Probably one of the wisest comments I’ve read on this topic so far.
So you’re saying it wants to flip the fold of the hinge kind of inside out a little or enough to break it?
Do you think re-drilling the hole where the shock mounts a little further away from the hinge would help that?
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Reposted from the other forum:
More hinge opinion:
They should be proactive about the ~100 potential failures in the field. Right now it feels very reactionary. They are not even notifying customers that I know of.
They mentioned that Toyota has recalls, which is true. When Toyota has a recall, you usually get a free rental while work is being done. Maybe a loaner gfc for people getting warranty work done?
They are taking back units for warranty work which is the right thing to do. Going a month or more without the product paid for and expected is a tough ask even if the warranty work is free and fixes everything. This is even more true if the product is used all the time.
Other ideas could be a mobile warranty team, or combine the install delivery with warranty. This was already mentioned somewhere.
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In my experience/what I observed, the hinges will flex forever and you can even pull on them too without issue.
But when there is a load upward? Well both hinge failures occured from that.
The passenger side, as I went to close it, the struts acted like a fulcrum, and the hinge failed in spectacular fashion, ripping across its length, and very nearly causing me to get hit by the panel now swinging on the struts.
The driver’s side failed right when the struts hit max extension and gave that last little upward push to their max.
I have no doubt the hinges were tested for millions of cycled.
But I doubt the hinges were supported in the same way as they are in the campers or were subjected to the loads they experience from the struts or during usage.
Again, just my opinion.
It sucks because changing these hinges is such a stupid process with this sealant. The whole damn thing is glued together, and really doesn’t go back together the same way unless you trim everything away.
Say what they want about my camper having been sealed with original hinges. It took I think 8 months for the failure (sealed at the beginning of the year). The side I used least failed first. 5 weeks later the driver’s side fails, the side I use the most. To me that closeness seems more like an environmental/load thing.
Understand that there is constant upward pressure on the hinges even when the panels are closed from the struts. They’re never in an an environment absent some load on them.
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They didn’t notify me that they knew my camper would be more susceptible to hinge failure based on how they resealed it.
I found that out here.
Weeks after my first hinge failure.
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Can you shoot those to me via email? I am on the road currently and will be able to better explain that there and can repost it here.
Hi all, figured I’d try to shed a little light on the hinge situation.
Here’s what’s going on:
When we began building campers we used a piece of foam seal between the tent frame and the hinge to seal that edge. The issue was that the foam was thick enough to allow the hinge to be installed in a manner that wasn’t perfectly flat, especially at the front and rear corners where it would flare out slightly. This lack of flatness along the hinge line meant that every time the hinge was opened or closed, the pivot line of the hinge had to bend along more than one axis. The hinges aren’t designed to tolerate these multi-axis bends and would eventually start to develop stress cracks (even if you can’t see them, they are there). Once the cracks form, it’s only a matter of time before the hinge fails.
When we switched to the new liquid sealant (Teroson) we eliminated the foam gasket. This means that when we clamp the hinge between the spaceframe and the tent frame, the hinge can lie flat along the tent frame extrusion and is pinched more consistently along its length, preventing the flare at the ends so often seen on the older sealant design. This means that the hinge now bends along one axis, making it much less likely that stress cracks will form. You can see this effect for yourself by folding a piece of paper back and forth to form a pivot line. If the paper is held flat against the edge of a table, the paper will pivot easily along the fold line. but if you add a little bit of curve to the paper, it will resist bending easily and introduce tearing forces. That’s what was happening and what the new sealant eliminates.
We didn’t figure this out right away. We have campers with the old seal design that have been heavily abused off-road without issue. Turns out that the old way we sealed them didn’t necessarily prevent a good hinge installation, it just made it easy to assemble one with a bad installation. Which is why not every camper with the old seal will have failures. And unfortunately we did have a few that got resealed with the old hinges that had already developed stress cracks and eventually failed after resealing.
We have about 400 campers in use now (including test/demo campers and customer builds) and aside from that handful of reseals without hinge replacement, we haven’t had any hinge failures with the new seal design that we’re aware of. If it turns out that we’re wrong about all this (we don’t think we are but it’s always possible to be wrong), we will engineer a new solution and support (via warranty or at-cost replacement parts as applicable) every camper we make as long as we’re still in business.
Cheers,
Wiley
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When was it discovered then not having replaced hinges during the sealing process could lead to failure then?
None of this was mentioned when I contacted GFC about my hinge failure. Why not offer all the hinges then right when the failure occured if this is a known issue?
Also, if this is known, why let campers like mine be out and about and not reach out to let us know? What if either of my failures occured in the freeway instead of in my apartment’s parking lot?
I was told this solution required a weeks curing time to ensure everything would be correct when my camper went back earlier this year. When I called I was told it could be done in the field. My major contention regarding the warranty work was that a field repair wouldn’t adequately resolve the issue.
What is it? Is a couple hours field repair actually going to get this thing right so another hinge failure won’t happen in the future? As you know, most adhesives don’t actually set in such a short amount of time.
Agreed. Would be nice to see them being a little more proactive on this.
Meanwhile, I’ve tried a few times to get in touch with no luck. Guess I’ll hit the request a call button and see what happens.
Would like to see what it would mean to get my build 20ish camper up to date this winter while I’m not using it.
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Just make sure they replace the hinges on yours 
Cause even though it’s an issue they knew about when they fail to get them to fix it you’ll have to pay up or you’ll be doing like myself and fixing at home having to work through all that sealant.
If anyone hasn’t gotten a hold of us you must be using the wrong email as we empty every inbox, every day!
