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Subject Topic: ALKO 2004 indicator Post Reply Post New Topic
26/4/2010 at 3:07pm
 Location: Essex
 Outfit: Mondeo 2TDCi Abbey Freestyle 470
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The red part of the wear indicator on my ALKO 2004 stabiliser has broken away from the green part - actually it's the lugs on the green part that have broken. Although I realise that this is not a serious problem as there are other checks on the pad condition, I like to keep all parts of the caravan in as good condition as possible. I have tried various adhesives, including superglue and resin types without success. Looking at the way the indicator works, I suspect that this could be a fairly common problem. Have any other forum members experienced this, and found a solution.


26/4/2010 at 9:17pm
 Location: Essex
 Outfit: Mondeo 2TDCi Abbey Freestyle 470
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As a clarification I should have pointed out that the broken part I am referring to is the wear indicator on the coupling handle, not the indicator button on top of the soft dock.


16/8/2010 at 10:42am
 Location: Essex
 Outfit: Mondeo 2TDCi Abbey Freestyle 470
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In the hope that I can help any other members, this is how I have (hopefully) solved my problem, but first I must emphasize that this is the result of my experiments and those who might use this information do so at their own risk. Also I must stress that the wear indicator is a non safety-critical item and any modifications must not change this.
In my stabiliser both the lugs on the green part of the wear indicator were broken off, making it very difficult to accurately locate the red part on the green. I tried various adhesives, but all failed in use. Neither my local service shop nor ALKO could offer a satisfactory solution. I decided that what was needed was some means of pinning the two parts together to back up the glue joint as well as ensuring a close fit to optimise the glueing.
This is what appears to work for me:
I fitted an old towball in the hitch to hold the indicator as far forward as I could, pulled the indicator as far out as possible and drilled a 1mm hole as far back as possible in which I inserted the end of a paper clip to hold the indicator out while I worked on it. (Warning: Don’t release the towball while the paper clip is in place – the force with which the indicator snaps back will wrench the paper clip out of the hole)
Using a 1.2mm drill I drilled 2 holes in the red section about 1.5mm in from the outer edges, starting about 3mm below the top front and emerging about 4mm from bottom of the face that I wanted to glue. Using rapid resin glue I then temporarily glued the red part in place and drilled through the red part into the green part. The red part was then easily removed by levering with a small screwdriver. But if it isn’t you probably don’t need to do anything other than remove the paper clip.
I then thoroughly cleaned the mating faces. I took two 25mm lengths of 1sq.mm copper wire (from mains lighting cable), which is a snug fit in the 1.2mm hole. I slightly flattened 2mm at one end of each piece of wire and checked that these are a tight fit in the 1.2mm holes. I dipped each flattened end in Loctite Superglue and inserted ONLY THE 2MM ends into the holes in the green part and waited a few minutes for the glue to set. I then threaded the red part over the wires and checked for a snug fit. All was well, so I removed the red part, applied Superglue to the mating face and refitted the part. After giving the glue an hour to cure, I tested the operation of the hitch and all was well. I finally trimmed the ends of the copper wire flush with the surface of the indicator.
I will now see if the repair lasts, but even if the glue fails, the wire should stop the red part getting lost.

Important note – If the wire is inserted too far into the green part, it will interfere with operation of the hitch lever.


20/9/2010 at 2:28pm
 Location: Essex
 Outfit: Mondeo 2TDCi Abbey Freestyle 470
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4 caravanning trips later and the repair is still holding, so I think this can be considered as a cure.



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