Body Work…Front

Oct. 1st, 2018: (Update Nov. 2023 – see report below)

Areas of the front end cap of this Journey have the same issue as the rear end cap. Talking about the fiberglass pieces that are epoxied to the frame.

And the problem is that there are several molded fiberglass pieces that aren’t properly attached to the metal framework. Front drop-down cover (aka the Hood), the rear grill, rear engine access cover, and even large areas of the front and rear endcaps. They used epoxy glue at the factory for even major structural supports of, for instance, the drop down hood that allows access to the top of the generator. Piss poor design in my opinion. And since there are no regulations preventing RV manufacturers to continue to provide this and several other road hazards from dropping off the RV at speed, we end users have to adapt and fix it ourselves.

In this next picture, you can see the rectangular cutout, what I’ll call the ‘hood’, that gives access to several items behind the front end cap and you’d think they’d attach it in a way that it would not just drop off onto the road while you’re driving. But no, that’s what you might think, but that’s not how the engineers at Winnebago think. What they spec is for the brackets to be pushed into some plastic epoxy smeared onto the fiberglass cover and left to set. So the epoxy squeezes out of the brackets mounting holes and sort of holds the plastic cover in place when it hardens. The squeezed out epoxy is suppose to act as a screw or bolt.

As you can imagine, as the RV ages, or if the epoxy sets up wrong, or the tech didn’t do a good job of slopping it onto the fiberglass, that then the fiberglass piece the epoxy squeezed through the holes in the metal brackets is suppose to hold breaks free and drops on the ground. Lucky that most owners discover it’s loose before that happens.

And then begins the owners quest for a solution. Hard to believe (for me anyway) that most of them decide to fix the epoxy with a long drawn out procedure of grinding down the old epoxy and reapplying it. And many want to keep using that same failed method of attachment so for some reason I’ve seen 10’s of methods to reuse new epoxy.

I just do not think that’s all that smart an idea. So my procedure when one of the many fiberglass body parts gets loose is to abandon the epoxy all together and just drill holes through it using the brackets behind as a hole drilling guide. With the hole in place, I just use a counter sink tool to ream out a small indentation in the fiberglass on the front so I can use a flathead stainless steel 6-32 screw. I’m debating as I progress with this about whether I should use 8-32 or not, but so far I’m happy with the results using 6-32.

Here’s some pics to illustrate what I’ve done shortly after I discovered the bracket that holds that front cover had come loose. The brackets holding the hood itself were fine, but the bracket on the right which is epoxied to the fiberglass endcap had come loose. Shown here. See those jade colored lumps on the metal piece in the center of the picture? That’s the epoxy that remained on the metal bracket as that side came loose. Since it had broken free of the epoxy holding it and was now loose I’ve rotated it for the picture, usually it would be rotated 90 degrees right and stuck to the backside of the front endcap of the RV (does that make sense?). But look at how stout the whole metal assembly is to hold on the front fiberglass cover, grill, hatch, hood, whatever you want to call it, plus the aluminum framing that holds it (shown below)…and only to end up epoxied to it.

Here’s the hood after removing the 4 nuts holding it. Used some PB Blaster to loosen up those mostly rusted nuts but eventually, they came off without breaking the bolts. I didn’t think I’d be that lucky but they all came off fine. And here’s a pic of the backside of the hood. Note that this nicely made aluminum frame is only epoxied to it. And that’s the problem. Mine is OK for now, but since I’m having to fix the other broken epoxied on bracket anyway, might as well apply my fix to this hood before it falls off.

What I did was center punch and drill through that aluminum frame and through the front fiberglass piece in a triangular pattern. Two of the holes were in the middle of the top horizontal piece centered on the two outer vertical bracing pieces. The third drill hole was down below, centered on the horizontal piece below that middle brace. While here, note that black articulated arms…those go into slots attached to the front endcap which are also epoxied on. They hold the hood in place while traveling. To open the hood, you put your hands under the hood and pull those bracket arms towards the center of the hood, which pulls the latches up, disengaging the tabs. Then the hood assembly rotates down supported by the articulated assembly. Here’s a close up (next picture) of the framework showing those nice bolts, and shows that the framework is only epoxied to this piece of fiberglass, you can see it oozing out a couple places behind the framework onto the fiberglass. Not acceptable, to me at least. The hole sizes I drilled were for 6-32 hardware and I can easily use bigger hardware, like 8-32, if that becomes necessary. I don’t think it will but I started out using a smaller screw size so if eventually I need to go bigger, I don’t need to do much other then drilling out the holes. I have seen RV’ers use 1/4-20 and even 1/2 hardware for this job but the fiberglass is so light, I just don’t think that’s necessary. And those larger bolt heads are just unsightly! I don’t want to have to look at that on the front of my RV so I’m sticking to flatheads and when I find the appropriate paint, I’ll brush some touchup paint on them and you won’t even see them.

