Door Adjustment Bolts

[Camping Carpenters]

Adjusting shells and door. Attempted to adjust the bolts under the trailer to trim up the door. Per usual, had to cut them out and replace. A few questions:

1. What does your trailer have for a "plate" underneath the trailer for a bolting mount? Mine is as shown in the first two photos. Wondering if this is the norm or someone has "repaired" this before. Perhaps one of the worst pieces of engineering I've seen in a long time. If this is the norm......
2. The bolts I cut out were 5" long, with a dozen washers on each. Again, what do you have? I replaced the 5" with 4", which are plenty long with one or two washers.
3. Note in the last two photos, the area where the "plate" rested underneath - has caved in the aluminum skin and styro. So I need to come up with a better, and larger plate to disperse load. Any other ideas out there, I'm open for business.

Beyond all this, we have the bolts completely removed now, and see no difference in our door (still are out of adjustment). What effect does this adjustment normally have?

As always, thanks in advance for the help.

[Larryjb]

Ah, this took me quite some time to orient myself! I'll have to look on my own trailer to find this part.

The door alignment is greatly affected by shell alignment. Before you make any adjustments to the door itself, you have to make sure the trailer is perfectly level and the shells adjusted perfectly. I found that there is enough flex in the frame itself that if you level the trailer and end up having to "lift" an entire side of the trailer from the two corners, it can sag in the middle just enough to cause a misalignment.

so, when setting up the trailer, make sure everything is level front to back both sides, and side to side at the front and back. You should level side to side with boards underneath the low wheel, then you can use the corner jacks to level front-to-back.

After that it is making sure the shells are sitting at the right height (39.5"), measured from the bottom edge of the trailer to the bottom of the lift arm inside the pocket stop:

[Bill]

I'm also having trouble getting oriented. Are you describing the adjustment that hides behind the little triangular wood piece, just inside the entry door, at floor level on the right as you enter the trailer? If so, I have adjusted that 2 or 3 times, without a problem, so more detail on what you are attempting to do would help me.

Bill

[Camping Carpenters]

LarryJB I have very carefully leveled our trailer, several times. We have 4 levels on the outside body, and we have a level inside the trailer we move around and check several places. I do not need wood beneath the wheels where I am parked in our driveway. In it's "home" under a canopy in our turnaround, we do have a specially built wooden ramp, designed to level us in the one spot.

I will say this: I believe the 39 / 39 1/2 inch measurements might be fine on a relatively new or carefully maintained trailer. I believe those numbers are crap on a 15 year old trailer that has not been cared for. I have torsion rod holes coming out of the frame to the lift arms that have been elongated so much that I have almost 1/2" of play between the torsion rod and the lift arm. I also have pocket stop screws through the upper shell that are elongated. So, no I do not believe those numbers are usable on an old trailer. We have adjusted our shells so that our movement up and down is smooth and directly in line. Our door is still out of alignment, and the 2 bolts beneath the trailer I find of little use. By the way, the first thing I did was carefully level the trailer and set all of the lift arms to 39" and 39 1/2", and all I got was a door that was jammed, 2 shells that were wicked crooked visually, and a gap between the rear and forward shells at the top bag seals of over 1/2", during a tropical storm. This same advice gets a little old. I do know how to level the trailer and measure lift arm length.

Bill, yes I am describing the bolts beneath the triangle on the hinge side of the door. The bolts currently have been completely removed as well as the piece of crap aluminum plate someone put beneath the nuts below the frame and the lower aluminum skin. This underside aluminum skin and the styrofoam have been compressed up into the floor area of the trailer about 3/16". These bolts have been cut out and no bolts have been put in place yet. Since we leveled the trailer "our way", the door works, but the upper and lower halves are out of alignment where they meet. I simply want to know if anyone else's trailer has the same poor construction as ours or not.

[Larryjb]

Originally Posted by Camping Carpenters

LarryJB I have very carefully leveled our trailer, several times. We have 4 levels on the outside body, and we have a level inside the trailer we move around and check several places. I do not need wood beneath the wheels where I am parked in our driveway. In it's "home" under a canopy in our turnaround, we do have a specially built wooden ramp, designed to level us in the one spot.

This is good!

Originally Posted by Camping Carpenters

I will say this: I believe the 39 / 39 1/2 inch measurements might be fine on a relatively new or carefully maintained trailer. I believe those numbers are crap on a 15 year old trailer that has not been cared for.

This could be true, although my 19 year old trailer has held up pretty well, it would be interesting to see the wear points on yours. Perhaps you can take some pictures of these for us?

Originally Posted by Camping Carpenters

I have torsion rod holes coming out of the frame to the lift arms that have been elongated so much that I have almost 1/2" of play between the torsion rod and the lift arm.

Play between the torsion rod and lift arm? We need to be clear on this. Play between the lift arm and torsion rod would be highly unusual, and probably easily fixable. I suspect you mean the play is between two different parts. Perhaps the play is between the torsion rod and and the angled support bracket that is bolted to the bottom edge of the trailer? That steel is really, really tough. I had to enlarge the hole in mine to accommodate a larger diameter torsion bar. I used a grinding stone on my dremel tool and wore the stone down to practically nothing while enlarging the hole by 1/16". I'm not saying you don't have wear in the spot, but if you do we'd certainly like a picture of that! It is also possible that angled bracket is pulling away from the floor of the trailer, which has happened before and should be fixed.

