That's a lot of good information Lars, Thanks for the details. I haven't looked into how the suspension works, so I don't have too much to add other than a couple of observations. A couple of times I've had to pop the shells open enough to fill the water tank at state parks by myself when it was very unlevel. It is much more difficult to open and close if it is unlevel side-to-side. I've found that if I work on the downhill side (both opening and closing) before the uphill side I have better luck because I can push on the shell a little to get it lined up from the downhill side. When opening, if I try to lift on the uphill side first the shell cams downhill and binds, but if I lift the downhill side first it helps to keep it from binding. If I try to close the uphill side first it will latch, but then I'm fighting both gravity and the rigid attachment of the other side when I try to latch the downhill side. I would never try to camp with it this unlevel, and I carry 2x10 boards to drive the TM on to try and temporarily level it for cases like this. I've gotta rig up a way to fill with the shells closed even if it's to back fill through the drain valve as I've seen in a few postings.
Front-to-back unlevel mostly means that one shell or the other is easier to pop, but then the door fittings won't work well and I would never want the refrigerator to be too unlevel front-to-back because the ammonia draining won't work correctly.
Another thing is that initially we had some attempts at closing when I thought we had too much on the bed, and the shells seemed to hit something solid keeping it from closing the last couple of inches. It turned out that the shell was hitting the nuts that attach the lifting arms to the hinge, and this was usually on the non-solar wiring side (the curb or door side of the TM) because the solar wiring allowed the shell something to slide on so that it didn't catch on that side's nuts. Now I know to watch that as we close it, and I can close the TM by myself.
|