Afternoon All As the subject above.... i removed the roof ready for the paint man to do his magic, and i am coming up to putting it all back on. ****'Word of warning when removing. Don't do as i did and just take out all the screws, because if any part of your body is in the firing line it may get removed'**** tuesday_wildchild Now i have the task of refitting it all which includes the springs. The question is, has anyone got any good ideas to compress the springs ready to refit ? its a later type Devon roof with the spring/struts front and back thanks Mike
Yep, just done this. Lucky escape taking them off ... You need a couple of nylon ratchet straps around the square tops and bottoms of the box sections. Crank them up evenly. Use some cable ties to hold the straps in position if necessary. Keep cranking until the bracket moves into position. Fiddly, but can be done with sufficient cursing. PS Prop the roof up with the folding, locking struts first. It'll stay in place.
Sounds like a good idea, I'm sure there will be sufficient cursing probably not as much as when i took them off !
You'd noticed that there's still plenty of spring in them, even with the roof up ? Straps really the only way to compress them.
Yes i did, it was my own fault, it was all booked in for paint, booked the trailer, day off to move etc. and i was quickly stripping stuff off getting it ready and BANG about 3 seconds after i took the last screw out, so just enough time to think its not going to go !
Devon roof springs pah! I know somebody who decided to dismantle his up and over garage door whilst the springs were in tension. Nearly took his face off and half the garage wall
man up It is a nightmare when i did mine i pushed up the bottom bracket some of the way on and balanced it on a bit of fence post then took a deep breath and pushed it up by hand and screwed the bolts in
@andyv , @matty if either of you find yourself in Sunny Shropshire please give me a call, i will even put the screws in for you
As @andyv and @matty haven't ventured near Shropshire, i thought id better man up and get on with it, just needs a good clean now !
That's what I did,I was sweating with fear at the time,first attempt nearly took a passer by head off and I had skid marks in my pants
That's the way to do it! If you don't ratchet them together, you'll never get the brackets in place again...
On my Devon Moonraker 1979 replacing the roof struts was straightforward. Just elevate the roof and keep it there with a piece of wood. Replacing the 4 struts took no time at all, they were under only slight tension with the roof up
Hi Mike, your previous post on TLB on this subject was very helpful, just ordered a set of struts from SGS myself. Question for you, which strut fits where? One strut is a 300N rating, the other 450N ...... can you advise?
The old ones should be marked, but in any case I fitted the same rating of strut. From memory, one supplier suggested 2 different ratings were required and another suggested they were all the same - confusing. It's probably not critical. Anyway, four years on, the similarly rated struts I fitted are still doing a great job (much better than proping the roof open with broomhandles) ps. It's fairly hard to get the roof started on it's upward journey, possibly indicating that the more horizontal strut (when viewed with the roof up) might benefit from a stronger rating. But it's not really a problem.
Great advice. Have just had to do this after one half of the central hinge failed firing the spring into a shelf. One bit of extra advice, if you end up a few inches short of the bracket being in place with the ratchet straps, as I did when the ratchet straps got stuck, use a clamp to draw the bracket up the extra distance and then screw the bracket home as quickly as you can. Only got my hand trapped between the roof and the van once in the process and the straps only slipped off the struts about 4 times
