389. Caught

Florence

Moving today so got up an hour earlier than usual and skipped the shower also so that there was plenty of time to crank up the front repair to level the floor and set things right. See yesterdays blog Strapped. Was actually looking forward to seeing the fruits of my labours.

Jacked up the chassis to ease the load on the threaded rods, wound up the nuts and absolutely nothing happened. I couldn't believe it! Fiddled round gradually removing more and more of the front trying to work out what the hell was happening?

Peering in the tiny hole at the end I worked out that the front panel had jumped on top of the floor. I sketched at the little diagram on the right on my phone to show Jacqueline and have since annotated it (click on it to view). The question was how to pull the front forward as it can't be pushed as it is under the bed and behind the toilet. The little bits that i could get at wouldn't budge.

Not having a solution I just kept removing the entire front locker install that I did in Avignon. Plans for moving to Rome today now abandoned, I simply had to get this fixed. There was a point at about eleven o'clock this morning where I was just sitting on the gravel looking at it, the realisation that if I don't get this fixed or worse, if it is unfixable, we will have to abandon the caravan as it is unsellable and rapidly becoming unusable. Writing this now I still feel a little stressed.

There was one point behind the bed I could get access so I drilled through with the threaded rod and attached it to the locker floor. To my shock, it still didn't really budge so I kept removing the front of the van as I couldn't think of anything else to do. I was not a happy camper! 

After I removed the cross brace that I installed in Avignon (still in place in the snap on the right), a tie down strap to the threaded rod pulling the front skin forward, I was able to use my chisels to lever from underneath now that I had access. I discovered about five super screws that had originally held the front in place that had pulled through and were now stopping the front dropping back into location. It was a battle to get them out but I was so relieved. This done the front pulled into place easily and everything fitted again. 

All I had now was the long job of reinstalling everything. The one hour job that I expected this morning took nine solid hours to complete. When reinstalling I was pleased to see that my new locker floor fitted perfectly without all the extra spacers that I had to use originally, which had perplexed me at the time. 

Reloaded with all our gubbins, sun setting