I believe the factory over did it with the butyl tape on my slide rooms. Every time I put them out I have butyl smeared down the sides of both rooms, under the bedroom slide and I found out yesterday on the length of the roof of my main slide. I just keep cleaning the sides with fiberglass polish and that takes it off but I'm concerned about the roof. Has anyone had luck removing this sticky stuff off the roof? I sure don't want to damage the EPDM roofing material.
Butyl Tape
- Thread starter Coyote
- Start date
brianharrison
Well-known member
I am having a difficult time picturing your exact issue. I am aware of butyl tape behind the window frame flange to seal against the fibreglass, but I am unsure of butyl tape that would be near the EPDM roof of the slide, or under your bedroom slide.
The slide seals are all around the slide, but I am pretty sure they are not butyl tape, they are a rubber compound buy not continually sticky. My slide seals left marks when new but these marks wiped off easily and stopped fairly quickly after using the slides a number of times (dust from road travel, camping etc) - but I digress.
Excess butyl tape around windows can be removed carefully with a plastic scraper, and cleaned up with goo gone or other similar products, be prepared to re-polish with Gel-Gloss or similar as Goo Gone removes wax as well. Do not use Goo Gone or any petroleum based solvents on EPDM. Dicors web site [link] helps a lot with cleaning maintenance tips for EPDM. THere are a few other threads here that discuss this issue (the search function will help).
Hope this is what you were looking for.
Take care,
Brian
The slide seals are all around the slide, but I am pretty sure they are not butyl tape, they are a rubber compound buy not continually sticky. My slide seals left marks when new but these marks wiped off easily and stopped fairly quickly after using the slides a number of times (dust from road travel, camping etc) - but I digress.
Excess butyl tape around windows can be removed carefully with a plastic scraper, and cleaned up with goo gone or other similar products, be prepared to re-polish with Gel-Gloss or similar as Goo Gone removes wax as well. Do not use Goo Gone or any petroleum based solvents on EPDM. Dicors web site [link] helps a lot with cleaning maintenance tips for EPDM. THere are a few other threads here that discuss this issue (the search function will help).
Hope this is what you were looking for.
Take care,
Brian
Last edited:
rebootsemi
Well-known member
I too am confused with the issue, on our Sundance there was a couple of places on the slide outs that got smeared with some seal caulking compound. Cleaned it off with acetone and it never came back.
Behind the rubber slide seals they used butyl tape. It sticks to the back of the rubber seals and as the slide goes in and out it smears butyl on the sides of the room and under the bedroom slide. The same thing has happened on the EPDM roof of the slide. I called the factory yesterday and they recommended I take it back to the dealer and have them clean it up or call the EPDM manufacture to find out the proper product to clean the rubber roof. I'll call Dicor. Thanks for your input.
brianharrison
Well-known member
Mineral spirits are recommended by Dicor to spot clean EPDM roofs where there are stubborn stains.
Hope this helps.
I am going to check what is behind my rubber slide seals - you have me curious. Thanks for the input.
Brian
Hope this helps.
I am going to check what is behind my rubber slide seals - you have me curious. Thanks for the input.
Brian
Last edited:
This didn't seem right, so I checked the Dicor site under "care and maintenance". They only specify mineral spirits to only clean the lap sealant areas, when applying new sealant over old. The mineral spirits that I know are petroleum based and should not be used on EPDM per Dicor.
brianharrison
Well-known member
Yes mineral spirits are recommended by Dicor to clean stubborn stains and around openings for new lap sealant or over old lap sealant.
Thanks for the clarification - I should have said Spot clean. I'll edit my original post to clarify.
Brian
Brian
