RV Life: DIY repairs - Fixing the steps

We all want our things to just work and never break or have problems. We also know that life is not that way. Things break and there will be problems from time to time no matter how much we wish differently.

The foldable steps that help us climb up into our travel trailer home are one of those things that should just work. Ours had started to break and I could see it getting worse over the last several weeks. The steps worked but the attachment point on one side had started to rust and was beginning to break.

The entry steps into our trailer.

I was always being careful not to step in a way that put most of my weight on the breaking side, but it was still getting worse. Something had to be done. After some thinking, I decided that the easiest way would be to get an angle bracket and just drill holes for the existing bolts and use that to reinforce the steps. I looked like a simple and relatively fast project. I should have known that it would not be that easy. It always seems like something goes wrong that makes any fixing of the camper take multiple times longer than I first anticipated. I should learn to just count on things taking longer, but I still foolishly thinks most things will be easy. This time it really would have been easy and quick if it had not been for one very stubborn nut!

It tooke me several hours to get this though nut to come off!

The first thing I had to do was to remove the existing nuts so that I could measure properly, drill holes in the bracket and place it up next to the step as a support. Easy, right? As soon as I tried to remove the first nut, I knew that it would be a little harder than I anticipated. I had noticed that the nut and bolt was a little rusty. Not that strange considering that it sits under the trailer. With the help of some good old WD-40 I could get the nut down about 1/4 inch but then it was stuck. I used some more WD-40, let it sit for a while and then used some more force and then it started spinning. I thought it would just come off but I quickly realized that it was now not just the nut but also the bolt that was spinning. The top of this, now spinning, bolt happens to be right under the wall, next to the door. I would have to cut a hole in the wall to maybe see the head. I had no idea how it would look so I decided that would be a last resort.

My next attempt to loosen the nut was to use good wise grips to hold the bottom of the bolt and keep it from spinning. It still spun and the nut was still stuck. So I decided to flatten two sides of the bolt since I didn't really need the thread at the bottom, just at the top. This did not help and the nut still would not move, neither up nor down.

Now I needed help so I asked my good friend and neighbor in the campground Doug to help me. He brought over a hammer drill and a crowbar to put some downward pressure on the nut. Still no success. By now it was dinner time and I had to let day one end with 1 - 0 to the nut.

The next morning I got two narrower lock nuts at a local hardware store and tried to put both on the bolt and lock them together. I should have been able to hold them with a wrench and by doing so also keep the bolt from spinning. But by now the thread was so damaged that even though I have two nuts locked together - the bolt still spun. I only had a little time to work and I had to accept that day two ended: 2 - 0 to the nut.

As the third day began I was really frustrated and if I'm honest, angry at the nut that would not give up. It had proven to be a very hard nut to crack! But I was not going to give up.I decided that it was time to get serious.

I should be able to cut the nut off with one of these, right?
source

I have a decent collection of tools that I carry with me in the trailer and among them a set of power tools from Ryobi. The Sawzall with a metal blade should do the job. With the help of another of my neighbors and friends, Paul, I got to work cutting the nut off. My first blade made it about halfway through one side before it shattered. That blade happened to be not just my first metal blad, it was also my last. Fortunately, Paul had a blade that fit my tool so we sent back to work. Just before I cut all the way through the nut it starts to turn. The heat and the fact that one side is almost cut through has finally loosened the nut so that we can take it off. The nut won the first two battles, but I won the war!

The next challenge was not nearly as hard but as you can imagine the thread on the bolt was by now in pretty bad shape. I would have wished to rethread it, but neither I nor any of my friends in this campground had a thread repair tool or a tap and die set. It was hard to get a new nut to thread all the way up on the bolt but in the end, I got it tightened and the new reinforcing bracket in place. My steps were fixed.

This does not look like a big project does it?

This is the best picture I could get showing the repair. The offending bolt is the vertical one on the left. You can also see the silver colored side of the new bracket. This "simple" project that I planned to get done in about an hour before lunch ended up taking several hours spread over three days, one trip to the hardware store and the help from two friends and some of their tools.

Thanks for following the journey of me and my family
as we travel and roadschool our kids around the USA.

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