GMC Motorhome, Interior… more door hinges

Yesterday I said I would work on hanging the doors and drawer fronts in :Fandango”.  The delivery truck didn’t show until 3:30 …… there goes that day!  Hey, it was the morning after the Super Bowl…. everyone seemed to move slow so lets blow off yesterday in favor of mourning all those dead brain cells ……. “out with the bad, in with the good”  and you feel so much better when it’s gone….  That’s where we should be today.  I couldn’t wait to get to the shop this morning to get THIS party started!

Have several subjects for “Motorhome Rehab Ranch” videos…. we’ll do another one today but before that I want to talk a little about door hinges… what works in this application.  I may reference some of the pics here in the video…

First, I need to plunk out some verbage explaining what we look for in a door hinge.

You can see seemingly thousands of types of hinges, each with their own specific use.They can be simple and inexpensive or extremely complicated so don’t pick a hinge type on that.

You need something that will do it’s job while rockn -n- rollin down the road.  The doors have a chance top open up on turns… come unscrewed when fibrated, too loose….. too tight….. takes too much and too tight measurements.  Hey listen, I wish I could say cabinets can be made to tight tolerances but things need to have “gimp” so the door won’t pop off say when you hit a curb.  Some hinges and latches cause huge problems.  Out of all those choices over the years I have found a couple of hinge types that fit applications we see.

Laying out the doors in sizr to the right are 2 hinge types I will be using in Fandango.  I will be using an adjustable strength overhead hinge there in white and a 2 action articulated hinge for the doors.    Criteria for these selections are:

o  invisible when the door in closed
o  flat mounting for the door and the opening
o   The overhead hinge needs to be adjustable to smoothly hold large and small doors
o   Needs a spring action holding closed
o   Needs a positive hold when the door is open
o  and they can’t be some delicate, custom install hinge… I mean the more involved they are to install the harder they will be to fix when they brake

last weekend.. yes during the Super Bowl pregame shows…. I installed this door using the same hinges in Willie & Nancy’s coach “Savoy Brown”    As you can see, the door is held open fully….. why?  What if you were parked on an angle… the door will hold itself open.   Closed the hinges go away    The overhead hinges mount on the inside of the opening and the face of the door    Behind this overhead Bill has his control panel.. down it has a clean look there over the frig   The screw at the bottom of the hinge can crank up the strength depending on the weight of the door Bill has (left to right, top to bottom) his Honda EV-4010 generator….. Water heater LP gas switch….. the systems monitor looking at fresh, grey and black water tanks, LP tank, the fresh water pump switch…. and a quick look 3 LED volt meter.  Deeper into his voltage situation, the top right gives out data on AC power and current currently being used.  Below that he has an accurate digital DC voltmeter… to the right  is the water pump electric element switch finally on the bottom left is a high current batter switch that disconnects the huge Inverter/charger.  Left to it’s own devices that 50 pound easy components would suck the life out of his 2 golf cart batteries!  When it’s not needed you really need to cut that power sucker off!  so then after that technical evaluation it’s all pretty againYou may have never seen hinges like these before… and I believe that, these are designed for a specific need.  Lemme give you a great examle.  So building drawers there are some really smooth moving slides ….. great but the first time you take a curve with the coach all THOSE drawers will open.  You need a smooth slide with friction and a latch lock when closed.  We found a unique slide with a ” push up open-push to lock” feature….. perfect!

Hope this helped out, when choosing a hinge or slide, don’t choose it on price or on smoothness…… get what you need to do this job……

I’m on Fandango now with my order in, I’ll do some pics for you tomorrow…. .

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