In this blog we will discuss the external cleanup and rectification works performed on the 1989 Jayco 17’6” pop-top caravan.

 The first thing we did was pressure clean the roof which was covered with dirt, mould and other growing things. It come up pretty good but needed a good polish which we did and the improvement was acceptable. We blasted a lot of old silicon off the roof so we decided to reseal over the screws to ensure it was still waterproof.

The screws securing the windows, removable covers, the door and pop-top hold down clamps were badly rusted so they were replaced with stainless steel screws. The hold down clamps were also replaced with white ones.

The next thing we did was to give the outside of the caravan a good wash and polish with an extra cut and polish. Check out the results for your self by visiting our gallery.

We also polished the bronze anodized window frames; although not perfect they look a lot better than they did. Apparently there is not a lot you can do once anodized aluminium begins to fade. The fly screens were removed, washed and re-installed. The rollout out awning was cleaned top and bottom.

The white wheel covers (hub caps) were cracked and scuffed; these were repaired with 5 minute araldite and re-sprayed with white enamel paint. The draw bar and rear bumper bar were also sanded back and re-painted with black enamel paint, as were the four corner leveling legs.

Due to severe sun and weather damage the bumper rubbers on the four corners of the caravan were replaced as well as the pop-top roof sealing rubbers and all the window rubbers.

Next were the electrics, one clearance light was replaced as it’s colour had faded away. The tail lights on the caravan were also faded so they were replaced with LED type (no more light bulb problems). The LED tails lights did not have a built in number plate light so one of these was added under the number plate shining up. The wiring to the trailer plug coming out of the draw bare was exposed so we removed the plug, installed heat shrink tubing over the wires and re-installed the plug.

You can follow the renovation progress by visiting our gallery.

We purposely went for any older, but newer style caravan that we can modernize and ad some of the items mentioned on our website www.caravanersfriend.com.

Please return to view future blogs that we will be listing as we pimp our caravan.

Regards
The Caravaners Friend