dum dum...bent lift arm on camper

[brainpause]

As most of you have seen from pics or in person, we have a Palomino with the external spring-loaded lift arms.

I got a new Dremel tool with router for Christmas, and was playing around with an old chunk of wood the other day. When I was finished playing, I laid the chunk of wood against the camper, vacuumed the garage and cleaned up my other toys.

I was about to start work on repacking the camper's bearings, and dropped the tongue of the trailer down so I could get a jack under it. Just so happens that the chunk of wood was just shorter than one of the arms on the camper and...you guessed it...the weight of the camper was bearing down on that arm and the chunk of wood. It bent it pretty good. Might still be useable...I'm going to try and bend it back into place and reinforce it with something.

This is probably one of my dumbest SPUT's. The others haven't cost me any money. :compumad:  :mad:

Larry

[PopUpMomma]

Ouch!

[tlhdoc]

Sorry, what an odd SPUT.:eyecrazy:

[brainpause]

I just got off the phone with Vanguard. What a great company! I have dealt with them on two occasions, and the ones that answer the phones in "Parts Dept" really know their business.

Anyway, a new arm set is $72.00 plus shipping. Not too bad, I suppose. But for a camper that is worth about $6-700 (per NADA, though more than that because of my improvements), that is about 10% of the value! That would be the equivalent of a $1500 repair on a lot of hybrids!

Oh well...I am going to try and straighten it and reinforce it before shelling that out. After all, I just saved us $50 by repacking the bearings this AM.

Larry

[brainpause]

Well, it's not pretty, but I 'fixed' it. At least it works. I straightened it enough to get an aluminum right angle bar on there (from Home Depot), and fastened it with hose clamps. It's not completely straight, but I was able to get the camper up. I think it is probably actually stronger now, just crooked. Like I said, it ain't pretty, but 5 or 10 bucks was a lot cheaper than spending 10% of the camper's worth to fix it.

Larry