Here’s a close up of the bolt plates and bolts that mount this assembly to the articulated RV frame. The aluminum weld isn’t the best I’ve ever seen, but it’ll do in this application I’m sure.Later on in this report, I’ll show how that piece shown above went back on and how visible the flathead screws are but right now, I’m posting a picture of one of the two brackets that hold the latch slot that secures that hood when it’s closed. Those are also just epoxied onto the back of the fiberglass endcap and I drilled one hole for each of the brackets, and used SS flathead 6-32 hardware to secure them. One of them was loose and wobbly so I did that chore just in time. If all the epoxy  stays had broken off, there’s nothing to prevent the latch assembly from just dropping onto the road. It’s an easy matter of busting off what epoxy might have oozed through the bracket and is still left so the hole can be used to align the drill bit. Now we move on to the big brackets that hold the heavy duty assembly used to hold the hood when open. For those who don’t have this style of RV, by way of explanation there are two hand operated latches on the lower part of the hood you push towards the center that rotate a couple tabs out of those slots shown above and then you can pull the cover towards you. That hatch cover assembly rotates ‘down’ so it’s now open and you can access the equipment behind it. Pictures above do a pretty good job of helping visualize that.

This particular epoxied bracket shown below holds that metal assembly to the backside of the front endcap, one on either side of the hood. Note the two screws with the nuts I’ve already added. By drilling from this side through the existing holes in the bracket, then the epoxy on the surface of the backside of the fiberglass, and finally though the fiberglass itself, it doesn’t require measuring anything to find the centers of those mounting holes in the brackets. I later added flat washers on this side. I also just snugged the screws. No need to reef on them getting them too tight as that could fracture the surface of the fiberglass. Since the nuts are plastic insert type, they won’t move on their own due to road vibration so I’m not worried about them just being ‘snug’ instead of tight. This picture also gives a good view of the bracket a few inches below…showing the epoxy squeezed out the bracket holes. That’s what is suppose to hold the entire front end cap to the Freightliner chassis so road winds don’t cause it to wobble. There’s more brackets and epoxy in other spots of course, but still…   And here’s what it looks like after I added those two screws on the front. Once I dab those screw heads with white paint, they’ll disappear. To the left is the articulated cover bracket assembly those screws are holding now.Once cleaned and painted, those screw heads won’t be noticeable.  The above picture shows the two bracket screws along and two screws holding the hood on…though they are hard to see.

But here’s a better view of two of them holding the hood onto the framework. Once I dab those with paint, they will practically disappear too. There’s another screw down below the hood that holds the latching bracket mentioned earlier.

It was very easy using a small Li-Ion drill on the backside of the endcap in various places to drill through to the front so I didn’t need to measure anything. But my drill wouldn’t fit on the left side door bracket so I’ve left that alone for now, since it’s still nice and tight. Once I find someone with a small 90 degree battery operated drill I’ll get the screws installed on that side too. Eventually, I’ll have 9 flathead screws holding the various components onto the front endcap.

Very pleased with how this all turned out just using screws and not trying to reuse the messy epoxy method like Winnebago did. Didn’t take me more than a couple hours. I’ve gotten months (years?) of successful operation from the same work I did on the rear endcap and expect the same success on the front endcap.

Time will tell.

Update: Oct. 2020

This repair has turned out to be one of the better ideas I’ve had with this RV. The screw replacements for the epoxy method used by Winnebago are holding fast with no tendency to crack or split the fiberglass panels front or rear of the RV. Haven’t had to do another thing to this setup. I still occasionally think about dabbing the screw heads with white paint but they’re already nearly invisible so haven’t gotten around to that.

Here’s a couple recent pictures:

Looking carefully, you can spot 7 screw heads.

If I hadn’t spent months at a time on the Sea of Cortez with this fix without any rust appearing, I might worry about rust but I think the regular wash and wax of the SS screw heads as a natural part of doing that to the RV is helping keep them bright and shiny.

UPDATE: Nov. 2023

A couple months ago I realized the left bracket had finally popped loose. Because of the equipment on that side, it was difficult to reach and see behind the bracket and I’d always thought I’d need a right angled drill or drill chuck to drill the hole from the back through the bracket holes and the front of the RV. But, this time I decided to just measure the other side and drill in the same places. So I headed to the DoItBest hardware here in Pahrump, Nevada and bought some SS hardware…8-32 and 6-32 screws and plastic insert lock nuts. I spent $10 on what I bought but I’ll just toss the extras into my hardware stock bins.

What I measured was 10.3 mm from the bottom of the cowl and 6.3 mm over from the opening on the right side and transferred that over to the left after getting a good idea that it went in the exact same area on the left as it did on the right.

And that worked perfectly. Drilled right though the original mounting holes that formerly had the epoxy squeezed though them. Then used my always helpful countersink to countersink the holes which allows the screws to end up flush with the front surface. I ended up using the 8-32 screws because I tend to lean my elbows on that side of the swing down hood and tend to work in the area because of the equipment there, and the bigger screws might help stop any cracks in the fiberglass…though after many years, the 6-32 screws are doing fine.

I did not remove the hood this time, and I used a Vise Grip to hold the bracket in place…I could tell it was in the right spot because the broken epoxy sort of makes a bed for the bracket. Shimmied it into place where it was originally and clamped it down, then drilled the holes.

And it’s already finished. I used the 1.24″ long 8-32 flathead SS screws as the longer length was easier to get the washer and nut on the backside without having to root around much. Took less than an hour.