Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill
I'm not sure either - the mention of lag bolts and torsion rods has me a bit confused. Maybe this?
On each side of the trailer, under the edge of the floor, there is a metal bracket which the torsion bars pass through. The bracket holds the torsion bar ends in place, specifically up against the floor of the trailer. If these brackets come loose, the torsion bars drop down, which means the shell drops. These brackets are each held in place with four sturdy upward-pointing fasteners, which go up into the wood floor frame, so wood rot is a first thought. But the fasteners turn out to be machine-threaded bolts, not lag screws. The fact that they are bolts implies that they go through the wood, and into nuts somewhere above the floor frame - but inaccessible inside the wall.
Some of our members - including me - have been surprised to discover those brackets very loose, and in my case, several of the bolts had actually dropped out and gone missing. Thinking that the nuts had come off the ends of the bolts, and were now bouncing around inside the wall, I panicked, wondering how to get access the upper end of the area, so that I could re-thread the nuts and washers onto the bolts.
Turns out that the nuts were apparently secured somehow to the top surface of the wood. I was able to simply push the bolts upward against the nuts, which didn't move. I could start turning each bolt by hand until I felt it catch the threads in the nut. Then I torqued them down quite hard with a socket wrench, and there was no sign that the nut was sinking into the surface of the wood. I assume this means there was a big flat washer, and presumably a lock washer, up there. Big relief!
This was my experience in my nearly new-at-the-time 2020 TM. Perhaps older models used lag screws into the wood, rather than bolts and nuts. If so, the changeover to bolts and nuts was a good idea.
Bill
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Thanks Bill, those are the bolts that I was talking about. I said, "Torque rods" and should have said, "Torsion bars"....... tomatoes/tomatoes........
Shane is probably correct on our 2009 model. It did seem like there are nuts of some sort in there because I was able to torque those bolts down pretty good.
If I ever have that happen again, I will add some wood glue. Good suggestion Shane.