We wanted to re-cover the Penthouse bumpers, or whatever they are called, and figured we should go ahead and replace all of the penthouse hardware while we were at it. We read Jage's write-up (
viewtopic.php?p=41598#p41598) over ten times so we felt pretty good going into this. We had some concerns taking all of the bumper bolts out at once but we didn't have any issues with that at all.
The way our top bolts are positioned we decided to go predominantly with 3 inch washers instead of 4 inch or the 2.5 inch ones that were installed. That would prevent them from hanging off any of the ridges. We did use 2.5 inch washers for the bolts in the depressions since anything larger would not fit. There's a second bolt behind the rear latch, doesn't seem to do anything, that was slightly off center in a depression that required a 2 inch washer. All bolts are .25 inch in varying lengths from 4inches to a single 1.5 inch for behind the rear latch.
As in Jage's case, our washers were not correctly sized so some cracking and chipping was apparent. Replacing the hardware with the correct size is essential, in our opinion, so we are glad we decided to go ahead and do this. Our local Ace only carried flat washers for .25 bolts up to 2 inches so we had to order the 2.5 and 3 inch sizes from Grainger. They had all of the other washers and bolts we needed. We ordered the butyl roll from McMaster-Carr as recommended in Jage's topic, took about a week to be delivered which allowed the rest of the planning.
Total time was about 8 hours. This should have been shorter but we guessed wrong about some bolt lengths and had to stop to go buy some more. That happened twice. We did pull a test bolt before starting but our rear bumper requires bolts longer than our front so we didn't expect that, same for the super short one for the one behind the rear latch. We also had to remove and re-cover the bumpers so that time would not be necessary if you are just planning on replacing the hardware.
Before starting we washed the roof and used a chamois to dry any areas that was holding water. While it dried completely we gathered all of the tools we would be using.
What we did:
Removed the existing hardware and the solar panel track we will not be using.
Cleaned all of the butyl off by using a plastic scraper and a little acetone. Notice the triangle shaped hole, probably from the incorrectly paired washer.
New washers prepared with butyl tape. We just stuck the washer to the tape and trimmed it with a pair of old kitchen scissors. We then peeled the paper off and used one of the old bolts to poke through and make the hole. You could probably just squish the butyl out when placing the washer and clean off the bolt as needed.
To be continued...