Thursday, September 7, 2017

Master Bed Problems

As with anything you own, most everything breaks sooner or later.  So it was no surprise when our bed broke away from the wall in the master bedroom.
Bed pulling away from the wall in the RV.
So every time we would put the slide back out, I had to go and push the bed back in place, which was not easy to do, especially since we load it up with junk while moving.

It would also slide out of alignment when driving down the road due to the vibrations, which made it even harder to get back into position.

So I decided it would have to be fixed, which should not take too awful long.  Yea.

First thing you want to do is remove the lift support shocks that are used to life and hold up the bed base over the underneath storage.  There is one on each side of the bed.
Remove lift support shocks from underneath storage top.
The next step is to slide the mattress out of the way so that you can get to the top part of the bed and remove the ply-board.  It is a section about 3 foot by 5 foot.  There are 4 screws holding it in place that need removed.
Remove the 4 screws that hold the ply-board down at the head of the bed.
After you remove the 4 screws you also have to remove 26 screws that hold the piano hinge in place that allows you to lift the bed board to get to the underneath storage.
Remove screws that hold piano hinge in place.
Now you can remove the top plate and expose the underneath storage and where the bed frame attaches to the head board and wall.
Top plate removed to expose where bed frame attaches to wall.
Here you can see where the two screws (per side) pulled out of the bed frame.
See where the two screws pulled out of the bed frame.
I then pushed the bed back up against the wall by sitting at the bottom of the bed frame with my back against the dresser drawers and my feet against the bed frame.  I would push one corner a quarter of an inch or so and then slide over to the other end of the bed frame and push it about the same amount.

The headboard where the bed frame attaches to the wall is hinged, so once I got the bed frame close enough I pulled the headboard out from the wall and attached it to the bed frame with a screw on each side to hold it in place.
Pulled headboard into bed frame and attached with a screw to hold it in place.
I then started up the RV's engine and retracted the slide to let the slide motors push the bed back into place since my back was hurting from me pushing and it was almost impossible for me to have the strength of pushing the bed 100% back into place.

To ensure that this would never happen again I decided to use 5/16 inch bolts to reattach the bed frame to the headboard.  If they pull out, then there is something else wrong, like the bed frame getting hung or something.
5/16 inch bolts I used to reattach the bed frame to the headboard.
I was going to use 2 bolts on each side, but my other 1/4 inch bolts were too short, so I could not use them.  So I doubled the screws also and used 4 per side along with the 5/16 inch bolts.

The bracket seemed to be securely attached to the headboard into metal rather than wood, so I did not beef them up any.  I hope I do not pay for that in the future.
Bed frame attached with 5/16 in bolt and 4 screws.
After sweeping the area clean of metal shreds and saw dust, I reattached the top board and hinge. 
Reattaching top board to bed.
The hardest thing was getting the bed frame back up against the wall so that it could be reattached.  The entire job took me a good three hours to accomplish, but if I would have had help it would not have taken so long.  As usual though, a job that I though would be simple, turned out to be hard to do, but it is done.

So now when we slide, the bed goes in and out like it should without any human intervention.  Lets hope it stays that way.

God bless and safe travels!

Thanks!
Don, Misty, and Kids.......
Twenty Six states visited so far!