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!

[Wavery]

Originally Posted by jferrarello

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!

The tension adjustment probably just hastened the failure of a weak point in your trailer. You may want to back the adjustment off 1/4 turn, especially if the shells pop-up too fast or are hard to latch down.

The 1st thing that you should do is to determine if wood-rot is in play here. Take out the screws that hold the latch catch on. Check them for rust. Dig a little scraping of the wood out of the hole with a screw or pointed object like a dental pick. The wood should be light brown. If it's dark brown, it may be from a rusty screw or the beginning of wood-rot. If it's soft and black, you may have a problem.

If the scrapings are soft, you will need to scrape out the holes until you find new looking wood. If that means scraping out a 1" hole, so be it. If you don't find "new wood", get back to us for wood-rot repair.

More than likely, you will find that the screws have just been degraded over time and the wood just stripped out. I found that on my '98 TM last year. The screws were rusty and degraded but the wood was good and strong. Just not strong enought to hold the degraded screw. I just installed the next larger size (same length) screw in each hole and they tightened up securely. Had they stripped out upon tightening, I would have been suspicious of a wood-rot problem. A longer screw may hold if the original length doesn't. However, be sure to drill the hole out with the appropriate size drill, so you don't split the wood.

If/when you install new screws, I suggest that you use stainless-steel screws. They shouldn't rust and strip out over time.

[commodor47]

Try this thread:

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ght=hold+latch

Our unit has a reinforcing metal bar that spans the latch bracket.

Dick

[Bill]

This latch is sometimes called a stirrup. A search on that term also turned up this thread. Since you have an older unit, it probably lacks the fix that TM adopted.

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...read.php?t=537

Bill

[Wavery]

Originally Posted by Bill

This latch is sometimes called a stirrup. A search on that term also turned up this thread. Since you have an older unit, it probably lacks the fix that TM adopted.

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...read.php?t=537

Bill

I thought that the, "stirrup" was the part that one puts their foot in to push the top down to latch it. I thought that this part would be called a "catch".

[Wavery]

Originally Posted by commodor47

Try this thread:

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ght=hold+latch

Our unit has a reinforcing metal bar that spans the latch bracket.

Dick

That looks like a great fix........I may just do that to mine, just for the heck of it. However, with our wood wood framing, it would be better to make the flat bar longer and install the screws in a straight line as apposed to side by side. I could use 3/16" flat bar ~4-6" long and 4-6 screws on each catch. 2, in the original holes and 1 or 2 on either side of the original holes. That thing would never be an issue again. That may be a good fix for "jferrarello" as well. Although that frame still needs to be checked for wood-rot.

A couple of searches did not return any hits on the stirrup mod kit mentioned above. When was that incorporated in TM's and what is the modification? thanks.

[Wavery]

Originally Posted by MisterP

A couple of searches did not return any hits on the stirrup mod kit mentioned above. When was that incorporated in TM's and what is the modification? thanks.

See post #3 by commodor47 in this thread.

Click on the pictures.

My thanks to everyone for the feedback and education. I’ll be tacking the problem this weekend and think I’ll start with HarveyRV’s advice on first finding out the condition of the underlying structure. I think that will dictate what type of fix I have to employ. I do like the idea within the thread that Commodor47 linked to where an added metal plate was attached to reinforce the stirrup attachment. However, this will only work if the inside structure is sound. Bill’s linked thread also had some good info on other possible fixes. All in all, I now have enough information to have at it.

Ah, another TM voyage of discovery. Gotta love it.

This was also a good lesson in search terminology. Had I known that this part of the latching system is called the stirrup, I'd likely have found the links you all pointed me to and wouldn't have had to start this thread. Which got me to thinking how helpful it would be to have some photos or illustrations of various views of the TMs and a glossary of terms used on the various parts. But searching on the term glossary returned one hit and its use was for Toyota towing issues, so I assume there’s nothing in these forums. Then I got to thinking about whether or not the TM factory has any kind of exploded illustrations (of the kind that auto parts and model assembly instructions have) that might help. Anyway, just a thought.

Originally Posted by jferrarello

My thanks to everyone for the feedback and education. I’ll be tacking the problem this weekend and think I’ll start with HarveyRV’s advice on first finding out the condition of the underlying structure. I think that will dictate what type of fix I have to employ. I do like the idea within the thread that Commodor47 linked to where an added metal plate was attached to reinforce the stirrup attachment. However, this will only work if the inside structure is sound. Bill’s linked thread also had some good info on other possible fixes. All in all, I now have enough information to have at it.

Ah, another TM voyage of discovery. Gotta love it.

This was also a good lesson in search terminology. Had I known that this part of the latching system is called the stirrup, I'd likely have found the links you all pointed me to and wouldn't have had to start this thread. Which got me to thinking how helpful it would be to have some photos or illustrations of various views of the TMs and a glossary of terms used on the various parts. But searching on the term glossary returned one hit and its use was for Toyota towing issues, so I assume there’s nothing in these forums. Then I got to thinking about whether or not the TM factory has any kind of exploded illustrations (of the kind that auto parts and model assembly instructions have) that might help. Anyway, just a thought.

There is a section of the forum for suggestions. This one sounds to me like a VERY good one. I'd guess a pdf file could be set up somewhere.