Jayco bed causing rear wall to bow out

Looks great! Last time I was up at the Jayco repair facility their labor rate was $90 an hr. Do you have room to open a shop? Happy camping.

Four months later, and I finally repaired the damage. In5r and I had communicated back and forth after my original post, and he had some suggestions.

I sent the pics to my local RV dealer, and they wanted $2500 to repair it. Ha. Instead I mulled it over, and waited for work to settle down (and for camping season to end!).

I just completed the repair this evening, having started this past Sunday. From start to finish (not counting trips to the store), it took me about 12 hours to fix it.

There was no water damage.

All of the damage was caused by shoddy design by Jayco, where the pneumatic bed lifts were spending 99.9% of their time not lifting the bed, but pushing the bed frame back against the wall.

Jayco (and probably other manufacturers) use staples to tack everything together. The rear wall was a large upper frame, set atop a smaller, inward slanting bottom frame. These are stupidly just loosely stapled together. The hinged beam that holds the bed was attached to the wall with just three screws at the bottom of the upper frame. The strong backward pressure of those pneumatic lifts cracked the frame, and caused it to bow out.

I removed the lifts - they couldn't hold the mattress up anyway. I then removed the bottom three aluminum skin panels on the back wall. I replaced the floating bed hinge-beam with 2x6 running from wall to wall, which now sits atop three shaped 2x6 pillars. These are attached to the side walls, and then all the joints have metal joist joiners locking them in place. I drilled holes through all of the rear wall joists, then secured them to the new interior beam with 3" wood screws. The newly secure wall is flat, and snug to the new beam.

Pics of the process can be seen here: Redwolf's Trailer Repair Pics @ Flickr

Snowman9000 wrote:
I'd be looking for hidden water damage.

X2 on this

WoodGlue

I had the same exact problem with a 30' Jayco Eagle TT we had. Ours was on the front wall, same issue. It is all in the way they frame up the bed support. When the struts are compressed it pushes on the wood work and thru the wall. On mine I strengthened up the plywood between the wall and where the hinges fastened. and added some gussets to the inside 1 x framework as well. That was the easy part. The more challenging part was removing the exterior moulding to pop the metal off and get the frame work of the trailer back where it belongs. Hope this gives some insight. Slight possibility you can get the bow pulled back from the inside without taking the metal off.

I'd be looking for hidden water damage.

I wonder if I just replaced the shocks with more powerful units, and reversed them, would it slowly pull the wall back into place. Hmmm

RJsfishin wrote:
First question comes to my mind, is what is pushing the bed/wall outward ?
Plain to see, it is those gas shocks doing it.

Now, if you want to fix it, turn the gas shocks around so they are pushing the other way.

:h how does a shock know which way it needs to push?

The force on either end of a shock is exactly the same.

West -

You're right, it needs some sort of bracing, but I don't want to block the access doors while doing it. I'll definitely keep it in mind.

I'm going to call the two local RV repair places today and get a ball park on what they'll want to charge to do the work. I know it's going to be expensive, so that's why I'm considering doing the work myself.


Rich -

I never even considered the shocks could be causing it, but it's a possibility. They're really weak, and can't hold the bed up. I assumed it was just the weight of the mattress, the extra memory foam, the blankets my DW cannot sleep without - a lot of weight, and every time we opened the bed, that weight pushed on the back wall.

But, maybe a little pressure over six years from those hinges did cause it. I'll definitely keep your idea of reversing the shocks when I rebuild it.

First question comes to my mind, is what is pushing the bed/wall outward ?
Plain to see, it is those gas shocks doing it.
We like to think that our RV MFGs have some of the best engineers. Well think again ! Most the problem is, "they don't think"

Now, if you want to fix it, turn the gas shocks around so they are pushing the other way. Not only will it fix the wall problem, the bed will lift easier also.Now that's not saying that the hinge setup won't need reinforcing also. Just remember to utilize the full stroke of the shock when laying out the geometry of the anchor locations.
I can tell you for certain that seldom is the geometry laid out correctly from the factory.

Bummer, Red.
Yeah, a guy will have to think up something to hold the bed frame from pushing back out. Maybe, you could put a couple of triangular corner braces from the sides to the back.
Good excuse to get a Kreg pocket hole jig!