OT - RTV Silicone Not Curing

I replaced some trim around a window when I was painting my house a while back. I caulked it with 100% RTV silicone. It had been sitting in the garage for a while and was apparently past its shelf life because it never cured. I bought some new stuff and it set like it should on another window I did. Silicone is kinda a pain to clean up so I have just left it as is. I'm curious if there any common chemical I can maybe spray on the uncured RTV that would make is cure?

Today I just got done welding up the cast aluminum oil pan on my car since I it on a rock on a dirt road this weekend. Its beyond me why they went with cast aluminum that cracks and leaks vs stamped steel that bends and holds oil. Welds turned out ok but was hard to keep the porosity at bay due to having been contaminated with oil all its life. Pan holds water and does not leak but I figured I would put some RTV over the welds for good measure. RTV is not setting up... Going to pickup a new tube but got me to thinking sure would be nice if there was a way to make old RTV kick.

Never heard of silicone failing to cure. You might try spraying it with water and waiting a while. Maybe even vinegar, as I think it's humidity and acetic acid that makes it cure. Otherwise it's probably scrape and clean time.

I had some hi heat copper silicon that didn't cure......on a five foot long, cast aluminium, marine oil pan for a 1927 flathead...... I talked to Permatex, they said that was normal, it has a 1 year shelf life. Anything older than that is a gamble. So now I always dispense a small blob. If I don't see it starting to cure within half an hour I toss the tube and get another one.....Yeah, that was a BIG mess to clean up!

Conrad is on it, you have moisture curing silicone sealant, but no moisture.
There are several other kinds. Unclear why someone would even sell that stuff in AZ.
https://www.pharosproject.net/uploads/files/sources/1828/1359733874.pdf

Plenty of humidity here in AZ this time of year. Age is a definite factor in whether the material will cure in a reasonable time. I did a repair a year or so ago on a leaky downspout on my house with some mil-spec one-part silicone that I picked up in some sort of lot of USAF surplus, and it took about 9 months to cure. The tube had some way-old date on it. I didn't worry too much about it since it was out of the way, and the goo stopped the leak, even uncured. Kept checking it every month or so, and it finally seems to have cured.

All that said, lack of humidity will have an effect; if you are working in an Arizona cleanroom with no humidity-addition capability, make sure your silicones aren't past their effective dates.

had this happen with some high tech silicone+ stuff

yeah, never went off, so you might be hosed

Some silicones absolutely do not cure properly once past a certain age. I've run across a few several year old tubes that I forgot about that Itried anyway and they would not cure well - and even the ones that finally did start to cure a bit, they degraded rapidly - cracking and peeling in short order.

Odd, because I've never had an old tube fail to harden right inside the tube well before I'm ready to use it, no matter how well I try to seal it.

Its beyond me why they went with cast aluminum that cracks and leaks vs stamped steel that bends and holds oil.
On my wifes ford v6 the oil pan is a cast Al structural member that helps hold the engine block together. I belive it is not part of the crankshaft bearing system just bolted into the journals to add more strength.
Bill D.