HELP!! Front bed almost fell thru today!

[mousefn]

Well our NTU 2002 Roo which we knew needed repair just got worse. As we were closing our front bed we saw that the bottom of the bed/door came totally out of the frame....luckily it didnt collapse when our grandaughter was on it. Anyway here is my BIG question....
we got a price of around 300.00 for a new end...has anyone ever replaced their door....how difficult is it............AND I know that somewhere I read about the screws not being flatheads causes a problem...any suggestions on this?
We thought we got a deal on this camper 3700.....but now I am ready to cry...any help would be greastly appreciated.

[bikendan]

Originally Posted by mousefn

Well our NTU 2002 Roo which we knew needed repair just got worse. As we were closing our front bed we saw that the bottom of the bed/door came totally out of the frame....luckily it didnt collapse when our grandaughter was on it. Anyway here is my BIG question....
we got a price of around 300.00 for a new end...has anyone ever replaced their door....how difficult is it............AND I know that somewhere I read about the screws not being flatheads causes a problem...any suggestions on this?
We thought we got a deal on this camper 3700.....but now I am ready to cry...any help would be greastly appreciated.

sounds like the entire hinge area, either on the trailer side or the door side of the hinge, or both, failed from water damage.
not sure but did you ask about what to look out for, when buying a used hybrid?
that's the #1 area to closely inspect.

i would assume that whatever the hinge attaches to, is compromised.
some have had to replace the wood that the hinge sits on and some have had to just replace the bunk door.

$300 is cheap for a new bunk door. i think there are You-Tube videos on this kind of job.

[mousefn]

thanks for the response.....we thought we checked it for damage but obviously not well enough.
The hinge area actually seems oky...we looked inside from where the storage compartment slides thru and that looks fine. The part that actually popped out is what I guess is called the core. We r going to price having it replaced,but we thought if we can do it ourself we could pick the door up since we only live a couple of hours from forest river. I HOPE its not the entire hinge area.
The previous owner had the entire canvas replaced, and I am wondring if that is when the water damaged may have happened and he didnt catch it....it said a branch went thru the canvas but did not mention ifg it was raining.

[kscapple]

mousefn,
Go with the new bunk end at $300 if you can. I just rebuilt my front bunk on our 2004 23B Roo and it was a chore. What happens is the aluminum frame only has spot welds to keep it square during glue-up. Once the plywood gets soaked it looses it's grip and the hinge end pivots and breaks free. My wife and I took the same wild ride last fall. To fix it I had to peel back all the rot and made small steel gusset plates to hold the frame because I didn't have access to the industrial adhesives and a vacuum bag large enough. The fix took a weekend and about $100 a the local big box store in new materials but it is as solid as a rock.

I'll link a gallery of the rebuild if you feel ambitious:
Camper Bunk Rebuild

[dancapps]

Nice work. I have a 2004 just starting to fail. Nice to see how it is put together and how to repair. I don't want to spend $1000.00 on this project.