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Can you explain to us how the bulging welds on @Borrego_Taco frame doesn’t contribute to this issue?
Also it looks like @Slowboater sees the same thing.
My guess is for those cases it is not a gasket issue. The logic makes sense about the hinge not being perfectly flat. But like you said, “the hinges aren’t designed to tolerate these multi-axis bends”, removing the gasket is not going to fix his issue at all. There is clearly a huge bead causing a multi-axis bend. It will need to be ground down flat and re powder coated in order to fix.
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@glachow I can try 
So first, we do grind those welds flatter these days. Off the top of my head I don’t know which unit number that started with but it was fairly early. That said, the camper I’ve been running on my truck almost from the beginning does not have the welds ground flat (but it does have new hinges and sealant).
The struts tend to push the hinge up against the aluminum extrusion, which is pretty flat. This essentially gives the hinge a flat edge to bend against. When we had the foam between the hinge and the extrusion, it allowed for a lot of deflection in the hinge as the foam compressed differently along the length. The foam effectively allowed the hinge to follow the profile of the less-flat steel frame rather than the mostly flat aluminum extrusion. The raised weld was more of a problem with the foam because the foam allows the weld to bend the hinge upward.
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With all due respect, you’ve got it backwards.
When was the last time GFC issued a newsletter?
Where are the blog posts?
The hinge problem, the new aluminum grab bars, the maintenance video, and the creation of this forum are all important announcements. None of those topics are to be found on your website, and none were sent to me as a customer, or as a subscriber to your newsletter.
While I appreciate GFC’s efforts on Facebook & Instagram, neither of those outlets are nearly as effective as emailing your customer & newsletter subscriber lists. I was very happy to find this forum, but I only did so after reading a crappy post on TacomaWorld about its existence, and then searching for it myself. Responding to individual emails is important, but I think you’d be able to share information much better if you relied on your website’s blog and email lists. Doing so would also free you up to concentrate on specific issues instead of going over the same topics repeatedly.
I know this is a critical post. I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t think it was necessary, and I didn’t think GFC cared about its customers. I’ve met Wiley, Graeme, and Ross, and I firmly believe that GFC is committed to providing excellent, well-supported products. Please begin issuing (at least) quarterly newsletter emails to keep us in the loop. I don’t mind if they’re full of marketing information, but there are critical support topics that need to be disseminated to your customers, and that isn’t being done.
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That post was directed to someone saying they had not heard back from us, which implies they had reached out. If you reach out, we get back to you. There are very seldom days (last week may have had a few as I was out from the Flu after SEMA) where we have any emails left. We are a tiny company, with very little support in the sales/CS department but we do our best to maintain a 24hr response period to all emails, and close to the same with the calls (most people request a call and send an email at the same time). So I do not think in the case of my post, anything was backwards, since it was intended to let everyone know that is contacting us through email or on the forum via a DM, that if it is not being responded to, then it is going tot he wrong place. And if you are texting or calling Graeme or Wiley (the owners who likely will just send it to one of us as that is not an official line of communication) or Ross, who is no longer part of Go Fast and has not been for quite some time, you will likely not hear back from them.
As the director of the warranty program, I cannot account for any sort of info missing in the newsletter, that is purely marketing currently so I will have to look into that. I do know we have been in the process of building an entirely new website, which will be better updated and supported than our current one. This process has been extensive as the new website will have a ton of features our current one does not, and we are building it (mostly) ourselves, as this is our way and it has been taking some time to do.
I definitely appreciate all input, and as a new small company, am always looking to improve communication as well as everything else we do. I will look into what it will take to add a quarterly warranty (or improvement/upgrade) news letter to the workload! Of course we are not large, we are tiny and new, so we do not have an employee who can just sit down and write all of this stuff, so it does take time to implement even small things like this so we do appreciate everyone’s patience in this Amazon age of getting everything right now, or at least wanting that.
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Mike,
I texted you as instructed in your voice mail a few weeks ago, and requested a call on the website last week.
I understand you guys are busy, but I’m not just implying I’ve reached out. Plus this all started when I inquired about the replacement AL tubes in April, a request that seemingly was lost.
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Pics of welds holding up the corners of the rear hinge. It holds up both sides simultaneously. No sliding the hinge left or right will solve it.
So I don’t just need resealing, but the frame ground down too?
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I have emailed Taylor at support@gfcengineering.com a bunch. He has returned most of my emails within 24 hours.
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Dang, was it your back Hinge that broke? I looked at mine today and it is all pretty flat. My side hinge that broke wasn’t overlapping any welds. Maybe the tolerance stack up from camper to camper was pretty big back then?
My rear hinge cracked in the middle but did not fail completely. A couple days later my side hinge failed catastrophically.
Two broken hinges on one road trip was fun to deal with.
It looks like the side panel hinges on mine are also lifted just slightly at the back corners.
I never stated I am the only one checking emails, I am not, I do handle technical sales and warranty but we do have customer service now. We have had some turn over, and not necessarily based on a bad fit, but everyone has their own priorities and goals.
Of course no company, no matter how great will communicate to everyone, in the manner or frequency in what they want. It is also shocking how much people think CAN change in a years time. Sure, we can focus more on newsletters, etc but then we lose focus on production, product improvement, innovation, etc. Everything has to grow at the same rate or you fail. I am a consumer so I understand your frustration, but if you reach out to us, we will get back to you. Currently, we are focused on being more proactive. I am currently training a new driver, so I can commit more time to you guys and less time being on the road. That will help a ton.
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