September 7 - 9, 2023 - Homer is Out of the Shop; Third Set of Access Door Catches; Repaired Ladder Support

HOMER IS OUT OF THE SHOP:

As I mentioned in the last blog, Homer needed to go to a transmission shop. The shop we chose is in Leopold, Missouri. It has been in business for many years and has an excellent reputation. Upon calling them I learned that they do not make appointments. It is first come, first served. You leave your vehicle there and they get to it when they can. With that in mind we immediately took Homer over on August 29th. We described the intermittent problem to the service writer. He thought the problem was quite unusual and stated that it may be hard to diagnose because the issue flares up so haphazardly. He advised that it could be up to three weeks before a technician could even look at Homer. Yikes! We left Homer to get him in line for repair.  

Since Homer was going to be at the shop for several weeks, we called and cancelled our campground reservations for the Carri-Yals RV Rally in Jefferson City, which begins on September 11th, and we notified the hosts that we couldn't make it. Surprisingly, on Thursday morning, September 7th, I received a call from the transmission shop saying that Homer was ready. We were shocked. It had only been eight days since we left him there. 

The transmission is partly controlled by the computer and partly inside the transmission. The technician got found several corroded connections for the transmission. He further found that someone at one time had rerouted the wiring harness. This caused the wires to the transmission to be stretched really tight. He cleaned all the contacts, routed the wiring harness back to the factory specs, did a test drive and found Homer to shift just fine. The service manager suggested we pick Homer up and take him for a long drive to see if this work resolved the problem. A $201.00 bill, not bad.

Upon receiving this news, I immediately called the campground to see if there was a space available for next week. A 200-mile trip to Jefferson City was just what the technician ordered. The campground manager advised that, upon our cancellation, he had let our spot go to someone else. He further advised that there were no other spaces available until the end of the week, when the rally would be ending. Bummer. No rally for us.

THIRD SET OF ACCESS DOOR CATCHES:

With Homer home I was able to make a few of the repairs he needed after the trip to Michigan. The first was the converter access door. I had just recently "improved" this door attachment by taking out two spring-loaded cabinet catches and replacing them with two magnetic cabinet catches. I was sure this method of connection would be an improvement. It was not. The magnetic catches did not work well with all the bouncing that goes on going down the road. Here is a picture of one of the three magnetic catches recently installed.

Looking for a solution, I found a package of the spring catches that are used on all of Homer's cabinet doors. They hold very tightly. None of the cabinet doors have never come open going down the road. Here is what these catches look like. The flat piece is screwed on to the cabinet and the longer, thinner piece is screwed on to the door. When the hook on the door piece pushes into the catch a spring inside trips the part sticking out and it locks inside the hook on the door portion of the latch. 

Here are the new catches installed. This will be my last revision of the locking mechanism for this access panel door. If these don't hold I'm going to break down and screw the access door on.

The new catches hold the access door snuggly. I almost need a screwdriver to pry it open - just the way I want it!

REPAIRED LADDER SUPPORT:

The second repair undertaken was the reconstructing of one of the ladder support tubes. This failure is partially due to old age but mostly due to the fact that these supports were only riveted on to the fiberglass wall at the factory. A rivet provides little lateral support since it hardly spreads out on the inside of the wall. I have already replaced the two other connections on this side of the ladder. Here is a picture of the fitting that pulled loose. Every time I climbed up the ladder it pulled out more. It was providing virtually no support. In addition being loose like this allows water to leak inside the wall.

First, I drilled out the rivets to get the horizontal support tube loose from the wall. This part was easy. The support tube is attached at the other end to the ladder with a bolt. This bolt goes into a nut in the middle of a round fitting which is wedged against the walls of the tube. You can see the rusted bolt head below. This bolt had to come out for this repair. The chances of it screwing out after 30 years were NONE. 

I drilled the bolt head off. Here is a picture of the support tube after I got it off. The rusted bolt stud on the left is the section that went through the ladder tubing. 

The aluminum bracket, which had been riveted to the wall, came off the tube quite easily. Here is a picture.

Surprisingly, there was absolutely no corrosion on this bolt. It not only unscrewed easily but the round fitting wedged inside with a nut in the middle was like new. This was great. I cut off the rusted stud in the support tube and turned the tube around to use the good nut to reattach it to the ladder. 

