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Old 11-16-2022, 04:00 PM   #1
Stephene1219
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Default Door Jam Issues

I have a 2022 2922KS that has had door closing issues since I picked it up. There were two issues. One was the door hit the Jam at the bottom, so it would not close easily. The second one was that the Jam hole and the door latches and Dead Bolt did not align.

I wrote Adam at TM and , I can truthfully say have never had worse service or responses. Finally I found Jacob at TM, who was very helpful. At this point I need to remove the the Jam and move it down about 1/4' to 3/15' and remove the weather stripping behind the Jam. According to Jacob, moving the Jam down will allow the opening to lower allowing the Dead Bolt to engage. Moving the weather striping behind the Jam will allow it to open further, which should solve the Door alignment issue and make it easy to close.

Lastly, Jacob said I may have to trim the brush at the bottom of the Jam, but nee to be carful that the bristles do not fall out.

I can do what Jacob says, but why would a trailer ever pass inspection with these problems.

Has anyone else had these problems,

Stephene
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Old 11-17-2022, 08:57 AM   #2
Bill
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Where are you located (you didn't fill out that info when you signed up for the Forum)? If you can take the TM to the factory or your dealer and let them deal with it, that might be the best answer.

I'm trying to visualize how the jamb is mounted - my TM is closed up in the garage, so I can't check my memory. That is the little swing panel, right? I'm not a fan of trying to lower that panel, especially by a small amount like 1/4 inch. But my guess is that the deadbolt hits the edge of the hole just a bit outside the hole. Would it not be easier to simply enlarge the hole a bit, to allow the deadbolt to move into it? A few strokes of a file on the strike plate might work wonders.

Are you sure that the pin at the top of the swing panel is pushed fully into the clip? If the pin is outside the clip (easy to do), or if it is not not fully seated within the clip, the swing panel would be misaligned, and the door would hit it. Worth a quick check.

The alignment of the door can be sensitive to how the trailer is leveled. Do you have the stabilizer jacks down? As in all trailers, not just TMs, the frame can twist very slightly if it is set up on a non-level surface, and you lower one jack kind of aggressively to level it. This would affect the alignment of the door slightly - perhaps enough to affect the deadbolt. And this could explain why the door operated correctly on the nice level concrete factory floor, but is a bit off when not level, or cranked up to level, outside - especially if the original alignment was close (granted, it should not have been that close). But you can be sure that the door operated correctly when it was at the factory, since it was opened and closed dozens of times while the trailer was bring built. That would also explain why the bottom of the door hits the jamb.

Let us know.

Bill
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Old 11-17-2022, 09:14 AM   #3
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One more thing. In my South Dakota-built 2720, the entire lock assembly in the door was slightly loose. If I firmly pulled the lock assembly toward the edge of the door, it would actually slide out of the door 1/8 inch or so. And if I pushed the edge of the lock assembly back into the door, it would slide back into place. When it was in the proper place, everything worked fine. But when it was out by that small amount, the door would hit the swing panel, and had to be coaxed to close.

The solution, of course, was simply to tighten the screws holding the assembly in the door.

Bill
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Old 11-17-2022, 09:50 AM   #4
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Stephene,
It sounds as though you may need to adjust the front shell height.

I know, from your previous posts, that you purchased from a new dealer- as such, I'm sure they are probably not well versed in the process to adjust/level the shells.

There are posts on this forum and the TrailManor's fan FaceBook group about the process to level shells, so I won't try to go through detailing that, but will say that there's no reason to begin efforts to change the door or the striker plate without first ensuring that the shells are properly adjusted....and I'm 95% sure its just the shell adjustment which will resolve your door closing problems.

I believe that having the awning and the door grab handle mounted on the door side aggravates settling of the front shell in the area that is critical to door clearance and checking/ doing shell adjustments is just another TrailManor maintenance item that needs to be done every year or two depending on camper usage.
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Old 11-17-2022, 02:39 PM   #5
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Interesting thoughts. We are talking about the lower half of the Dutch door, right? Since both the lower door and the lower door jambs are mounted on (attached to) the lower box, and none of them is mounted on a shell, I'm not clear on how adjusting either shell would help the situation. I'll give it some thought.

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Old 11-17-2022, 04:42 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill View Post
Interesting thoughts. We are talking about the lower half of the Dutch door, right? Since both the lower door and the lower door jambs are mounted on (attached to) the lower box, and none of them is mounted on a shell, I'm not clear on how adjusting either shell would help the situation. I'll give it some thought.

Bill
Because if the shell is sitting too low it makes it really hard to fully engage the lock pins on the door jambs into the clips, which outs the jambs at odd angles instead of perpendicular to the lower box wall, and makes the door pretty much impossible to align correctly.

Heck I’d even say make sure your pocket stops are set correctly so the upper shells open to the correct spot, which allows the upper door and previously mentioned lock pin clips be in the correct positions.

I had door issues the first bunch of years I owned my 3226. Had to hip check the door to open it from inside, and closing it was a total PITA. It was due to the roof sagging, pushing the walls outward at the top, causing alignment issues. Door opens and closes like butter as long as the camper is level.
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Old 11-17-2022, 07:30 PM   #7
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Yes.....when the front shell rear arm on the door side is too low (there's no gap between the top shell and the lower "box" at the door jamb assembly) the weight of the top shell pushes the door striker plate too low....

Eventually there's no way to compensate for the corner of the front shell being too low via adjusting the leveling jack in front of the door....which is just changing the lower door geometry. (That point is when the bottom "ledge" of the door will no longer clear the threshold).

See the gap between the two shells in the attached picture (which is not my TrailManor).
-When the front shell has settled and the gap is gone, it's time for an adjustment of the rear lift arms of the front shell.
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Old 11-21-2022, 02:25 PM   #8
Stephene1219
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I am lucky in that I have a 12X12x30 3 sided structure to park the TM . The structure is on a slab that is very level.

In looking at the Jam before making changes I found a couple of problems related to the quality of the TM manufacturing process.

Problem 1 - The jam was not plumb. In fact is was out of plumb by 3/16". This is very significant in such a short run. It was out of Plumb bottom to top. The top was 3/16" further away from the outside than the bottom.

Problem two - Was related to the Brush they install at the bottom of the Jam. These brushes come in "X" length which TM then cuts to fit. Just like a weather strip for your home the brush strips have a flange at the top to hold the spine where the all the brushes connect. This flange is 3/16" thick. TM notched out the flat portion of the strip so the brush would lay flat and install at the bottom of the Jam hinge. However, they made two errors. The first was the flat portion of the brush strip actually laid about a 1/16" on the hinge. The second and major problem was they left about 2' of the 3/16' flange above where they notched out for the brush. So when the hinge closed it was pressing against this 3/16" inch flange at the bottom of the hinge. Of course the hinge was unable to fully close at the bottom. This is what caused the bottom of the the Jam to stick out and make it very hard to close the door.

I removed the Jam hinge and lowered it 1/4" and moved it forward 1/8". I then cut the bush strip to remove the flange so it could be installed just below the hinge without interfering with the hinge action. When I reinstalled I made sure the hinge was perfectly plumb. The end result is that the door latches, the dead bolt engages and the door now does not hit at the bottom of the Jam. As an added bonus. the hinge side "Pin" now slides into the spring clip really easy.

All of this was caused by a lack of quality control. This TM should never have left the factory with the door problems. I loved the TM in over 100 days of camping this Spring, Summer and Fall. Yet now I worry about what other corners were cut or whether there is really a QA process in place

Steph
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