Bay Door Repair

[Rob Robinson]

Recently noticed that the 1/8" aluminium door skins on three of my pantagraph bay doors were lifting. I decided to take the worst one completely off to work on it. Removal is easy. Open fully, cut electrical wires, ubolt adjustment arm and then with the help of one other person remove the two bolts on the arms. The arms are spring loaded but will not go any further than the fully open position. They will not hit the coach when you remove the weight of the door from them. The door outer skin is afixed with studs that were welded to the inside of the door skin as well as double-sided tape. All along the bottom the stud welds had broken loose and all that was left holding the skin to the door frame was this double-sided tape. If your doors make a rattling sound (like small pebbles) when you open and close them then you too probably have bits and pieces of studs rolling around in there. Not to worry.........100% Polyurethane works well. I used it two years ago on the entry door when several main aluminum welds cracked. It is the BB recommended fix for these failures. I fixed the other two doors in place by simply prying open the gap and squirting the poly in. I cleaned the surfaces with rubbing alcohol and applied clamps after gluing. One last thing...the latching mechanism sometimes fails due to a lever arm popping out of place. If you look closely at pic 3 you will see I have put a simple tie wrap around the offending part. Here's some pics