Plastic side panels on windows.

Hi,
Today I noticed one of the black window covers/side panels on our Topaz had dropped off in the recent bad weather. Some kind soul had pushed it under the van, but the plywood mounts it was screwed to are pretty rotten.

I'm thinking of getting the glass vinyl wrapped rather than replacing the rotten ply, but either way, I was wondering if anyone had experience of removing the plywood from the glass? It's presumably bonded with something pretty resiliant (it was too cold and wet to do much investigation today) and I don't want to break the windows. Has anyone done this?

Cheers,
Graham.

Have a read od this thread....

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Thanks Paul, I saw that thread, but there's no mention of how to get the rotten ply off the glass. It would have been nice to see some photos of the finished job.

Our local signwriters will vinyl-wrap glass. I'm hoping thay might take the glass out and put the vinyl on the inside where it can't get scratched off, but I'll have to go down and ask them.

Cheers,
Graham.

I'm in the process of repairing the nearside panel on our Duetto but there's no window underneath just a glass fibre blank where a window would have been, a previous owner must have had an argument with something solid requiring a replacement side door and rear quarter, not done very well I might add, so I'm trying to improve on the repair of the broken panel to smarten up the old girl. These panels are made of unobtainium as I got the last of the smaller panels from AS on a recent visit!
Graham

So, the first window had three strips of marine ply which was stuck to the glass with mastic. This scraped off fairly easily with a wallpaper scraper. So far so good.

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When I removed the second panel, I discovered that the previous owner had experienced the same problem, so had replaced the three strips of ply with an entire window sized piece of ply, which was stuck to the glass with industrial quantities of silicone bathroom sealant.

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I've managed to get it off the glass, but it's on the paintwork surrounding the window (so can't use metal scrapers there) and it's also stuck to the rubber seal around the glass.

There is a chemical available for removing hardened silicone from the shower cubicles... but will it dissolve the window seal as well?

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