1973 Starcraft roof material

[will]

Greetings to all,

I am trying to identify and located the exterior aluminum material used on a 1973 Starcraft Galaxy 6 Camper roof. This materail is a thin textured (hammer finish) baked enamal coated (white) Material. Anyone know the trade name and suppliers of this material.

Thank You

[austinado16]

Google something like "textured sheet aluminum" and see what you get.  Or call StarcraftRV and talk to the guys in their tech dept.

[will]

Thanks, but i have already performed searches by textured aluminum sheet, roofing, hammer finish aluminum, baked enamal textured aluminum. All i found was .013 aluminum bonded to plywood or plastic panels. This material appears to be the aluminum i am looking for exept i need the aluminum sheet not bonded to plywood.


Regards

Will

[austinado16]

I can't remember if it was on this forum or over on Popupportal, but someone was doing a full-on roof build and they found it.

You might just call StarcraftRV then and get the info straight from them. They may not build roofs with that material any longer, but I'm sure their tech guys know where the manufacturer(s) are.

[will]

After further research I have found this material. It is called Stucco Embossed Aluminum. So Far a cannot find a supplier in the US. I can buy all I want from China as long as I place a minumun order of 100 tons.

I am sure it is available here in the US is small qty. I will continue to search.


Will

[will]

Thank You austinado16 I checked popupportal and found //www.All-rite.com they have siding in rolls and list seamed factory roof. I'm waiting for a call back. Siding is at least 5.25 per square ft which is much too costly.  I can buy smoth aircraft alum sheeting and seam it for much less or most likely, I suspect i will be very carefully salvaging the existing aluminum.

[austinado16]

Glad you found more info and a possible source.  I googled "RV aluminum roof sheet" and found a place that way too.

If you existing is still intact, I'll bet you can save it.  I had to rebuild the front face of my roof, replace about 18" of the sides at the front, all the ceiling luan, and the 1x1 stringer that runs down the middle of the roof to about 3' into the roof.  I was able to save all of my roofing and all of the 1 by styrofoam insulation panels.

Once all back together, it is hard to tell anything's been done.  You should be able to find my thread from last spring/summer about rebuilding the roof.

You might consider painting your finished product with EPDM (industrial rubber roofing) and then it'll be bulletproof.

[will]

I may salvage the existing roof. It is creased and split where a limb fell on the rear edge. I can straighten it and with enough coating make it appear pretty close to good as new. I would have thought that the embossed metal would be available and relativly inexpensive compaired to the time spent to carefully remove the foam and adhesive without further damaging it. The wood structure will be total rebuild. Not enough remaining to rebuild.

The roofing material i found at All-rite turned out to be corregated which would prevent solid bond to the foam and bending over front/rear corners.

Another option is to build it from 4 X 8 .025 2024 aluminum with four lateral seams kinda like old mobile homes. Problem with this is it would require either polish or high quality paint. I have no time to polish often and quality paint that would last would jack the price up tremendously.

Somewhere, someone should have this material. Havn't called Starcraft yet. I called but everyone was out to Lunch. I'll try again tomorrow.

Will

[austinado16]

Mine had 4 or 6 nice holes drilled all the way through on that rotted front face where the PO (original owners) put long bolts through to the interior and bolted a piece of 1x6 redwood across the inside of the front face to reinforce it!

So I had those holes to take care of, along with a bunch of perforations from the roof sweating and sort of electrolosizing/rotting from the inside out where it was wet in the area where the front face plywood (OSB) met the 1x1 cross member at the top of the face.

I filled all the holes with 50 year silicone sealant, and then went over that with the self leveling roof caulk which is paintable.  Then I bought some Sherwynn Williams oil based paint mixed one of their standard colors that was very close to the 1980's tan of my roof, cleaned the roof and painted it with a roller.  1qt. exactly did the whole roof (11'x6.5').

It's been a year now, and it's holding up fine and from a few feet away, you'd never know about the butchery :yikes:  (I mean skilled workmanship) that it took to salvage it.  Here's what it looked like torn apart:


And after the repair outside(before paint):


And after the repair inside:


And the outside right after painting (but before polishing/waxing the rest of the body:

[will]

Looks Good.

Here are is a picture of the rear of my Galaxy

[will]

Oh well, Picture file to too big. I'll crop it anf try again later

[ScouterMom]

Will,

 I have a 1973 Starcraft Starmaster 6 that I had to do some roof repairs to, and need to do still more.

I have not found a replacement for the sheet aluminum, either - and if I were to replace my roof, it would have to be inexpensive.

I did have to remove about 1/3 of the foam glued to the aluminum, as it was mildewed and channeling water.  My son came up with the easiest method so far -

We were working on it in the un-heated garage, in March, with a Mr Buddy space heater to keep us warm enough to work.  He found that if he warmed the putty knife he was using to scrape the foam off, on the front of the heater, that the hot knife would melt the adhesion between the foam and the aluminum, without gougeing the aluminum. It cooled very quickly, so he worked with two - one heating while using the other, then switching.

If I had to remove more of the foam (which I might, I have to replace the other 3 walls of the lid) I might try a heat gun, or some other method of heating.

On mine, the paint finish is almost completely gone. it needs paint, or something - but there is no point in putting a new finish on it if I still have to peel it back - so I will be painting it once I get the whole roof done.  I'd be very interested to follow your progress, if you have any photos to share.  If it helps, check out my albums, I took many photos of my fixes - and am still working on it.

Laura

[will]

I found web pictures of of the hot putty knife method, Maybe it was yours.

I found two sources for the metal. Both companies offer a mill finish (no texture) 102" wide cut to length. (All-Rite $5.25 sq ft) The Metal  Company offers seamed pop up roof like what is on my starcraft. The material is not cheap and must be shipped via conmmon carrier which is generaly very expensive. the company the California/Georgia will allow you to pick it up. I havn't spoke with the Colorado company.

The Metal Company //www.themetalcompany.com, Arvada Colorada 303-423-4425

All-Rite Custom manufacturing. //www.all-rite.com, Holister, CA. and Conyers, GA. 866-255-5266