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Old 08-16-2010, 10:27 AM   #3
MisterP
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Here is the text from the link "TM lower clam shell repairs" - no pictures remain:


Trailmanor lower clam shell repairs page!

This is the old wood that was in my trailer. Some of it was so rotted, I could squeeze it into shapes like silly putty! Tho it hadn't rained in quite some time, it was still all wet on the bottom section. That was ok though, just made it easier to get it out of the trailer. This picture shows the old wood next to the replacement, about 4' of aluminum tubing. This replaced out all the wood from the very front, to the first pocket stop where the travel arm goes up into the trailer.

Here's another picture of the wood, as well as some of the screws that were in there. Notice the screws are all almost gone! You will notice the long pin that is the one that goes into the aluminum stop at the front of the camper, it was rusted and almost gone, so I had to come up with a replacement for that. I'll detail that part in a minute.

In the above pic, you can see where I have knocked/pulled most of the old wood out, as you can see from the previous pictures, most of it came out in large chunks. Also, you will notice the outter aluminum skin wraps around the bottom. I had to bend it slightly out to get the old wood out. One thing that helped me was to re-bend it back in a little more than needed just before adding the aluminum tubing so when it went in, it was all flush again.

In the above pic, you can see where I've added the aluminum/treated wood combo. As you can see, the aluminum skin that wraps around is back flush with the aluminum tubing. Had I not bent it back like I mentioned before, it'd be coming out instead of flush. As you can see, the wall is still separated at the front, that's something I'll have to fix when I get to it. Hopefully soon. All I need to aquire is a thin bracket that I can bend at an angle to fix it. (Replacing the old wood in the front section as well.) I have a diagram I can scan to detail this as soon as I remember to bring it home from work.

Here is some of the wood that came out of the other side. As you can see, it's so rotted, it can be formed like silly putty! Those screws are some of the ones that came out of that side, they are almost gone as well. They appear in the pic to be ok, but there is little to NO threads on them.

As I noted before, I found the old pins that go into the aluminum tubing in the front of the bottom section rusted and almost completely gone, as well as bent. So I had to find a way to replace it. After a few mins digging around the rather large selection of stuff at my local hardware store, I had found something called a "dowel" screw....it was close, but there were threads that would have had to go down in the aluminum tubing which would have caused excessive wear and tear. At the advice of my friendly hardware store guy, I purchased 2 lag screws for about $0.15 apiece, and simply cut the heads off with my dremel tool! It worked really well, then after cutting the heads off, I simply ground down the rough edges and voila'! Pin problem solved. )

See, here is the finished pin in place ready for service. It works really well as later after this pic was taken, I got the shell back in the pin where it's supposed to be. On an interesting side note, you will notice the "C" clamps in various of these photos. What I had to do to get "to" the rotten wood was remove all the staples that held the bottom part of the lower seal in place. Well, being as you can't really staple them back into aluminum, I simply used the "C" clamps to hold the vinal in place under the aluminum skin, then drilled all my pilot holes into the aluminum tubing through the vinal, using the existing holes as guides that were in the aluminum strip on the bottom. Then I simply run my screws up through the whole thing, and it's all ready to go!