Bathroom Wall Slide

The bathroom wall slide on my TM pulled out of the screws. This is the slide on the wall between the kitchen and bathroom to let the wall fold down nicely.

Has anyone had this happen to them? How did you fix it?

[ShrimpBurrito]

That happened to me. I don't recall exactly which end gave loose, but it became totally detached -- as in I could take the wall outside. As I recall the hinge is attached to a thin strip of wood (maybe 3/4" or so square?) that is screwed into the bottom of the shelf. I just glued the 2 separated pieces together (using either construction adhesive or Gorilla glue), clamped it for a few hours, and it not budged in the dozen or so trips we've taken since. I think I used Gorilla glue, but Titebond III (which is waterproof, which I would use given the moist bathroom environment) would also work fine, and wouldn't expand like crazy like the Gorilla glue does. You really have to keep an eye on that stuff for the first hour so you don't make a mess.

In my experience, a good wood glue will beat the strength of screws any day.

Dave

I had the wall hinge itself come loose from the wall and bend. I took the hinge off, straightened it back out the best I could in a vise, then reattached it back using pop rivets.

Great ideas - for me, it is the hinge, not the wood, but I like the glue approach, and I like the pop rivet approach - so I'll probably do both.

Thanks for the great ideas!!!

Our slide broke loose at the screw holes and I replaced it with another from the factory. If it happens again, I will consider using a metal drawer slide, assuming I can find one of the same width. Plastic seems to be a weight choice here that may be less durable than metal.

There seemed to be (at least on our TM) a clearance problem between the limit screw that presumably keeps the wall panel from coming too far out into the aisle and the wall panel. This resulted in leverage against the slide when folding the wall panel down. I left the limit screw out when replacing the slide and it works well now. There's also a screw eye in the same block of wood that could cause some interference.

Has anyone had a similar experience and/or do you know the purpose of the screw eye? I realize I'm getting old and a little senile, but can't seem to come up with a purpose for it.

Thanks in advance.

[TomNVenice]

I use the screw eye to attach a bungee cord to secure hanging cabinets and dresser when traveling.

I had an expert (my girlfriend - who really is an expert on failure analysis, she has been paid by people like the Air Force and Hewlett Packard to analyze failures) look at the slide and explain what went wrong.

She found two things:

1. Wrong lubricant - you can tell that because it beads up on the plastic rather than flows. The factory needs to switch to something different for the slide's plastic.

2. Wrong screw heads - the screw heads the factory installed are designed to be counter-sunk. That doesn't work when you don't countersink them, and will tend to rip through plastic. She recommends heads with integral star washers that are otherwise flat on the bottom, as they won't tend to get overtightened. She says there is plenty of room for a bigger screw head sticking out, without hurting the slide. For this reason, she's also baffled that the factory would have ground the inside rivets flat on the other half of the slide, but that isn't exactly a problem, just extra work for the factory.

She thinks if these two things were fixed, the slide would be fine and would last a lot longer. In the meantime, she is repairing the slide (filling the holes where the screws used to be with new PVC and reshaping it) and then going to switch the screws and lubricant to something more appropriate. I'll let everyone know how it works.

[wbmiller3]

Wow, grakin, hang on to that one.

[ShrimpBurrito]

Originally Posted by wbmiller3

Wow, grakin, hang on to that one.

Indeed, sounds like a very rare find.