Nasty Door Stopper needed a Fix

So we are banned again from traveling across the border into the USA for another month. That makes us wondering if and when we are allowed to make our own decisions of where to spend the next winter season with our travel trailer away from the cold and snow. Meanwhile as I am looking at our travel trailer, I noticed a couple of wasps disappearing around the awning motor housing. 

 

Of course the inside of the motor housing for the awning presents a perfect spot to build a nest or two. Even a spider had found this a suitable cubbyhole to lay a bunch of eggs. Well, we opened the housing up and they were all evicted in short order.

 

Our travel trailer has two sliding doors. The one separating the bedroom to the main cabin we leave pretty well open all the time and it is being secured with a strap. The other one at the bathroom is being closed when in use. It happened that we either forgot to attach the strap, which fastens to a button on the door or we didn’t push the straps button perfectly, so that it popped open during our travel. This happened already when we picked the trailer up from the dealer in October last year, that the bedroom door got loose and hung in a terrible position when we arrived at home. The issue was and is that with the momentum of movement the unsecured door slammed shut with so much force that the stopper on the top sheared right off. You see that the boys at Grand Design just put a simple long wood screw into the sliding channel to stop the door. Well it snapped and didn’t stop our door and apparently neither of the other doors of the “Imagine Grand Design” owners as per the Forum on the Internet. They wrote: “With no restraint at the bottom of the sliding doors they break the holding strap loose and slide back and forth during travel.” This can’t be good, as it becomes a loose cannon.

 

The question posed was what to do about that? Benno’s immediate remedy was to use a ¼” aluminum rod cut to size, that he pushed into two predrilled holes across through the channel and the face board prevented them from falling out. He did this to both doors. That turned out to be a great fix. The next problem was how to tackle the door from any sliding during travel in the first place. He came up with his own solution of securing the door on the bottom to the wall during travel with a brass rod and wing nut as shown with the following photos of his invention. We will remove these rods when we are parked at the RV Park. The material to fabricate the discs, brass rod, screws, washers and wing nuts he already had on hand. My talented husband had fun making these and I think those will work fine.

 

I noticed while driving by the harbor here in our neighborhood that the recently finished Coast Guard vessel bound for Shediac Bay in New Brunswick is about ready to depart for her home port shortly and another sister vessel is already in the process of being readied for painting at the Hike Metal Products Ltd. Company.

And across the road from us a lone Cormorant is looking for dinner. 

I hope everyone is staying cool these days as we are in the middle of a heat wave down here in Ontario. Thanks for dropping by and look for my next update of the installation of the rearview camera for the travel trailer.