Hold-down stirrup repair

[Bill]

On our last trip, the stirrup half of the door-side hold-down latch ripped out of the front shell of our TM. This seems to be fairly common - there have been several threads discussing it. It turns out that the stirrup is attached to the body with two big sheet metal screws - but the body at this point is just a piece of 1-inch x 1-inch square aluminum tubing, and the sheet metal screws don't get enough of a grip in the thin tube wall. The factory apparently has a fix, but the fix is simply the addition of more sheet metal screws, and a couple members have reported that the fix rips out, too.

A real fix would involve thicker material, machine screws rather than sheet metal screws, and some way to spread the stress along some of the length of the tube, rather than concentrating it at the position of the two sheet metal screws. Following that thought, I implemented a more permanent fix today (I hope!).

First, remove the trim strip along the bottom of the wall - it is held in place with half a dozen small sheet metal screws, and the stirrup mounting bolts went through it. If the ripout was a doozy, like mine, this strip is all twisted and bent, and you'll need to straighten it. You can see in the photo that it is still pretty wavy in mine.

Now clean out the holes in the trim strip, and in the aluminum tube, where the original screws ripped out. These holes are an inch apart. Drilling them out to 5/16-inch is fine - we have no further use for them.

Next, get a piece of steel strip 3/4-inch wide, 1/4-inch thick, and 8 - 12 inches long. Home Depot, etc, has it. In the middle of the strip, drill two holes an inch apart, and tap them with 1/4-20 threads.

Now, get access to the end of the aluminum tube. To do this, you need to open the trailer, and remove the upper half of the door. If you don't already have a square-drive screwdriver, this is your excuse to get one. With the door off, you almost have access to the open end of the tube. You will need to cut out a small amount of aluminum trim - this cut will be covered when you reinstall the door.

Slide the steel strip into the open end of the tube, and push it along until the threaded holes in the strip line up with the original screw holes (now cleaned out). Reinstall the stirrup using 1/4-20 x 1 inch hex bolts with split lockwashers.

Hope the photo helps make sense of this. I took it just before re-assembling the door. The arrow points to the stirrup that ripped out (now reinstalled). The cutout opening for access into the aluminum tube is circled.

Thanks to Windbreaker for good offline discussion of this fix.

Bill