View Single Post
Old 04-06-2004, 11:09 AM   #5
Bill
Site Team
 
Bill's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: The mountains of Scottsdale, AZ, and the beaches of Maine
Posts: 10,088
Default Re:Raising and Lowering

John -

You shouldn't have to struggle or get red-faced to open or close the TM. I simply step up to mine, hook my fingers under the lower edge, and lean back a bit. The shells come up slowly, but with little effort.

I find that the ease of opening is quite sensitive to fore-and-aft levelling. If you are not level, one shell will be extra-hard to open, and one will be extra-easy. Do you find that both shells are equally difficult to open?

If you consider tweaking the torsion bars, you have to remember that making the shells easier to open will make them harder to close. You are looking for a balance. With that in mind, let me ask:

When you open, do the shells reach the final position easily? Do you have to struggle to get them to move through the last 3 or 4 inches? Or do they seem to whiz past the proper position, requiring you to push them back?

When you close, does either shell tend to close too easily, and kind of slam down against the stops, rather than coasting to a nice stop just above the latch? They should not hit the stops.

If the shells are hard to open, but close too easily, then a tweak of the torsion bars is in order. We had a thread here, more than a year ago, I think, about how to do this. I think the info came from Denny_A. Search for it.

Regarding door pins - when you say retainers, you are referring to the shiny bent metal clips which accept and retain the posts on the door, right? I haven't had a problem here, but I can make a couple observations. First, when you are popping the door into position, it is easy to miss these clips entirely, and the posts end up beside (rather than inside) the clips. When that happens, the posts appear to pop out very easily, of course, because they were never really in. Second, as time has gone by, my clips have gotten better at gripping the posts, not worse. I think it is because the plating has worn off the clips, and the original film of lube is long gone from the posts and internal surface of the clips. The dry rough surfaces grip almost too well now. You might consider wiping both of the mating surfaces with a solvent-dipped rag to remove the film of lubrication that may be present.

Bill
Bill is offline   Reply With Quote