Originally Posted by Camping Carpenters

I also have pocket stop screws through the upper shell that are elongated.

I believe you are referring to the holes through which the lift arms are connected to the shell? If so, yes, this is very common. Bill and I have talked at length about this. Elongation of these holes only affects the shell height while raising or lowering the shell. Once the shell is fully raised, the shell rests on the pocket stop bolts. So elongation in those holes has no effect on the shell height.

Now, what can happen is that the pocket stop itself gets pushed upwards into the shell. This is less common, but will effect the shell height. Check post #48 here: https://www.trailmanorowners.com/for...t=19584&page=5

The pocket stop and the aluminum frame have been pushed upwards. You can check for this. The aluminum tube frame should be even with the skin of the trailer, and in a perfect straight horizontal line with the entire lower edge of the trailer. So, I did have to make some compensating for this issue. [/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Camping Carpenters

So, no I do not believe those numbers are usable on an old trailer. We have adjusted our shells so that our movement up and down is smooth and directly in line. Our door is still out of alignment, and the 2 bolts beneath the trailer I find of little use.

These two bolts are for keeping the wall perpendicular. You may need to add some fender washers, or try a product will be trying soon for a different problem, panel adhesive. This stuff is used by automanufactures to bond sheet metal together where welding would not be possible. You could use panel adhesive to glue a new piece of sheet aluminum to the bottom here with a couple of holes pred-rilled for the bolts. This would provide a very strong support for the bolts to hold the side wall perpendicular. In addition, gluing a piece of sheet aluminum would spread out the load exerted by the the bolts over a larger surface area, improving strength. [/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Camping Carpenters

By the way, the first thing I did was carefully level the trailer and set all of the lift arms to 39" and 39 1/2", and all I got was a door that was jammed, 2 shells that were wicked crooked visually, and a gap between the rear and forward shells at the top bag seals of over 1/2", during a tropical storm. This same advice gets a little old. I do know how to level the trailer and measure lift arm length.

What may be useful in your case is a height measurement from the bottom edge of the trailer to the lower edge of the shell. I'll measure mine so you can check yours. Ultimately, what is important is the alignment of the shell to the box of the trailer. For the door alignment, you will need the side wall exactly perpendicular.

Originally Posted by Camping Carpenters

Bill, yes I am describing the bolts beneath the triangle on the hinge side of the door. The bolts currently have been completely removed as well as the piece of crap aluminum plate someone put beneath the nuts below the frame and the lower aluminum skin. This underside aluminum skin and the styrofoam have been compressed up into the floor area of the trailer about 3/16". These bolts have been cut out and no bolts have been put in place yet. Since we leveled the trailer "our way", the door works, but the upper and lower halves are out of alignment where they meet. I simply want to know if anyone else's trailer has the same poor construction as ours or not.

I have never heard of such issues. I would certainly like to see some pictures. It sounds like a previous owner has abused this trailer quite a bit.
Like I said, ours is almost 20 years old and very servicable. There are still some wood framed Trailmanors out there too, pushing 30 years.

[Larryjb]

Front shell: Bottom edge of trailer box (floor) to bottom edge of front shell = 37"

Rear shell: Bottom edge of trailer box (floor) to bottom edge of rear shell = 36.5"



You should be able to use this spec to verify alignment.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Bill

Are you describing the adjustment that hides behind the little triangular wood piece, just inside the entry door, at floor level on the right as you enter the trailer?

Are you guys sure that these parts are aluminum?? This is a high-stress area, hence the large bolts, and I would expect (and seem to recall) that these parts are steel. I would expect aluminum to deform just as you have experienced. I have to back out of this discussion because the structure in that area has changed, and my memory isn't precise enough to be trusted. I'm not sure, though, why bolts have to be cut out, rather than just unscrewed and pulled out.

There was a bit of discussion here
https://www.trailmanorowners.com/for...ad.php?t=16360

Bill

[Larryjb]

I'm getting a lot more puzzled as we go here.

My interior triangular support bracket is bolted through the floor, through to the big, thick frame of the trailer, not just through the floor into something that looks like a home made bracket (by a previous owner, I presume).


Was there a change after 2001? Did somebody modify your trailer? Do you have this same frame member with holes in it?

Given this, I'd get a piece of angle iron that could be drilled and bolted to the stair mount, and use a larger plate to, as you say, disperse the load.

[ManorAg]

It is the same on my 2004 3023. The bolts do not line up with holes on the frame underneath. I added these washers some time back as the nuts were just wearing through the floor underside. I need to add a plate or something better.

[Shane826]

Larry- When you say the wall has to be perpendicular, I assume you mean the lower wall has to be perpendicular to the floor? Is that what the triangle brace adjustment is for? Will that move the entire wall? I also have an issue where there is a gap between that wall and the slide that gets bigger towards the top of the wall.