Roof - Satellite Dish Removal

Our 1996 Safari Sahara motorhome came equipped with a King-Dome satellite system for television.  Since Laura and I had done away with our cable and later satellite service at home (we live off the Internet for all of our TV watching needs), we didn't have much need for the dish.

From what I could observe, the dish was held down by four fasteners that went through the plastic base it was attached to and into the roof.  The cables from the dish went forward and traveled into the coach through a hole drilled into the front cap.

King-Dome satellite dish in original position.

Removal was pretty straightforward.  The dish itself was light, and after the four fasteners, it came right up.  Unhooking the cables inside the coach located in the front overhead compartments allowed me to pull the cables out while standing on the roof and free the dish.

Former location of the dish will all the Dicor cleaned up.

Beneath the dish was an unwanted surprise.  To prop up the base, the original installation had drilled sixteen screws into the roof.  Fortunately they hadn't leaked, but what a poor idea.

Front cap shows where the cables entered the coach.

Now faced with nearly twenty holes to seal, I decided to use epoxy and fiberglass stranded cloth.  To prep I sanded each area to be sealed with coarse sand paper in order to scuff up the surface and expose raw Filon fiberglass roofing material.  I cut out disks of fiberglass cloth and then mix the epoxy.

Each area was coated with epoxy, then the fiberglass cloth was applied, followed by wetting out the cloth.  This step was repeated to eventually get two layers of cloth.

Epoxy and fiberglass cloth patches in place.

Once the epoxy set, everything was coated with elastomeric roof coating.

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