It's such a drag when summer leaves. Little by little I feel it slipping away. What remains is cold. The clouds creep. The trees twinge of color. The breeze doesn't bite but it hints of teeth; no longer a pleasant reprieve from the bold sun. The bold sun that no longer climbs high into the sky. The shadows lengthen. Autumn is almost here.
We have to seal Bessie. She's had phantom leaks since we adopted her. We finally gave up and duct-taped her questionable seams, and then the summer came, the rains departed, and the leaks were no longer an issue.
This weekend, we peeled what was left of the worst-duct-tape-known-to-mankind off Bessie's seams and had a monster of a time removing the adhesive off the aluminum (Home Depot you suck for selling me that duct tape). It was awful. Goo Gone saved the day (Home Depot thank you for the spray bottle of Goo Gone).
To do things right, we're using a dental syringe (Water Pik) to apply the caulk to Bessie's seams. The results are beautiful - you can barely see the bead of caulk that forms the water barrier between riveted aluminum panels. It's slow and tedious work.
Before we were able to caulk, we had a number of steps: remove tape, goo gone residual adhesive, clean the seam, and polish the seam. So I got to use Gord's Polish on the leaking endcaps, which was rewarding until I gunked up the Russian Polisher with adhesive and it stopped working so well.
Here are some photos of the weekends work. Can you see a difference in Bessie's shine?
Here's a before-and-after pair...
