It was raining — a heavy type of rain that is not only hard to overlook … but illustrates problems that are hard to overlook. The problem we had in our 1965 Clark Cortez motorhome: leaks and there were tons of them.
From water puddling onto our dash to water streaming in at the top of door and window seals all the way down — Our cab had only a small portion of our leak problems.
Behind the cab, the water continued to poured in — Ceiling panels were buckling under the weight of the water, wood was stained, seats and carpet were soaked and also stained, and counters and sinks were topped with puddles of water. There was even water dripping from our heater and air conditioner units.
Andy and I starred for awhile in shock. If the rain kept coming down, our ceiling would cave in.
“I guess this means we know what our next job will be,” he said and he was right. After fabricating our 1965 Clark Cortez motorhome’s air intake system, instead of moving forward on our mechanical overhaul, we now needed to investigate our leaks.
The more unfortunate news is this is when our scope creep started — and before I get into more on what I mean, pause with me one second because I found this gem of a definition of Wikipedia:
“Scope creep in project management refers to changes, continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project’s scope, at any point after the project begins. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered harmful.“
Great, so we can look forward to another Cortez plot to derail us so instead of new mechanical-work plans, we now needed to investigate leaks … which turned into removing one buckling ceiling panel to find water-logged insulation … and that’s when we discovered the rust — rust so severe that it had eaten through our ceiling.
All in all, Andy and I had a serious problem before us, which meant we needed to bump up making our RV watertight, but that plan required several different ventures.
First, we needed to replace the cracked panes of glass and replace our window and door seals.
Second, we needed to remove our soaked insulation.
Third, we needed to cut out and weld in new metal.
But I’m getting ahead of myself: Each of these are separate stories …
