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 Topic: Weight of caravan wall making floor sag
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24/9/2019 at 4:30pm
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Joined: 24/9/2019 Standard Member
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Hi everyone
We have purchased our first caravan, an Elddis GTX Typhoon 2000 as a "fixer upper". When we viewed it, we thought the floor had been pushed up by the n/s wheel hitting a pothole, as it was apparent that the base units had become detached from the wall inside, and no longer aligned.
However on further inspection, it turns out that more than half of the screws securing the wall to the floor of the caravan had sheared, and the wall had been bouncing up and down on the remaining screws!
Thankfully apart from a few small areas of rot on the wall and floor batten the areas are sound, so I've chocked the walls up and put double the number of new screws back in. The o/s is sound (but has also dropped slightly), but I will add new screws to be on the safe side.
The issue I have is despite re-fixing everything, the floor has obviously been weakened as the n/s wall is slowly sinking again, which is pushing the edge of the floor down. Its worse around the middle of the van around the wheel arch.
Elddis refuse to provide any information regarding the construction of the floor, so I'm in the dark as to whether there are lateral timber supports within the sandwich construction.
Would performing a delamination repair across the width of the whole floor provide sufficient strength to stop the floor sagging again as I guess its possible the bonding has failed, or will I need something more substantial? The overhang from the chassis to the wall is only 12 inches where the sagging is the worst.
Any advice is very much appreciated!
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25/9/2019 at 11:25am
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Thanks for the replies trog100 and Paul_B, I think I've found the root cause of the issue.
The floor to the rear of the axle is dead level (when I parked the van up I used the floor inside the door as a reference for the spirit level), but the floor forward of the axle definitely slopes downwards (in the middle of the van over the chassis rails), sufficiently enough for the bubble in the level to move completely out of the "flat" lines on the level.
Subsequently when using a laser level last night, the bottom of the sides of the van slope to the front, which has put the pressure on the floor over the wheel arches (which is in the middle of the van).
As the chassis rails rear of the axle are only 12" from the outside edge of the wall / floor junction, the floors hasn't dropped significantly. However, where the chassis forward of the axle bends inwards to form the "A" frame, there is less support for the floor as the gap between the outside edge of the wall / floor junction and the chassis is that much greater. This is where the floor bends downwards.
With no outriggers on the chassis, and the walls being inflexible, the floor is being forced downwards in the middle of the van, which coincides with the location of the wheel arches.
Having secured the walls to the floor again, and the wood being sound (there is no tongued and grooved arrangement) something is causing the van to try and bend in the middle it seems. Is it possible that over time the chassis could have flexed from all the bumping of our wonderfully maintained roads? I've briefly checked the bolt locations where the axle is bolted to the chassis and there is no signs of cracking, and there is no obvious distortion to the chassis rails.
I could try and undo the bolts slightly at the axle bracket whilst supporting the weight of the van by chocking under the walls front and back whilst supporting the axle to see if this makes a difference?
The fact that the drop is uniform on both the n/s and o/s tends to suggest something to do with the chassis.
Does anyone else have any suggestions from previous encounters as to what the issue may be, and how to fix it?
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