How to mount to thin walls?

[mighty7sd]

What do most folks here do when mounting something to their camper walls? Toilet paper holder, towel bar, pictures, etc? I feel like the screws supplied with most of these things would just go right through the wall. I don't actually even know what the thickness is on the interior and exterior "walls." Does not feel very thick. Double sided tape? velcro? Smalls screws?

[myredracer]

mighty7sd wrote:
I tried rivets, but they just pulled right through the thin wall, I think they are really intended for sheet metal. I finally found the smallest toggle bolt I could and it works great! http://a.co/h0EzL2R
At least in my bottom of the line RV there is no foam in the interior walls, so no issues.

Did you use an RV Oscar rivet tho? An ordinary "pop" rivet will not work unless you can get behind the wall surface and put a washer on the rivet first. An Oscar rivet has high holding strength and you normally shouldn't be able to pull one out through 1/8" luan plywood.

[mighty7sd]

I tried rivets, but they just pulled right through the thin wall, I think they are really intended for sheet metal. I finally found the smallest toggle bolt I could and it works great! http://a.co/h0EzL2R
At least in my bottom of the line RV there is no foam in the interior walls, so no issues.

[Tango__AE7UI]

When my wife needed help in climbing the stairs to the fifth wheels bedroom, I opened the wall and inserted additional solid wood framing behind the thin paneling for the mounting screws to bite into.
Put it all back to original and you can't tell I had even done the modification.
It took a little work but it is solid now.

[LifeInsideJack]

I had the privilege of dealing with water damage in our coach's rear walls. I say privilege because I pulled this thing down to the exterior walls. I now know more about what's going on between the interior and exterior walls. Our coach's walls are a good 2" thick. I replaced the insulation and put up new interior walls and most things, like the curtain hardware, will hold in place well with the small-ish screws I used (I made our own curtain hardware).

If you really get into something then build that from the floor up. For our new rear closets I support them from the cargo box and there are only two screws into a wall for those. The floor is doing the heavy lifting.



Your coach is much newer than ours and in such maybe you are not ready to dig into it ... yet. Our coach is our home and as such I'll jump in and change it up to work for us.

** For those who are asking themselves about the Emergency Exit behind the artwork. It's still there and the artwork is hinged in case we ever need to bail out the back. Let's hope that is never necessary.

[Clay_L]

For most things we used 3M Command strips. They come in all sorts of varieties and weight holding capabilities. I also used the molly bolts shown above and they worked fine in the foam backed RV walls.

[myredracer]

I like Oscar rivets, a type of blind rivet with a split shaft that widens out behind 1/8" luan plywood when installed. They're made for use in RVs and are available from online RV parts vendors and Amazon. Not exactly cheap but they are very strong and great for things that are heavy or need to be well secured in place.

Ordinary wood screws work in some cases but it depends on what you are trying to mount/install. RV manufacturers love to use #8 cabinet makers screws everywhere as a "one size fits all" fastener. I have an assortment of different lengths and sizes of small wood screws that I've used on various projects which are kept in the spare stuff drawer in our TT.

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[TNGW1500SE]

profdant139 wrote:
TNGW, that works well if the wall is hollow. But on most newer RVs, the void is full of high density foam. Not sure if the toggle would deploy in the foam??

I bet the foam will lose and the metal would win.

[profdant139]

TNGW, that works well if the wall is hollow. But on most newer RVs, the void is full of high density foam. Not sure if the toggle would deploy in the foam??

[TNGW1500SE]

[profdant139]

If my project needs a lot of support, I use plastic spiral wall anchors. You pre-drill a hole and install the anchor, and then the screw goes into the anchor. If you have foam inside the wall, the anchor can provide a lot of support by spreading the load.

One tip -- don't drill in too far, and make sure that the wall anchor is shorter than the distance between the inside of the wall and the exterior of the RV.

Please do not ask how I learned this tip.

[DrewE]

Sometimes it helps to see what the RV builder used to mount stuff to the wall.

For towel bars, I made up some small spreader plates of thin (1/4" or so) plywood, looking vaguely like blank switchplates for lights switches, glued them to the wall (mainly to keep them in place while working), and then used plastic wall anchors through both the plate and the luan of the wall. My theory was that they would help spread the force of the mount out a bit and so prevent puncturing the wall, and the added thickness would make the wall anchors more likely to hold. Thus far it's worked out okay.

For many things, command strips would work nicely and be removable if desired.

[horton333]

mighty7sd wrote:
What do most folks here do when mounting something to their camper walls? Toilet paper holder, towel bar, pictures, etc? I feel like the screws supplied with most of these things would just go right through the wall. I don't actually even know what the thickness is on the interior and exterior "walls." Does not feel very thick. Double sided tape? velcro? Smalls screws?

For light things I use adhesive backed hooks, small stuff gets moved all the time anyway ....
The towel rack I bought one that slings over the top of the bathroom door.
For couple of things I have used very coarse screws just shorter than the thickness of the wall, which seems to have held up to moderate abuse.