5th Wheel Exterior Repair

[sourdough]

Washing and waxing the trailer and DW told me she found a "crack" in the exterior of the trailer. It's under the bedroom overhang on the face of the trailer right under the battery compartment door. I couldn't see it until she put my face on it. No marks, no damage, nada but there is a slit in the material about 4" long (vertical). It is a double wall behind it so can't access it from there.

My question is what kind of material is that? I've not owned a 5th before and this is like a thin, flexible plastic covering; not filon, fiberglass or anything hard. It fits very tight and really close together (the sides of the crack) but I wanted to use something to both keep it sealed and hopefully prevent it from getting longer. Whatever it is is going to be hard to apply since when it is just sitting the crack is imperceptible and you have to depress on one side or the other to make it appear.

I haven't the slightest clue how it happened or what caused it but there is absolutely no indication it was hit (maybe by throwback from the truck) or damaged in any way. Maybe it just split for some reason but don't really like that explanation. As soon as DW gets home in about 30mins I'm going to try to run out and get a pic of it. Just running it up the flagpole in the event anyone has seen this or fixed something like it.

[sourdough]

Here are those pics. First one is up close and looks BIG but it's really very small and has 2 lighting sources on it to highlight it. In reality it's about 2 1/2" to 3" long at the most. 2nd pic is a little further away to give more context, it is barely visible from about 3' away or so.

DW reminded me of some friends that have a plastic self adhesive film across the front bottom of their 5th wheel (same place) and that might be the solution. I've not had much luck trying to source that material yet but just started. May even leave it alone, nothing but an empty, hollow wall behind it with a metal bottom.

[jasin1]

I wonder if it happened when the dealer was installing the battery’s ..maybe tried to hoist them up and scraped/split the plastic.
If your gonna cover it I’d probably drill small holes..really small holes at each end of the crack to prevent it from spreading use a little epoxy to seal it and then cover it with a vinyl graphic sticker that matches some of your other graphics on the trailer..go to a sign shop or truck lettering shop and have a horizontal 4” wide by width of front of trailer and it will look like it’s supposed to be there..it could even have a white border so it doesn’t look like it’s to close to the door frame

[chuckster57]

I’ve replaced a few of those, and I think it was filon. Not hard, but definitely not fun.

[sourdough]

Thanks guys. I've looked at that thing, pushed on it (lightly) and studied on it quite a bit - head cocked and all. Best I can figure it may be like Justin mentioned and it happened when they put in the nice battery boxes, cutoffs and wiring on the bulkhead; I can think of no other way that material could get damaged like that - or at the factory (you just can't see it...thanks DW). In the end it's a ????

We see so much/many bad things going wrong with someone's trailer this is just miniscule in real life, a 1 on a scale of 10. I just don't want it to get worse but I suspect it won't since I don't believe it is anything structural going on - just my luck. Since there is no way to try to seal/adhere inside that tiny little split I'm going to do something I've never done...or thought of. I'm going to buy a quantity (smallest) of the 3M self adhesive protectant, cut a little strip about 3/8"W x 4" tall and put over it!! I figure that fixes any water penetration, won't look terrible like any "bonding agent" and will also help in keeping it from flexing and getting larger. We'll see; the RV adventure always has hidden "surprises" behind doors number 1,2,3 and beyond!! Thanks again.