# Prep the Coach for a Long Inland Empire Summer Before You Park It > Three or four months of inland sun will harden beads, chalk the sun side and press slide seals flat. What to do to the body before the cover goes on. Source: https://ocrv.info/blog/prep-the-coach-for-a-long-summer-before-parking Published 2026-04-30. Category: Seasonal Maintenance. About 6 minutes. Wash the coach, correct any split sealant, and cover it before a long inland summer, not after. Sustained heat and ultraviolet harden beads, chalk gelcoat on the sun side, and press slide seals into a permanent set. A breathable cover, shaded tires, and an occasional slide cycle prevent most of it. ## The short answer Heat is only half of the problem. An inland summer combines sustained air temperature with high ultraviolet load and a dark roof membrane that runs far hotter than the air around it, and a coach parked under that for three or four months ages in ways a coach in use does not. The prep is short. Wash contaminants off, repair any sealant that has already split, get the tires out of direct sun, and cover with something that breathes. ## What a parked body actually loses over three or four months Nothing about storage is passive. A membrane roof absorbs sun all day and radiates at night, and the panels underneath it expand and contract on that cycle without anyone driving the coach anywhere. Fasteners work. Beads that were flexible in spring go stiff by August and pull away from one edge of the joint they were bridging. Vertical surfaces take a different beating. Gelcoat on the wall facing the sun oxidizes, the resin at the surface breaks down, and the pigment turns loose as chalk that transfers onto your hand. Once chalk forms, the surface is porous and holds dirt, which makes it hotter, which accelerates the same process. Decals go brittle and start lifting at the edges and corners, usually at the trailing end of a graphic where the film is thinnest. Rubber does the least visible damage and the most expensive. Tire sidewalls develop fine checking in the flex zone from ozone and ultraviolet, slide seals take a set where they sit compressed, and windshield and window seals dry, shrink slightly, and lose the tack that keeps them bonded to glass. ## Fix what is already open before you cover it A cover hides problems. Anything with a gap in it when you put the cover on will be worse when you take the cover off, and you will not see it happening. Walk the whole body first with the sun low. Check the vertical seams at both rear corners, the perimeter of every window flange, the awning rail bead, the marker light and antenna flanges, and the transitions where the front cap meets the sidewall. What you are hunting for is a bead that has separated cleanly from one substrate while staying stuck to the other, which reads as a dark hairline shadow rather than a crack through the middle. That is the shape that widens. Anything you find up top belongs in a proper [roof repair](/services/roof-slide-and-awning/roof-repair) conversation rather than a tube of hardware store caulk over the existing bead. The same logic applies to a chip in gelcoat or a crack at a stress point. A hairline in a laminated sidewall that is open to weather will wick moisture into the core across a hot, humid summer and come out as a soft panel. Closing it costs a fraction of [delamination work](/services/fiberglass-and-delamination/delamination-repair) later. ## Washing matters more than waxing here Bird droppings, tree sap, road film and the fine grey grit that settles on everything inland are all acidic or abrasive or both, and baking them onto a surface for a season etches it. Wash the entire body, including the parts you cannot see from the ground, and rinse the roof properly rather than hitting it with a hose from a ladder. Dry it. A cover trapping wet organic debris against gelcoat is worse than no cover. After it is dry, a coat of a sealant or polymer product on the sun facing wall buys real protection. If the surface already chalks when you rub it, waxing over the chalk accomplishes nothing. That wall needs to be cut and polished back to sound gelcoat first, which is exactly what [gelcoat restoration](/services/fiberglass-and-delamination/gelcoat-repair) covers, and it is far better done before storage than after. ## Why a tarp is worse than most people expect A blue poly tarp seems like the cheap version of a cover. It is a different product entirely, and it does two things a fitted cover does not. It traps vapor. Poly sheeting has no permeability, so overnight condensation forms under it and stays there against the finish through the morning. Repeat that for ninety mornings and you have a moisture film sitting on gelcoat and around every window flange for hours a day. It also moves. A tarp cannot be tensioned everywhere, so the loose areas flutter in wind, and the underside of a woven poly tarp is abrasive. Flutter plus grit equals a sanded stripe wherever the tarp contacts the body, most often along the upper rub rail and across the front cap radius. That damage does not polish out at the depths a summer of it will reach, and it usually ends in [spot refinishing and blending](/services/paint-and-refinishing/spot-repair-and-blend-matching) across a whole panel. A breathable fitted cover in a woven polypropylene or similar fabric lets vapor out, holds tension at the corners, and has soft panels sewn in where it crosses the sharp edges. ## Slide seals, tires, and the parts that take a set Retract the slides. A room left extended for months collects debris on its roof, loads the mechanism continuously, and exposes seal faces that were never meant to sit in direct sun. But do not simply retract and forget. - Cycle each slide out and back once every four to six weeks so the bulb seals recover their shape instead of setting flat. - Cover the tires, or park where the sidewalls are shaded. Tire covers cost almost nothing and ultraviolet is the main driver of sidewall checking. - Set tire pressure to the sidewall figure before it sits, because a soft tire in storage flexes at the same spot for months. - Leave roof vents in a rain safe position rather than fully closed if the coach will be shut up, so trapped heat and vapor have somewhere to go. - Close the shades on the sun side. Interior fabrics and dash surfaces fade faster than the exterior does. ## Parking angle and the price the sun side pays You can choose which wall pays. Sun tracks across the south face all day, and whichever side of the coach you leave pointing that direction is the side that will chalk first, lift decals first, and dry its window seals first. If the storage lot lets you pick a slot orientation, put the door side, with all its glass, hardware and graphics, away from the sun and let the utility side take it. If you have a wall or a row of tall units to park beside, use it. Shade for even part of the afternoon changes the total load substantially. Owners who store around Jurupa Valley in open gravel lots rarely have any shade at all, in which case the cover is doing all of the work and it is worth buying a good one. ## What to do with the coach during the months it sits Visit it. Once a month, half an hour. Pull the cover back far enough to cycle the slides, walk the roof if you can do it safely, look at the tires, and check that the cover has not chafed through anywhere it crosses a corner. Re-tension the straps, because they all loosen. That single habit catches nearly everything on this list before it becomes work. ### The morning you pull it out Take the cover off and walk the body in low light before you touch anything else. Look for chalk on your palm from the sun side, decal edges that have curled, hairline shadows at seams that were tight in spring, and any tire sidewall with fine cracking in the flex area. Check that every slide still travels smoothly through its full stroke and that the seals return round rather than staying flat. Then look at the roof. If two or three things on that walk look wrong at once, the useful move is to get it evaluated before the first trip rather than after, and the [owner guides](/resources/guides) are a reasonable place to work out which items are yours and which need a bench. A [motorhome that stored well](/vehicles/rvs-and-motorhomes/class-a-diesel-pusher) shows almost nothing on that walk, and that is the whole return on an afternoon of prep in Eastvale in April. --- OCRV Center. 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887. (949) 799-3387. info@ocrvcenter.com. Serving Eastvale, California in Riverside County, about 20 miles from the shop. All work is performed in shop at the Yorba Linda facility. No mobile, roadside or on-site service is offered. Scope is body, paint, structural, fiberglass, interior and vehicle systems work. Engine rebuilds, transmission rebuilds, drivetrain work, DOT inspections and emission testing are not performed.