Broken chassis

[davejmobile]

2011 autotrail Dakota having recently had a trip to France and Spain I found out how wonderful there sleeping police men our we had a scooter rack and scooter out come pulled bolts out of floor which would be under the shower tray question is one part of the chassis appears to be glued is this away I can repair damage or is shower having to come out to repair.

 

[funflair]

Are you saying the side with no bolts is just glued and has never been bolted? the big question has to be, is the floor supporting the chassis or the chassis supporting the floor, my thought is the former but should be the latter and I would suggest that the chassis was never designed to carry a scooter cantilevered from the back of the van.

And to answer your question, I would be happy to glue the bracket back to the floor but without the scooter, if you want to keep the scooter on the back I would say it's not ideal but shower out and bolt and spreader plate on the inside both sides.

 

[davejmobile]

No scooter going back on but would like to carry a couple off push bikes a lot lighter then the scooter and rack.
Have been carry scooter and rack for over five years.

 

[davejmobile]

No scooter going back on but would like to carry a couple off push bikes a lot lighter then the scooter and rack.
Have been carry scooter and rack for over five years.

 

[The Wino]

I think you would be better extending the main chassis back rather than sticking it to the floor and as the previous reply said I suspect it should never have been fitted to the floor in the first place. I think I'd be taking the old bracket off altogether and possibly overboarding the floor from underneath to prevent water getting in before fitting a chassis extension if there's room or a rear mounted bike rack.

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[Jimbohorlicks]

Surely its the van floor that's jumped off the chassis not the other way around. Its what is holding the hab part of the van to the chassis as well as gravity. There must be spreader plates in the floor above the bolts as the main floor construction would not be strong enough. The floor would be a ply foam sandwich and the ply isn't that thick usually..

 

[TinaLes]

A few more pictures of the entire scooter rack frame from the underside of the van, would be good, so we call all then see the whole assembly from start to finish. I agree with others in that you simply cant rely on the floor boards to support the weight of a scooter/bike. It needs to ideally be an extension from the main metal chassis, same as any tow bar assembly, plus maybe floor supports with spreader plates on both the top & underside of the floor.
LES

 

[bigtwin]

Isn’t this where the scooter rack is mounted?

If so, the load is being taken by the chassis rails. Granted, there may be some being taken by the floor of the MH but adding chassis rail extensions isn’t going to help.

Ian

 

[davejmobile]

Thank you for all your comments THE scooter and scooter rack will not be going back on the motorhome the screw bolts that held the chassis bracket had no washer no spreader plates nothing this is a 12 year old van which has had this rack on for six years only getting the motorhome Airborne caused this damage just wondering how much work involved in taking shower tray out not to put rack back on

 

[Just smiffy]

Going by the first picture with no nuts, it looks to me that there has never been any nuts or bolts on it at all, there’s no evidence of washer/nut rings on the surface of the support plate…

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[funflair]

A few more pictures of the entire scooter rack frame from the underside of the van, would be good, so we call all then see the whole assembly from start to finish. I agree with others in that you simply cant rely on the floor boards to support the weight of a scooter/bike. It needs to ideally be an extension from the main metal chassis, same as any tow bar assembly, plus maybe floor supports with spreader plates on both the top & underside of the floor.
LES

As bigtwin says I am sure the scooter rack is already on the chassis extensions, if the OP got it all a bit airborne as he says then I can understand there might have been a bit of flex in the chassis rails, even if these were designed for a tow bar to be be fixed to that is usually a max of something like 75-100Kg ish and a scooter way behind the usual tow ball position would apply a load that it was not all designed for, likewise the floor was never designed to take the type of dynamic loads generated by a cantilevered scooter.