Bumper Installation Issue!

Has anyone else installed one of the bumpers? I am at steps 28-29 of the instructions, and am having trouble.

at this stage one has the first set of lag screws in and is adjusting the bumper height to 12” from the edge of the bend to the countertop. I have 12.5” on there passenger side and 12.85” on the drivers side.

And the trouble is that on the drivers side my lag screw appears to have stripped whatever it is screwing into and will not screw upwards anymore. I need to get the bumper higher especially on the passenger side in order to get clearance for the extension cord to plug I to the the jack.

I am not sure what to do now. Do I get a longer screw for the drivers side? Leave it lopsided and now not really screwed firmly into anything?

Advice needed!! of course it is late Saturday afternoon and we are supposed to leave on Monday for a camping trip!!

 

Hi Andre'.

I have never installed the bumper nor seen the instructions. Since most bumpers come installed at the factory I'm guessing most people on this forum are the same. But, you sound like you're in a pinch, so I will try to offer what help I can. Pictures might help us. My bumper (560 Ultra) is mounted to the metal frame with three bolts (with nuts) on each side. If one were stripped, replacement would be very easy. So, I am not clear on how lags are used in your application or if the mounting is even the same.

Generally...
__I am only familiar with using lags in wood, not metal.
__If a lag into wood is stripped, sometimes you can "save" the job (at least temporarily) by putting some small pieces of wood (similar shape to a match stick but preferrably of harder wood, installed parallel to the bolt) and wood glue in the hole to "reduce" the size of the hole.
__Or, would a slightly larger diameter bolt work (i.e. fit through bumper mount)?
__Or, is it possible to through-bolt and thread a nut/washer onto the other side? Some sealant would probably be useful. __Or, as you say, a longer lag might work. I would want to be sure I wasn't hitting any of the electrical.
__Finally, when in doublt I ask Cary.
__Do you need the bumper for your trip? Of course, having a bumper is good, but fast and wrong is still wrong. How would you install this if you could remove the time pressure?

Good Skill,
--Ken

 

Thanks Ken. yes I searched the forum and didn’t find a trace of anyone else installing a bumper, with the exception of the brilliant storage tube bumper.

You are right that the bumper itself attaches with three carriage bolts on each side. The bumper attaches to a pair of brackets that need to be installed if the trailer didn’t come with a bumper. The lag screws are part of attaching the bumper brackets to the underside of the trailer and screw through the aluminum cladding and into the wood framing.

I would use the “stuff the hole method” except that the hole is now full of silicone sealant. So there is no hope of getting additional wood fiber material to glue-bond to the original wood which is in part what that method relies on. One usually uses a generous amount of wood glue and the added pieces swell into the hole and bond to the original wood.

This is a very difficult location to shoot a picture of. I’ll upload a screenshot of the instruction page. This is one of the lag bolts shown in step 23, it passes through the bracket into a rubber spacer and then up into the bottom of the trailer.

From what I can see, one cannot replace the lag screws with a bolt, because there isn’t access to both sides and no way to put a nut on. So it seems to me that the alternatives are either a longer or fatter, or longer and fatter, lag screw. But I don’t know anything about the dimensions of the wood framing behind the cladding, so I don’t know how long I can go. (One of the interesting things about screws and nails into wood is that holding strength is greatly reduced if one uses fasteners that are too long and pierce through to the other side of the wood.)

I am reluctant to just remove the bumper assembly to go on the trip because it involves breaking the silicone seal that is working on the other side of the trailer. So my current default plan is to delay the trip by a day, talk to folks at Camp-Inn on Monday and hopefully get in the right track.

 

Hi Andre'

Looks like you are in uncharted territory and doing the best one can with the available information. Good luck and hopefully Cary has some good advice.

Cheers,
--Ken

 

Just a thought: Perhaps a plastic insert like the ones used to secure a bolt in concrete.

 

go on your trip without the bumper. Install it when you return.

 

Thanks everyone! We did get out on our canoe camping trip albeit a couple days later than planned. Not entirely due to the bumper issue. (The ultimate delay was a neighbor who had gone crabbing offered us some of his Dungeness crabs. We said yes, and delayed a day so we could get them!)

Had a great trip!

Re the bumper:

I emailed with Cary who advised removing the interior floor and wall on the street side of the storage bin area under the sink to check for rot in the area. Suspecting that maybe this was why the lag screw had failed to bite in properly. I did find a small amount of deterioration in the plywood wall area that probably extends into the horizontal 1.5x1.5” frame member that the bumper mount lag screw goes up into. I decided to try a longer lag screw, as it looked to me as if I had at least 2.5” to screw up into, if not 3”. I had a 3” lag screw and with about 1/4” to spare the tip of the screw could be seen piercing the top of the 1.5” high member of was going up into. I backed it out and added a couple of thick washers underneath And screwed it in.

So the bumper got installed and looks great. But at some point down the road I have to get back in there and do something about the rotting wood. Cary advises chiseling the old framing member out, repairing the damaged plywood and putting in a new chunk of replacement 1.5x1.5. I’ve done a fair amount of restoration work with epoxy and am thinking that I could simply drill some holes in the framing member and inject it with liquid epoxy. And that the deteriorated plywood could be treated the same way. (I’ve used both Abatron and West System epoxies for this sort of work.)

This is a 2008 SUV height trailer which we acquired used this year, from someone who had owned it a year and used it on one five day trip. They decided they preferred motels. (He was 6’5” tall and probably didn’t like sleeping in it, she was quite short and probably didn’t much like having to lean in to cool on the stove.but who knows!) So we have no idea how it was stored or treated.

Cary said the pix I sent of the damage didn’t seem bad at all for a 2008. It appears to me as though the moisture probably was coming in from a nap lace where the sidewall, trim and rear of the fender all come together. There is a half inch long spot where no metal covers the plywood. On the other side it is covered by some silicone sealant. But that had fallen off on the street side, allowing moisture to enter. In the building design trades we’d call this a bad detail. Cary says that the design was changed in later models to eliminate that problem area. Good thing. But meanwhile, I put a new gob of silicone sealant over that spot.

Thoughts for next time (or first time bumper installers):
1) Position the lag screws as far to the outside of the bracket as you can. The bracket a lot is oval shaped so there is some choice about where to put the lag screw. I had centered the screw on this slot. But 8 noticed that the tip of the screw came out very close to the inside edge of the framing member. This means that there isn’t a lot of wood structure supporting that lag screw on that side. So if I were to do it over again I would position the screw as far as possible to the outside edge of the trailer.

2) Jack the trailer up as far as you can to do this job. It is a pain to install the bolts holding the brackets to the trailer frame (the first steps on the process). I did a lot of it by feel because I couldn’t get my head in there to see anything.

Bottom line is that the bumper installation is a bit fussy and not exactly fun. But definitely do-able without a lot of specialized tools. (I used a power drill and hand wrenches in the process.) And I feel just a bit more confidence that a very low speed impact will not do ridiculous amounts of damage to the trailer.

 

Well written! Thanks for the follow up…hopefully it will help some one in the future.