Rapido 7 series replacing drop down bed struts

[Katies-travels]

I have seen various comments but no actual detail

The dealer wants £800 to do no help from the dealer
Any advice and tube would be brilliant seen items for Hymer but Rapido its really tight and when bed up they are not fully extended appreciate help

 

[cranky]

£800 jeez what are they gold plated! I have never done them but they cant be that difficult. i'm sure I have read somewhere about changing them. let google be your friend!! may the force be with you
if you are still stuck, give les bateman motors a ring. i'm sure he would be able to advise you.

 

[cranky]

try "replacing bed struts" in the search function. loads of hits including
https://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/forum/threads/gas-struts-wanted.167666/#post-2663725
good luck

 

[Rapido925M]

My Rapido is 9series, so may be different.

I bought 2 VERY LONG jubilee clips from Halfords, joined them together and, sitting on the dropped-down bed, fastened them around the strut (end-to-end, obviously).
I tightened each screw joiner so that the length of the clip decreased reasonably evenly on both sides.
Once the clip was tight to the strut I unscrewed the bolt at the non-windscreen end, so that if something went wrong, the strut wouldn't shoot through the glass!
Then I unscrewed the windscreen end: remove the strut from the van.

I have some sash cramps and one of them was fitted around the ends of the strut and tightened up.
As soon as the clip "bowed", I undid one of the screw fasteners and then undid the sash cramp.
The strut was thrown away. ["Disposed off in an environmentally friendly fashion".]

Now for the more tiresome bit!

The jubilee strap was connected around the ends of the new strut and then held in the sash cramp.
The sash cramp was tightened, the strap "bowed" and was then tightened equally on both sides.
Once the cramp was tightened as much as possible and the jubilee strap tightened, the cramp pressure was released, the stops adjusted and the cramping and strap-tightening was repeated until the strut was the required length. (Approx 4 goes, I think.)
[I tried fastening the strut into the cramp using a bolt at each mounting point but I felt that a direct connection between cramp jaw, jubilee strap and metal end of the strut gave the most secure set-up.]

The strut was then fastened back into the van, connecting the screen end first.
Slight adjustments to the length of the strut could be made using the screws on the jubilee strap, although I was very wary of not knocking the strap off the free rounded end of the strut.
Eventually the hole in the strut lined up with the hole in the frame and the bolt went in! SUCCESS!

Then came the protracted removal of the strap, as it had to be completely unwound to extract it.
The first strut probably took 3h, involving some degree of trial and error.
The second one took about 30 min.
£800 well saved!
(From memory, my friend at the local dealer offered me "mates rates" of £450.)

Good luck - Gordon

Recently I bought some racheting pistol-grip clamps from Aldi/Lidl for approx £5. I don't know if they would be usable BUT it might be worth considering something similar from a builders merchant, rather than sash cramps.

 

[tonyidle]

Lower or raise the bed until you can conveniently remove nuts or split pins from the strut ends (leaving the bolts or clevis pins in place). Then raise the bed fully and prop it using a couple of lengths of wood to hold it high enough that there's no load on the struts. Remove struts, replace with new ones, remove prop(s), replace nuts / split pins. Takes an hour tops. I used a scrap of plywood about a foot square with a towel to pad it and a length of 3x2 atop a trolley jack to hold mine up. The padded plywood prevents damage to the underside of the bed.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}