Broken support rods

I'm not sure what these are called, but while working underneath inside the belly of the beast, I noticed on one of the cross frame members that four of the connecting support rods were broken, and one is bent. I think some others are broken elsewhere too. I'll have to get a good count.

Any ideas on the causes of this? I have a friend who is a welder, and I might be able to fix these if necessary? Or, I could slap some duct tape on

Thoughts?

From the amount of rust, they must have been broken for some time.
What’s above that spot? It looks like the floor panel has been displaced directly in front of the damage.

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Agree with John, What's above? Even if it's open floor consider what trafic occurs there. Your welder friend should be able to beef up those supports rather than just weld them back together.

Your cross member is a Truss beam. The beams strength relies on all of it's components.

For whatever reason, you broke one of the truss webs.

The first web that broke increased the load on the two adjacent webs 50%
The you broke a second web, and also increased the load on the two adjacent webs. Now your center web has 100% additional load.

You should look at geting that fixed sooner rather then later.

Thanks, everyone. The truss is above/just aft of the rear axle. The one forward of the axles has bent webbing, but not broken. There are no known issues with the floor. What you may be seeing in the photo is the foam insulation I'm adding underneath to try and keep things warmer inside the coach.

Any ideas on a cause? I don't see any damage to the angle iron that makes up the truss. My first hypothesis is that the twisting during sharp turns put too much stress on the webbing. Alternatively, we had our left rear wheel fall off in January of 2016. Perhaps this happened then? And a third potential hypothesis is that the hydraulic rams associated with the slide outs caused the damage?

I added angle iron side-to-side near the hangers (running gear) and so if my first hypothesis is the correct one, hopefully the underlying problem is corrected.

Other ideas?

I'd lean toward the wheel falling off and added stress at the time. This is where the brunt of road conditions would affect them. Still difficult to say because of the time that happened. Could be a combination of that and some rough roads over that time. In any event as I said beef those rods up because they have already bent and more likely their integrity has diminished. Your friend that welds can weld the rods together and that weld will be stronger than the original metal, reinforcement to those rods would help to prevent any further bending.

"If" it was my trailer, rather then welding those broken parts (web) I would first make sure the top and bottom pieces (they are the flange) are not bent. If so, straighten them and then weld in new pieces of 3/8" steel rod along side the damaged parts.

StrongJava said:

I'm not sure what these are called, but while working underneath inside the belly of the beast, I noticed on one of the cross frame members that four of the connecting support rods were broken, and one is bent. I think some others are broken elsewhere too. I'll have to get a good count.

Any ideas on the causes of this? I have a friend who is a welder, and I might be able to fix these if necessary? Or, I could slap some duct tape on

Thoughts?

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The bottom cord of that truss has definitely had a lateral shift at some point as all the rods in the same direction are broken. If the frame members appear to be straight I would grind/trim the ends of the rods until you can get them to align again. It appears difficult to get back to the top cord of that truss so I would lay the broken truss rods into the V of a piece of angle iron and splice them in that fashion. The truss webs/rods have to be straight to maintain the integrity of the truss.
Doug


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porthole said:

"If" it was my trailer, rather then welding those broken parts (web) I would first make sure the top and bottom pieces (they are the flange) are not bent. If so, straighten them and then weld in new pieces of 3/8" steel rod along side the damaged parts.

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My buddy and I have talked about this a couple of times today. He'll be back in the area early next week, and we can inspect together then.

But, I've inspected the angle iron on the top and bottom of the trusses, and don't see any signs of damage. This seems to support (IMO) the theory that a one-time significant event broke them, and that general struct returned to its normal place. The overlap of the rods where the breaks occurred is not much, but we might be able to push the two pieces of angle iron apart, although I suspect that won't be that important.

More to follow! As always, you guys rock!

dereasoner said:

The bottom cord of that truss has definitely had a lateral shift at some point as all the rods in the same direction are broken. If the frame members appear to be straight I would grind/trim the ends of the rods until you can get them to align again. It appears difficult to get back to the top cord of that truss so I would lay the broken truss rods into the V of a piece of angle iron and splice them in that fashion. The truss webs/rods have to be straight to maintain the integrity of the truss.
Doug


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Excellent catch on each of the breaks being on the pieces pointing the same way!