Hondo Garage's New Thing

I’ve been googling ‘waterproof continuous hinge’.
The ‘hurricane hinge’ is interesting but I haven’t found one that’s simply 45 degree flanges that open up to 160 deg or so. They all have goofy lips/edges extruded.

if I could find a simple one I would consider swapping.

anyone found anything interesting?

 

Damn
I subbed ages ago when this first came about. Had no idea the problems. What’s production numbers up to at present?

 

I think one of the main issues is having a flat surface resting on a round surface. Of course having a plastic hinge also contributes to this flaw. Clamping a flat hinge between these surfaces is fundamentally not sound. GFC needs to redesign this in a way that would enable retrofitting and wouldn't dramatically increase their production costs. Perhaps they could dedicate the lowest track on the extrusion to retrofitting some sort of fail safe hinge.

 

My #406 just got finished

 

Damn
Well good luck y’all
Unsubd

 

From the GFC forum. I use the same name on all the forums I participate on.

Didn’t even make it to the new house as I thought before I had another hinge failure.

I thought it’d be the passenger side again, but nope, it was the driver’s side.

First failure was right before my birthday (yay me, awesome present) and 5 weeks after my first hinge failure he we are again.




Luckily I implored all the hinges be sent to me, and GFC did just that.

So no, there won’t be a repeat of the duct tape door again. I’m just out the time to fix this that I had planned on using for work on the new home.

Thankfully there was no near miss head shot this time either. First hinge failed while I was closing it. This driver’s side hinge failed without me touching it while it was opening. At it’s peak I heard a snap and there you go. This failure is starting at the front. The previous at the back. Basically everything was the opposite. Can’t wait to see how the rear hinge fails

 

Do you have anything useful to say?

 

Boys will be boys...boy.

 

Subd again

 

So, looking at my new rear hinge it is still not flat on the ends. I removed any seal under the ends, it is not that. It appears the design of the frame does not allow it to sit flat. The welds cause it to stick up.


I agree with @rajacat9 that there might be something wrong with a flat hinge laying on a round surface.

 

I agree. I wasn’t a huge fan of the round tubing. It’s a lot easier to seal and square things up with square tubing. I had one of the early deposits but eventually backed out because there were multiple things i wasn’t a huge fan of and didn’t want to be a beta tester halfway across the country... given how things I have gone, I think I made the right call.

 

So when I mentioned before that there seemed to be gentle curvature throughout my camper and that's why I didn't think a metal hinge would work, well:

The attached photo to me seems to show the natural, un-tensioned form the panel wants to take.

The hinge is only broken at the front, the struts have been removed. No extra load in the system

 

Maybe this could mean that separate, not full length, hinges would be able to account for any curvature. You could use shims to adjust fit.

I just looked at mine and indeed, there's a very slight curvature. The upper extrusion has a much more pronounced curvature. This results in the top not being centered between the corner fittings. When the wind blows from the left side it pushes the tent to the right and sometimes I have to pull the upper extrusion to the left so everything lines up.

 

I think that's just an illusion. It would be pretty difficult for a squared up welded frame made of straight tubes to be curved.

 

I don't think it's an illusion, but I also don't think it's as drastic as the photo shows.

But it looks like it could also be the panel with the curvature.

Anyway, having taken this apart, everything goes together just that little bit more difficult like not everything is straight.

I hate to be that guy, but I do engineer stuff for a living. My camper just feels like everything is on the ends of the tolerances. It all goes together, but not as well as it could

 

I used to order a few hundred feet of tubing per project at work. You’d be amazed at what is let out of some factories and/or poorly transported.