Question related to support arm...

The closest thread I could find is
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ead.php?t=8295

From this, I think I know the answer. This problaby falls into a call TM and ask Ed. Here is the issue and question...

Trailer is level and fully set up.
On the curb (door side) of my '04 2720SL, I noticed a lot of daylight from an inside view at the roof gasket extending from the corner several inches towards the center of the roof. This means that neither the inner or outer (upper or lower shell) gasket are making contact in this area.

I am able to push the rear shell up enough to make the gaskets seal. None of the other portions of the shell move up and down like this. I layed on the ground and pushed up and the whole support arm moves up and therefore there is "play" where the torsion bar comes thru the bracket under the trailer. It appears that where the support arm clamps to the torsion bar need to be adjusted, moving the support arm up and reclamping.

The above post makes it sound like this is possible and not a big deal. Seems if I block under the shell edge with blocks and jack, loosen the clamping, jack the shell up a bit to get a seal at the gaskets, and reclamp, I'd be okay.

Does this sound right? Does anyone know the torque value to reclamp the support arm?

Alternative thoughts -
This doesn't seem like a torsion adjustment, but perhaps more tension on the middle lower bars would help, but my observation suggests that it would still be too low.
Maybe there is too much torsion in the upper shell on this side, pulling it up off of the lower shell?

I was told a pretty good gauge of where the shells need to be is the corner latches (square tubes) that swing up to lock the shells should be parallel to the ground when the height is correct. See if that works for you.

[Bill]

Please take this answer with a large grain of salt, since I don't have experience in this area.

First, it is not clear which shell is out of place. Is the front shell too high, or the rear shell too low? Clearly you want to adjust the one that is out of place. I like robertkennel's approach, but if that doesn't work, you might put a long level at the center of the ceiling of each shell, near the gap.

Second, it sounds like you are contemplating pulling the support arm up off the end of the torsion bar a bit. I'm not sure that's a good idea - the piece of the torsion bar that sticks up inside the support arm is quite short, and there is a lot of stress at that point. My thought is to lower the support arm onto the torsion bar as far as possible, and clamp it tight. Then loosen the clamps at the other (upper) end of the support arm, and make the adjustment there.

Long ago, Denny_A posted a good tutorial on how to adjust the position of the shell on the support arm. I'll see if I can find it.

Try this
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ead.php?t=2262 which in turn references
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...read.php?t=562

Denny seems to do his adjustments from the bottom, just as you described, so maybe I'm being paranoid.

Bill

The idea behind the raise the shell support until the corner latches (square tubes) are parallel to the ground is that when the factory set up the shells they should have installed the corner brackets parallel to the ground. The person who told me this makes his living doing this so it is probably a pretty good idea. At least it's a good starting place. Of course it is only accurate if the factory person set it up parallel to begin with.

[Speckul8r]

I suspect that another thing to look at is the door alignment. If the front shell is too low, the door halves wont come together. If too high, I'd think there would be a lot of gap. Of course, this assumes the TM is level and square. If the door connects, opens and closes correctly, then I'd look at the rear shell.
I've had the front support on the front shell slip a tad and my door halves would not mesh.

In reading all of the archived posts, one thing that stood out was looking at the shells being level side to side. This is probably a little trickier than writing about it since the the top is crowned. I figure I can put some inspection blocks on the edges and a straight edge between the blocks to see if one side of the shell is tipped.

Yes, the trailer is level. Not sure what the 'square' remark means. Seems nearly impossible to check and hard to imagine how to correct it you could.

The problem has to be related to the inner shell being too low or the upper shell being to high. Since the door alignment isn't too bad, it seems like the lower shell is the likely culprit.

Before I do anything, I will try to check shell level, side to side to help confirm the lower shell is low on the door side.

Spekulator - When you say 'slip a bit' do you mean the square tube support arm slipped down the torsion bar (towards the ground)?

Anyone - Is there a torque value for support arm clamping ? Is there anything in the support arm to carry the torsion bar inside the support arm?

[Speckul8r]

Instead of square, I probably should have said twisted. That is, a corner higher or lower than the others probably the result of a stabilizer let down farther than the rest.

Yes, it seemed that the lift arm on mine slipped down the torsion bar so the doors overlapped. I don't know what the torque rating is for that adjustment but the bolts on mine have 3 "knocks on the head" indicating a pretty hard bolt. I do know that I had to use my impact tool to loosen them. I put a jack under the arm and snugged it up before loosening the bolts so it wouldn't slip farther and then just jacked the arm up until everything lined up again. It's been fine ever since. I did put a mark on the torsion bar too see if it slipped again. So far so good. Roof seal looks right to me. No gaps.