RichE
07-13-2013, 08:25 PM
This topic seems to be beaten to death but I thought I'd ask for advice. My head is swimming with all of the forum topics I've hit over the last couple of weeks.
I've disassembled the plenum and bed as one corner of the bed had delaminated. Now I want to square everything up before we put the bed back together.
We are currently not cutting square. It is about 3/16" longer on one corner than the other. I've tried adjusting the stops and pushing the car up against them while setting the drivers in order to square it but using my 2'x3' square, it looks like the car is pretty danged square to the x-rails before power is applied.
The x-rails also bow somewhat in the middle. They are about a quarter inch narrower in the middle than the ends. We loosened the bolts in both the rails and the bolts holding the extrusions to the cross members to pull the bow out with a ratcheting tie strap attached to a lag bolt in the wall. While this did improve it some, the tension tends to pull them back after tightening the bolts.
It looks like this may be related to the previous owner extending the z-axis. It has a 2" risers fashioned out of half of a 2x4 under the aluminum extrusions which are pretty shoddily put together.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2839/9280731262_acbcb0559b_z.jpg
I can't pull the bow out any farther as the bolt holes in the 2x4s seem to be holding tension now. I'm going to remove the extensions in the morning when I have enough hands to keep everything from falling into a heap on the floor.
I worry that my rails are permanently bowed now.
I've disassembled the plenum and bed as one corner of the bed had delaminated. Now I want to square everything up before we put the bed back together.
We are currently not cutting square. It is about 3/16" longer on one corner than the other. I've tried adjusting the stops and pushing the car up against them while setting the drivers in order to square it but using my 2'x3' square, it looks like the car is pretty danged square to the x-rails before power is applied.
The x-rails also bow somewhat in the middle. They are about a quarter inch narrower in the middle than the ends. We loosened the bolts in both the rails and the bolts holding the extrusions to the cross members to pull the bow out with a ratcheting tie strap attached to a lag bolt in the wall. While this did improve it some, the tension tends to pull them back after tightening the bolts.
It looks like this may be related to the previous owner extending the z-axis. It has a 2" risers fashioned out of half of a 2x4 under the aluminum extrusions which are pretty shoddily put together.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2839/9280731262_acbcb0559b_z.jpg
I can't pull the bow out any farther as the bolt holes in the 2x4s seem to be holding tension now. I'm going to remove the extensions in the morning when I have enough hands to keep everything from falling into a heap on the floor.
I worry that my rails are permanently bowed now.