Loose bolts on torsion bar bracket

[Miketbar]

Took out my new to me unit for its first trial run. Things went great till I got home. While setting up to clean unit, lower door would not line up with latch side of door. Found 4 loose bolt on underside of unit on left side of stairs.
While re-tightening these bolts I'm hearing a wood cracking sound. Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggesting on repair or what it might be.

Thanks
Mike Richards
2011 2720 SL

[Gapopper]

Did they tighten or do they just keep turning. Did this fix your door alignment.

[Miketbar]

They did tighten and door is re-aligned. Concerned about condition of wood framing that started cracking.

[BrucePerens]

Those particular bolts might not have that much to do with shell alignment, which of course is also the door alignment. I think you need to look at the pocket stop adjustment (which is documented elsewhere on this site). And sometimes the door alignment is just a matter of how far you opened the front shell. Your 2011 doesn't have wood framing, but those bolts might be going through the wood composite flooring.

While you are new to the camper, you might consider setting a torque limit of only a few pounds. There are a lot of places on the Trailmanor where overtightening would do it harm. The aluminum lift arms which attach to the torsion bars are deformed by the pressure you put on the bolts, bolts that go through flooring might crush the wood or they might actually be wood screws and might strip their own threads, the bolts through the aluminum-styrofoam-sandwich body panels must not be allowed to crush the panel, screws which go into the wall will strip out very easily, etc.

[bheisser]

any chance that arm.just has a piece of wood in the end so it doesnt crush. i thought i read that on here

[BrucePerens]

Look at the second photo, which he attached so you have to click its link to see it. I think those are the bolts he tightened.

[Skyjim73]

We actually had a bolt from that 4 bolt cluster holding the lift arms to the torsion bar missing when we arrived at our very first campsite. On inspection I found most of these bolts fairly loose! When I started to tighten them, it became obvious that the lift arm box section could be deformed very easily...

Wound up calling the Dealer (Custom RV) for a torque spec - took a while, but they got a number from somebody in Nebraska - can't recall the value right now, but it was quite low - just barely enough to fully compress the split lockwashers. Also got replacement bolts so they would match visually with the factory bits, which look cad-iridited.

So, I went and bought some blue Locktite (#242, removable) thread locker and went around reinstalling all of them one by one, mindful that you must beware of letting the lift arm section slip on the torsion bar end. So, one at a time. I suspect one pair is enough to provide clamping force, actually, but was cautious.

No further problems, though I now automatically look those bolts over during trip prep...

Jim

[Miketbar]

Thanks for the info!

[gonzo628]

Originally Posted by Miketbar

Took out my new to me unit for its first trial run. Things went great till I got home. While setting up to clean unit, lower door would not line up with latch side of door. Found 4 loose bolt on underside of unit on left side of stairs.
While re-tightening these bolts I'm hearing a wood cracking sound. Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggesting on repair or what it might be.

Thanks
Mike Richards
2011 2720 SL

The underfloor bolts do pull the floor back up to the wall (or wall down to the floor). Mine was out of alignment and Custom RV removed a couple LAG bolts and swapped them for longer ones to bring everything square again.