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Old 10-17-2022, 02:47 PM   #21
Bill
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Location: The mountains of Scottsdale, AZ, and the beaches of Maine
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Just as a follow-up, a couple months ago, I replaced the two front bumper pads. Learned a few things.

Each pad is held on with 2 screws. Each screw head has a square recess (Robertson drive), but the size seemed odd. A #2 square-head bit was too big to go into the opening, while the next smaller size was so small that it barely gripped the edges of the hole, risking stripping out the recess. I don’t know what is going on here, but be careful!

As noted earlier, the spacing between the holes on each pad seemed random.

I was able to remove 3 of the 4 screws with considerable effort. I had no luck getting the fourth one out, even after using penetrating oil, tap-tap-tapping the screw for hours, heating with a torch, etc. At this point, the proper tool would be a hammer drill, which delivers both a big rotary impact to turn the screw, and a big downward impact to keep the screwdriver bit from rising and stripping out the screw head. I didn’t have an electric hammer drill, and wasn’t about to buy one - but I have a manual hammer drill (confusingly called a manual impact wrench). It is a heavy steel cylinder, with a socket in one end for a screwdriver bit. You insert a bit, set the tool in place on the screw head, and belt the other end of the cylinder with a heavy hammer. It took a dozen whacks, but the screw backed out nicely. I don’t often need this tool, but when I do, it is worth its weight in gold (or about $25 at Amazon).

Once I had the four screws out, I cleaned up their threads with a wire brush, put a generous glob of grease on each one, and ran them in and out of the hole a few times to clean up those threads.

For pad material, I bought a 6X6 piece of rubber from Amazon. I chose 3/8 inch thick rubber, rather than the ½ inch stuff that TM uses, because the corner latches on my trailer don’t have much adjustment left. I cut it into 2” x 6” pieces (1-1/2 X 6 would have been fine) with a sharp utility knife as Wavery suggested above, angled the inner ends to fit the location, and drilled holes in the rubber at the screw hole locations.

The old pads on my trailer were ripped and broken. This happened because the original screws had small heads which were sunken into the surface, and the sharp edges of the screw heads ripped the rubber. I put a fender washer under each screw head to get a better grip on the rubber and prevent it from ripping on the screw. But I also noticed that under the edge of the front shell, at the location that comes down on the pad, there is a protruding screw head, which also rips the rubber. See photo. I replaced that screw with a flat-head screw, and that seems to have helped.

The photos show the results. After several thousand miles, I am pleased with what I see.

Bill
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