevented from side movement by little retainers, the middle ones left in place, to help when refitting.	Remove, both end caps.
This is a window retainer, stops the window moving.	Just a matter of slackening the screw.	And slide along the rail to remove (Left the two innermost ones in place on the rail, for locating the windows).
Take out the plastic trim, just pulls out.	These two screws need to be removed on the window stay, on both sides.	Then the window can be slid along the rail.
Removed and stored somewhere out of harms way.	Rail screws next, they were in good condition so will reuse.	Ran a Stanley knife blade along the top and bottom of the rail to break the seal.
Concentrated on one end, pulled it away while using the stanley knife.	Used a screwdriver to keep the rail from sticking itself back the the caravan!	This is how it looked once the rail was removed.
A bit of cleaning up to do, the mastic looked in good shape.	Removing the mastic from the rail, I found pulling and scraping with a screwdriver seemed to work.	On the caravan used the sticky ball of mastic and a plastic scraper, took a while.
Most of it off, now went at it with white spirit(it softens it) and paper towel. After it was clean went over with meths to degrease.	Must have bent the rail getting it off, gently bent it back until it was straight.	Applying the roll mastic, 19mm to the backside off the rail keeping the left side as straight as I could (that is the top of the rail)
To help line the rail up with the screw holes, put some nails in both ends and the middle. Once located just press into place, refitted the screws. (see note: A. below)	To help the windows slide back a little easier, used some lubricant on the tops and on the rail channel.	Slid the two retainers back into place and tightened. Put the plastic insert strip back, then the end-caps. Ran a bead a Seamseal across the top (belt & braces)
Also put Seamseal over and around the end-caps, just to make sure any water will not go behind it.	Nearly there, the window stays need re-fixing, two for each window.	Four screws for each window, checked they close okay, job done.

A. Actually had two attemps at putting the rail on, the first attempt had put locating nails at each end, pressed into place, the middle was way out, taking it off ruined half of the mastic on the backside of the rail. So, after redoing the mastic used THREE nails, one at each end and one in the middle lined them up and went for it!

Materials used: W4 Mastic 19mm (£5.75) Seamseal (£3.00).

Page Created 28th April 2008/Updated 17th May 2008