In the past when I repaired the other two supports I used stainless steel boat rail connectors which I found online. Here is a picture of the fitting. The price of the part and shipping had increased 50% since July of 2022. This little puppy now cost $40.00 with shipping. It is much heavier duty than the thin riveted aluminum one it replaced.

Here is a picture with the area with the support tube off at both ends to give you an idea of what I was repairing.

The first step to install the new fitting was to figure out how to mount it to the wall. For the prior replacements I had used toggle bolts. Here is a picture of a toggle bolt for those who are not familiar with them.

Toggle bolts are readily available and work great. You drill a hole in the wall large enough to accommodate the width of the winged portion when it is folded down. It is spring loaded so once it is pushed through the hole in the hollow wall the winged portion expands to provide wide support around the bolt. I went to Buchheit's to get two toggle bolts for this repair. A drawback of the toggle bolt is that it requires a fairly large hole in the wall while the bolt itself is rather thin in diameter. In the prior replacements, due to the small size of the toggle bolts and the large holes in the new stainless-steel mounting brackets, I had to back these bolt heads with stainless steel washers. These repairs obviously hold much better than the original rivets but I wasn't totally thrilled with them. 

At Buchheit's I found a new type of expanding bolt called a "Pull Toggle". I'm sure it has been around for a while but I never saw one before. For this project the "pull toggle" had two advantages over a toggle bolt. It has an even larger holding surface on the inside of the wall for strength and it allows for the use of larger bolts to properly fill the holes of the stainless-steel mounting bracket. Here is a picture of this device.

Here is how they work. You bend the black plastic zip tie so that it is flat with the steel portion and push it through the hole in the wall. You then pull the white plastic piece on the zip tie toward the wall to tighten it up for threading in a bolt. I thought this was going to work well but I immediately had a problem. The black zip tie would not fit through the hole in the bracket. With a utility knife I carefully trimmed about a 1/16 of an inch off of each side to so it would pull through the hole in the bracket. Problem solved? Nope. I then found that the stainless-steel bolt and the black zip tie would not both fit through the mounting hole in the stainless-steel bracket. I also had noticed that in order for the bracket to fit flush with the wall, the white plastic part would have to be cut off. The white plastic part is all that keeps the rest of the toggle from falling into the wall until you can get a bolt threaded on. What I had to end up doing to make this work was tricky. 

I taped the now trimmed zip ties to the tube support, which I had inserted into the mounting bracket. Taping them on would keep the toggle from falling into the wall once I cut off the white plastic part. The taped zip ties held the bracket inside the wall in place as needed. Luckily the stainless-steel bolts I purchased to replace the ones that came with the "pull toggle" were long enough that I could insert the bolt through the stainless-steel mounting bracket and then thread it into the pull toggle in the wall just enough to keep it from falling down in the wall. Once each bolt was threaded into the metal "pull toggle" I cut off the zip ties. Now, however, without the zip ties available to pull on the silver "pull toggle" inside the wall, I had a problem of keeping enough pressure on each bolt in order to tighten it until the portion inside the wall made contact with the wall for final tightening. Additionally, before tightening the stainless-steel mounting bracket to the wall I had to place butyl tape on the flat side of the bracket to keep moisture out once tightened.  It took a while but with a small screwdriver keeping pressure on the head of each bolt I was able to get the bracket tight.

 

This repair took just over two hours, including the time I went to obtain parts. Not bad. The ladder is once again sturdy and the repair looks great. It is stronger than new in my opinion! You can see the flimsy, riveted bracket on the other side of the ladder. Someday it may fail as well.

READYING FOR NEXT TRIP:

Since we had planned on being at the rally and aren't going, next week is free. We decided to once again attempt to drive the Natchez Trace. We had tried to make the trip last year but in Nashville we experienced a locked front caliper. After a roadside inspection by a mobile brake service, we decided to come home and get it repaired rather than risking another problem on the road. As it turned out that was a good decision because the caliper had to be replaced. I have a doctor appointment early Monday morning in Farmington, Missouri, so after that we will head to Nashville. The campgrounds along the Natchez Trace have no hookups and no water source nor dump station. I have filled Homer's water tank to the brim and filled four jugs of drinking water. The weather looks like it will be comfortable so it should be a nice trip. I'll report.