TrailManor Owner's Forum - View Single Post - Hold-down latch and shell trim pulling away from front shell

07-08-2010, 11:21 AM

I assume the following issue is rare, since I can't find much of anything about it by searching the forums, but I'm hopeful that one of you more experienced TM owners have some knowledge of what may be at work here.

After we had arrived and set up our '98 3124 for a 4-day weekend over Independence Day, I noticed that the trim along the bottom of the front shell, which includes the main hold-down latch, was pulling loose from the shell. Since the previous week I'd finally decided to attempt adjusting the torsion bars on the front shell, I'm afraid that may have caused the separation, although I can't figure out why.

As you can see from the attached photos, at its widest point, the separation is about 1/2". I only turned each of the four bolts about a half turn tighter on the torsion bars, which doesn't seem like it would be enough to alter the latch-down that drastically, but the results would seem to say otherwise. I would have thought that this would have been caused by mis-adjusting the closure stops which I didn't do and in fact, don't recall any of the how-to postings on the torsion adjustment mentioning that adjusting the closure stops was necessary at the same time. Anyway, I have several questions:

1. Is it likely that the torsion bar adjustment is the cause of this separation or does it seem more like a coincidence of timing?

2. Regardless of the cause, does this separation hint at a deeper problem with the front shell, such as wood rot or something?

3. If the torsion bar adjustment was to blame, will repairing the separation and backing out the recent adjustment alleviate a recurrence of the problem?

4. The biggest question is how does one go about fixing this kind of thing so it doesn't recur? I assume that this is anchored into the wood frame, but can't tell that for sure without disassembling more of the shell than may need to be done.

I've had to fix where the front shell attaches to the side panel by using metal strapping (thanks to the suggestion of Mario, one of the techs at The Car Show), so I'm familiar to a degree with the shell construction. But that type of fix doesn't apply here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

07-08-2010, 11:21 AM	#1
jferrarello Guest Posts: n/a	Hold-down latch and shell trim pulling away from front shell I assume the following issue is rare, since I can't find much of anything about it by searching the forums, but I'm hopeful that one of you more experienced TM owners have some knowledge of what may be at work here. After we had arrived and set up our '98 3124 for a 4-day weekend over Independence Day, I noticed that the trim along the bottom of the front shell, which includes the main hold-down latch, was pulling loose from the shell. Since the previous week I'd finally decided to attempt adjusting the torsion bars on the front shell, I'm afraid that may have caused the separation, although I can't figure out why. As you can see from the attached photos, at its widest point, the separation is about 1/2". I only turned each of the four bolts about a half turn tighter on the torsion bars, which doesn't seem like it would be enough to alter the latch-down that drastically, but the results would seem to say otherwise. I would have thought that this would have been caused by mis-adjusting the closure stops which I didn't do and in fact, don't recall any of the how-to postings on the torsion adjustment mentioning that adjusting the closure stops was necessary at the same time. Anyway, I have several questions: 1. Is it likely that the torsion bar adjustment is the cause of this separation or does it seem more like a coincidence of timing? 2. Regardless of the cause, does this separation hint at a deeper problem with the front shell, such as wood rot or something? 3. If the torsion bar adjustment was to blame, will repairing the separation and backing out the recent adjustment alleviate a recurrence of the problem? 4. The biggest question is how does one go about fixing this kind of thing so it doesn't recur? I assume that this is anchored into the wood frame, but can't tell that for sure without disassembling more of the shell than may need to be done. I've had to fix where the front shell attaches to the side panel by using metal strapping (thanks to the suggestion of Mario, one of the techs at The Car Show), so I'm familiar to a degree with the shell construction. But that type of fix doesn't apply here. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Attached Thumbnails