Re-attaching table

[HoMiPa]

Does anyone know the trick to re-attaching the table? I removed it for the renovation, thinking it was going to be easy enough to put the screws back in. I had problems when I re-attached it for my trip a couple of weeks ago. But since the table no longer lined up with the original screw holes, I just tossed a couple of L brackets at the top of the frame to attach to the wall.

Now that I have the floor laid and the the holes line up properly again, I want to reinstall it permanently. However, the long brass (?) screws that are used to attach it to the wall, through some sort of anchors, won't screw in more than 1/2", and I still have well over an inch of screw sticking out. The anchor things just spin, and there really isn't any way to grip them.

Any suggestions? Or anyone with first hand knowledge?

First photo is close up of the anchor, second shows it in relation to the bed above it, on the front wall.

[Bill]

Holly -

Let me tell you my experience - you decide if any of it is useful to you.

The sideframes of the tables in my TM kept coming loose from the wall. The L-brackets held nicely in the wood of the frame, but the combination of road vibration, and the stresses of pulling the table tops out of the frames, and dropping them back in, pulled the screws out of the wall again and again. I tried longer wood screws. Fine thread, coarse thread. Plastic anchors. Butterfly anchors. Mollies. Well nuts. I tried pushing a glob of glue into the hole before inserting the fastener. A glob of silicone caulk. Nothing held. I finally got a dental pick and a flashlight, and when I peered into the hole and probed around with the pick, the problem became apparent. The thin aluminum skin on the inside of the wall is bonded to a substrate of crumbly fine-grain particle board. The board disintegrated when I tried to put a screw in it, so wood screws didn’t work. When I drilled into the substrate, I got a smooth-sided hole, with no space behind the skin where any kind of expansion anchor could expand. So drywall anchors, mollies, well-nuts, etc, couldn’t expand, and just slipped out of the hole. I couldn’t drill all the way through the substrate and use a nut on the other end of a machine screw, because the other side of the substrate was the outer skin of the trailer. Arghh!

My final solution was to insert the point of an X-acto knife into the hole in the skin, and excavate an empty area about ½” deep behind the skin. At the surface, the diameter of the hole was about 3/16”, but gradually expanded as I pushed the knife deeper. Once the excavation was done, a well nut expanded into the excavated space perfectly and has held ever since.

Hope this makes sense. Hope it helps. It was a frustrating experience, but with a good ending

Bill

[Larryjb]

I noticed you didn't mention trying rivets. Was there any reason why?

This might be a crazy, perhaps even unworkable solution, but I have wondered about such fix:
https://www.systemthree.com/products...x-epoxy-sealer

If you were to mix some sawdust with the epoxy sealer to give it body and viscosity, then place it into a syringe without the needle and inject it into the hole where the particle board had disintegrated. Perhaps just making a slurry of sawdust and epoxy would do just as well. Then you could drill and have something to screw into.

As for screwing into a location backed with Styrofoam insulation, I'm not sure this would work.

[HoMiPa]

Originally Posted by Bill

Holly -

Let me tell you my experience - you decide if any of it is useful to you.

Hope this makes sense. Hope it helps. It was a frustrating experience, but with a good ending

Bill

Bill - it all made perfect sense. I have pried one of the heads to the anchor off, since they are useless as is, anyway. Not sure I can get the remaining part of the anchor out, but it just flopping around in there anyway. Most likely, I can push it out of the way.

Since mine is the front wall (your's would have been the side wall, since you have an SL, correct?) mine is just styrofoam inside, so an anchor should work, and mine was never loose, until I removed it. So I think a new anchor will hold well enough.

Thanks for all the info - and sorry it was all such a hassle for you!

[HoMiPa]

Originally Posted by Larryjb

I noticed you didn't mention trying rivets. Was there any reason why?

Larry - I don't have a rivet gun - although I'm beginning to think, after the fact, it would have been pretty darn handy to have considering all the z-clips, etc I've installed on the remodel...... hindsight is 20/20.....

[Larryjb]

As I understand it, rivets are stronger when attaching things to sheet metal, although less convenient if you have to remove them.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Larryjb

I noticed you didn't mention trying rivets. Was there any reason why?

Rivets require a space behind the panel to expand. In my situation, there was no space.

Bill