Talked to our nearest siding supplier

Aug 27, 2014 10:56:38 GMT -8 wolvenwood said:

Talked with the really nice lady at a Tulsa area supplier today.
I am looking at them because they are only 4 hours from our home near KC and we can avoid trucking costs if we run down and haul the product home ourselves.


A couple things are going to make re-skinning and re-roofing the '67 NuWa more challenging/expensive than we thought, depending on how we go.



The roof: We can either buy a single sheet of bare aluminum 103" wide x any length or get a seamed roof. We would cut the bare aluminum to width and paint it ourselves. We'd also have to put s-locks on ourselves, or come up with some other watertight method of joining to the lower panels front and back. Painting options would be to spray with our own rig or have a pro do it. We are already planning on painting the turquoise accent panels, so I suppose this option just makes that part of the project bigger, and a different color. Of course it's aluminum so we don't HAVE to paint it...


Upsides to a seamed roof is no painting and s-locks can be factory made.
Downside, more expensive, maybe by a lot. But living in the stormy, often wet midwest, I am hugely averse to roof seams, so am still leaning to the seamless roof, even with the additional up-front labor.


As for the sides, the surprise was that they don't like to fabricate longish panels at greater widths than 21". I need lengths between 10' and 11' on the the driver side wall, so we would have a couple more horizontal joins than we'd planned. No biggie, just a little more carpentry for stapling to.
I still prefer that to vertical seams.


We did not talk price yet as it's all by square foot and I don't have my measurements complete yet.



Thoughts?

My thought is you are NOT talking to "a real" RV metal supplier.  A RV metal supplier will have no problem supplying you with any length metal you desire, and it comes standard in 48" widths.  You do not want to do your own "S" Locks.  You want the "S" Locks done at the roof factory.

The 103" rolled aluminum is made for the roofs of semi truck trailers.  I have used it on two trailers and would not recommend you go that route for several reasons.

The cost of the RV metal is about $16 per linear foot, and the Semi truck roof skin is about $13 per linear foot so it's about the same in the big picture.  Note, a linear foot of "RV metal" is 12" by 48" of material.  They will sell you narrow strips but will charge you for the 48" roll size.  The 103" metal is .040" thick, and the RV metal is .025" to .030" thick.  The semi truck roof skin is available to you "locally" at any large semi trailer repair shop.

There's nothing wrong with a quality seamed RV roof, just don't buy a trailer roof skin with the crinkly seams because it looks crappy.  You want the smooth flat seams.

Call another place, before you buy. 

Aug 28, 2014 5:14:14 GMT -8 bigbill said:

The thicker metal sounds like a better deal BUT it is much harder to bend and fold over the edge. you will have to cut it a lot to get a smooth nice finished appearance with no humpy flat spots.

Bill, It's not that hard to work with the thicker skin material. It's still very soft, easy to cut with hand snips, easy to bend and staple, and the difference is .030" to .040", or to say it another way, it's just over three human hairs (3 x .003") thicker, not a very big deal.

Without getting into all the details, I have done two teardrops, and one 13' canned ham with it, and I would not use it again for a couple of reasons. The material is not high quality. It has irregularities rolled into it during the manufacturing process. If you want to leave it unfinished, it looks like KA-KA!  No matter how smooth you think the roof/front/back framing was, you will get what I call "puckers" at the windows when you try to do a 20'+ "one piece" roof/front/back without using the standard "S" Locks.  The cosmetic quality would not be a problem on the roof of a semi trailer, which is the purpose for this material.  This 103" semi trailer material is sold without any coating.  The mill finish RV material (both sides and roofs) have a clear coating to prevent oxidation.

The "smooth" seamed replacement roof skins from Hemet Valley are custom made to your exact specifications and cannot be beat, IMO.

I might feel less strongly about this, if I was not able to make the 200 mile round trip to "will call" them from Hemet Valley.  I know both freight cost, and shipping damage are big issues for some of our builders. 

There's never a easy answer.