I've had a rattle from my roof for a while, I thought it was the power rams I'd fitted knocking on the metal roof cassette so tried fitting a rubber stopper under them. This made no difference. Eventually I traced the issue to the solid meta rods that hold the cantilever roof bed up in my HiLo. When the bed is dropped down and the rods have no load on them they rattle on the studs. On closer inspection I noticed that one of the ball stud sockets was loose and the thread on the rod chewed up. I tried to screw the sockets on to shorten the length of the rods and put them under tension when the bed was dropped but it didn't work.
This is the state of the threads.
I'd been mulling over swapping them for gas struts for a while and while at Camper Jam I noticed other roofs with the same solution. The new 'HiLo' has gas struts instead of fixed rods. A cheeky pic got a similar spec.
My fixed rods are 610mm long center - center, from my 'research' if needed 8mm rods. Closest I could get to that length is a 280mm stroke strut with a 325mm body giving a total length of 605mm, by adding a 18mm ball joint socket to each end makes a total length of 641mm center - center. So when I drop the bed it compresses the springs by 30mm resulting in no more rattles. I went for 250N spring force. Works perfect.
This is the state of the threads.
I'd been mulling over swapping them for gas struts for a while and while at Camper Jam I noticed other roofs with the same solution. The new 'HiLo' has gas struts instead of fixed rods. A cheeky pic got a similar spec.
My fixed rods are 610mm long center - center, from my 'research' if needed 8mm rods. Closest I could get to that length is a 280mm stroke strut with a 325mm body giving a total length of 605mm, by adding a 18mm ball joint socket to each end makes a total length of 641mm center - center. So when I drop the bed it compresses the springs by 30mm resulting in no more rattles. I went for 250N spring force. Works perfect.