Cool Mods - Thread restored 10/18/2012
My daughter was getting a little warm in her bunk during our last camping trip, so I decided to put her a fan in to keep the air flowing. I had been wanting to add a 12-volt fan to the main livin...
Forum Discussion
Most of my mods are structural: I had some issues with the used trailer I purchased (click here to read the whole story), so I decided to have a better product after I was done than when the trailer left the assembly line to be sold to the utter moron that sold it to me (with lots of hidden water damage)...
I decided to beef up the brackets for the stairs. I didn't like that the bracket was being held up by the floor: I wanted the bracket to hold up the floor. The original bracket didn't have a diagonal piece, and thus would bend under load. The back plate of the bracket didn't even go all the way down to the bottom of the frame it was "screwed" onto. Yes: they used a single metal screw to mount this bracket to the main frame... SMH...
Solution: add a 1/4" piece to the back plate to extend it, drill 2 holes in it to accommodate 3/8" bolts, and also add a diagonal piece (I used angle-iron) to make it more solid.
Before:
Design (didn't think of using angle iron for the diagonal section yet) = and yes, I noticed that the overall length of the diagonal member is supposed to 10.5":
Modified bracket (the flash made the paint job look like it wasn't properly done, but there are 3 coats of paint on these brackets:
Here they are installed:
There was a problem I discovered after installing them: the main frame is not strong (stiff) enough to take that kind of stress (load) on it's side. It's only meant to take a load vertically. When I stepped on my newly-bracketed steps they sagged considerably - enough to make me not want to use the steps until I solved this problem.
The solution to this problem came from another problem: the floors are made of sandwiched materials, with the centre portion being a board of foam insulation. As a result of my repair, that panel was no longer offering support, and the 1/32| plywood I added didn't fix the problem. The solution turned out to me a lot better than I anticipated. I had to support the floor from below, but I had to ensure that bottom layer of the floor would not form around the support components. My plan was to use Unistrut that is 1 5/8" wide to make floor joists. I had to find something that could disperse the load over a larger area so that the floor wold not sink around the joist. My solution was to use a sheet of 1/8" thick aluminum.
Design:
The parts partially assembled and not cut to size (I had not figured out the exact placement of my joists at this point. They will be a lot closer when I install them):
The brackets were made from 1 3/4: wide pieces of 6" x 3/8" thick angle iron:
What it looks like underneath:
How it is attached to the frame:
The added bonus of this repair (and why I call it a modification), is that not only is my floor very sturdy there, it also made my steps very firm and solid. But the true "mod" status is what I get to use the Unistrut beams for: I can hang stuff under them, like a spare tire! :)
I decided to beef up the brackets for the stairs. I didn't like that the bracket was being held up by the floor: I wanted the bracket to hold up the floor. The original bracket didn't have a diagonal piece, and thus would bend under load. The back plate of the bracket didn't even go all the way down to the bottom of the frame it was "screwed" onto. Yes: they used a single metal screw to mount this bracket to the main frame... SMH...
Solution: add a 1/4" piece to the back plate to extend it, drill 2 holes in it to accommodate 3/8" bolts, and also add a diagonal piece (I used angle-iron) to make it more solid.
Before:
Design (didn't think of using angle iron for the diagonal section yet) = and yes, I noticed that the overall length of the diagonal member is supposed to 10.5":
Modified bracket (the flash made the paint job look like it wasn't properly done, but there are 3 coats of paint on these brackets:
Here they are installed:
There was a problem I discovered after installing them: the main frame is not strong (stiff) enough to take that kind of stress (load) on it's side. It's only meant to take a load vertically. When I stepped on my newly-bracketed steps they sagged considerably - enough to make me not want to use the steps until I solved this problem.The solution to this problem came from another problem: the floors are made of sandwiched materials, with the centre portion being a board of foam insulation. As a result of my repair, that panel was no longer offering support, and the 1/32| plywood I added didn't fix the problem. The solution turned out to me a lot better than I anticipated. I had to support the floor from below, but I had to ensure that bottom layer of the floor would not form around the support components. My plan was to use Unistrut that is 1 5/8" wide to make floor joists. I had to find something that could disperse the load over a larger area so that the floor wold not sink around the joist. My solution was to use a sheet of 1/8" thick aluminum.
Design:
The parts partially assembled and not cut to size (I had not figured out the exact placement of my joists at this point. They will be a lot closer when I install them):
The brackets were made from 1 3/4: wide pieces of 6" x 3/8" thick angle iron:
What it looks like underneath:
How it is attached to the frame:
The added bonus of this repair (and why I call it a modification), is that not only is my floor very sturdy there, it also made my steps very firm and solid. But the true "mod" status is what I get to use the Unistrut beams for: I can hang stuff under them, like a spare tire! :)
