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garyemunson's avatar
garyemunson
Explorer II
Oct 01, 2018

Winnebago Hood Latches

Grrrr! On our way home we heard a banging noise on the front of our 2015 Winnebago 36Y. Pulling over, found the hood flopping around. There are 2 brackets attached to the inside of the front cap that the 2 hood locks close against. The left-hand bracket had come loose. Looking inside the hood area, I found that everything that attached to the front cap did so with bolts that were attached to plates molded into the fiberglass cap. Everything with the exception of the hood lock brackets. They were glued on! AND the bracket separated from the glue. I was also able to easily pull the other bracket off (finishing our trip sans hood). Actually I think the arrangement would have been OK had the paint been removed from the bonding surface of the bracket and the metal roughed up. Bolting the brackets back on at this point would entail drilling holes through the front of the cap. Not what I want to see. When we get home, I'm going to take the grinder to the bracket and rough up the existing pad of adhesive (still in good shape) and use JB Weld to reattach it. I'll see how well the JB sticks to the existing adhesive. That's my only bonding concern. I've never been able to remove JB Weld from properly prepared metal. I suspect that if you have a Winnebago Class A with that front cap (late 2015 on), you will eventually have the same problem.

13 Replies

  • Wow, it is a shame that Winnebago hasn't improved that bonding technique over the years. I had both the rear lower clip and the generator access door on my 2002 Winnebago Journey start to fall off. In both cases, the bonding agent lifted from the metal brackets since the brackets were painted and there was no evidence of any prep (roughing up, etc.) of those brackets.

    I had a friend who owned a body shop re-attach the rear clip. He roughed up the brackets and used some sort of body shop epoxy. I later repaired the front genset access door using some JB Weld but I also added four stainless button head bolts. It looked fine IMO.
  • Ranger, did yours actually lose it's grip on the fiberglass? The 'pad' of glue remaining on mine seems quite well adhered to the coarse inside surface of the cap. Would prefer to not have to get it off. That looks like it would be a chore as it's difficult to even look at without a mirror. What brand of adhesive did you use?
  • Winnebago uses that epoxy a lot. It started to come loose on the rear engine access on my Tour. I had to re-epoxy it to the fiberglass. So far so good. Every Winnebago I had has had that issue with loose glue.