I need to know if the roof on my '05 FR Grand Surveyor has any type of rafters/trusses. From what I have seen with the air conditioner unit and the bath power vent fan completely removed the roof is constructed using a piece of the interior roof paneling (the white stuff), 1 1/4" thick styrofoam, a thin layer of plywood (I call this Luan plywood) maybe 1/8" thick and the rubber roof membrane on top of all that. Where each roofing panel meets side-to-side within the camper there is a decorative strip running from side to side. We are working on some type of device to raise the panel the A/C unit sits on back to level to prevent water pooling on the roof only at the A/C unit. I'm betting that with this type of roof construction there are no rafter/truss type members within the roof. I've read where some people have removed the A/C unit, then peeled the rubber membrane back carefully and inserted piece of plywood under the roof membrane to raise the area the A/C unit sits on to improve drainage. This does not address the problem when the entire roof panel is sagging. We have used lasers to measure both the interior and exterior of the panels along the entire unit and only this one panel with the A/C unit is sagging. As of now we are thinking of making some type of crowned aluminum trusses that would fit inside the camper raising the roof panel approximately one-inch (1") in the middle fore and aft of the A/C unit. Each of these trusses would sit on two aluminum tubes placed against the opposite interior walls with adjustment screws at the bottom of each tube. There is plenty of room for what we have crudely drawn up. The exterior measurements show that the panel is sagging closer to 1 1/4". We used some boards and two screw jacks on the inside to get the bottom of the roof panel level, fore and aft of the A/C unit, and that is where we got the one-inch measurement. With the roof panel leveled within the camper there was only 1/8" of sag on the top (roof) of the panel. We're just not sure yet if we should raise the bottom of the roofing panel, which would be the inside, that extra 1/8" or not. I'm sure this sounds as if two of the Three Stooges are doing this but I have 42 years of machinist/millwright/fabrication to my credit and Steve is a structural engineer who has gotten into solving this problem. Hey, maybe we can come up with something to help others with this problem. Stay tuned
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