Add me to the list. Unit #143 with the new sealant. Closed the door and started to hear it crack, then the entire door popped off.
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Sorry man that’s a huge bummer! Is sucks to see that the hinges can fail even with the new sealant…
Agreed. This is concerning. I hope this case is an exception. Picking up my camper on Tuesday. I’ll definitely ask them about proper opening and closing techniques. I feel like these failures must be related to one’s opening and closing habits. Don’t know. If I find out anything useful, I’ll post it here.
Peace.
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Guess a lot of people have the same habits.
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I am convinced it is the over matched upward force of the gas struts.
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Are you having hinge issues?
There is no special insight on how you open and/or close the doors besides what they say in this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=904kRf3hCE4
I wonder how many others (if any) have failed with the new sealant…
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I’ve lost track of the revisions. Does the latest attachment method still use rivets between the hinge & door?
Has anyone made limiting straps for their doors? I’m thinking about somehow attaching small limiting chains to the struts. Don’t have my camper yet, so we’ll see how that goes. I think chain because its easy to count links to ensure equal lengths. Hoping that the chain will take load off of the hinge. I have seen one GFC in person. The doors felt flexy. As the video eludes to, I wonder if haphazardly opening the doors accentuates the flex and causes stress on the hinge over time. I’m going to try to be careful opening and closing the doors and try to incorporate a limit on the struts. I’ll quiz the installer on Tuesday. As I stated earlier, I’ll post any useful info I get here.
Peace.
Nope I checked mine out this morning after seeing this post and they’re all looking good. But this issue was supposed to be limited to the first 100 or so(?) campers that were built with a different sealing method on the hinges. If you dig back through this thread there’s a good explanation from the guys at gfc about what was causing them to fail and how the new sealant should have fixed the problem.
I am thinking about taking the struts off
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Yes, the new sealant still uses the rivet design except for the following: long bed Tacomas and long bed Colorados.
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I have read through this entire thread and I understand that out of all the campers that have been produced, only a small minority have had failures. But I still don’t understand why GFC doesn’t choose to go with a more robust hinge design where the hinge could be bolted/attached to the bottom of the RTT. For instance, if you used a stainless steel piano hinge (or something similar), it would be a lot more robust and insure that the panel could fluctuate from a 0-90 degree angle without concern of the hinges failing. It will be interesting to see how these sealant based hinges age (>5 years and beyond).
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@mattyd Was your camper sealed originally? Or was it the original design and resealed at some point? If it was resealed and retrofit, did they replace the hinges?
This is alarming if an original sealed hinge failed.
If it was an original poor design it is less alarming but still very concerning since resealing was supposed to fix the issue.
I agree a more robust hinge is a good idea.
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Installed my rear hinge last week, now all 3 hinges have been replaced… I have zero confidence that another hinge wont fail sooner rather than later. Really wish they would just come up with a more robust permanent solution… But highly doubt that will ever happen.
The holes on the new hinge didn’t line up with the last two outer holes so I had to drill through the metal panel to accommodate.
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ouch. sorry man.
I’ve got 2 hinges failing - they’re backed up with gorilla tape to hopefully keep them from exploding.
i googled a bunch of hinges and couldn’t really find anything better. I’m willing to swap something else in - I just don’t know what would work.
From what I’ve seen - maybe someone could make a ‘hurricane’ hinge that would work? I haven’t seen anything out of the box that looks like it would fit.
One snotty comment.
and for the record - I LOVE my GFC. Bragged about it 3 times today at length at the beach. Frikkin love it.
@GFC_Mike - Guys get off Instagram and get the hinge shit figured out - PLEASE. Cool IG posts aren’t helping us.
@mattyd - Can you confirm that this is a from a build of the ‘new sealant method’? I’m not sure what number is the first ‘properly assembled’ hinge.
Everyone - the rivets vs gluing - doesn’t make a difference in anything but appearance. How the hinges are attached to the panel has nothing to do with whether they’re failing or not.
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I just can’t help thinking about this… I guess its because I pick up my camper in 2 days and this is getting real for me. Since I don’t yet have my GFC, its been a little hard to wrap my mind around this issue. I’m likely still somewhat disadvantaged because I haven’t seen these hinges operate in the wild. Best I can tell, there are about 12 folks on this thread that have had failures. They all come from the first 150 or so campers and it seems like most have had their campers for at least a year. If all failures have been reported here that puts the rate of campers (not hinges) that have had failures at 8% over 1-2 years. It does seem that failure is time dependent, so the reported 1% failure rate is probably quite inaccurate. Its not fair to keep campers that have been out in the wild less than a year in the denominator. It doesn’t seem clear to me whether its hinges failing independent of the camper or whether there is something within those campers causing hinges to fail. If there are other failures not on this thread, then the percentage of campers is obviously higher than 8%. Unfortunately, the time dependent nature of these failures will keep the actual failure rate unknown for a few more years.
I would encourage GFC to release the failure data here and let the users who have experienced these failures first hand have a look at the data. I feel certain that the data would get thoroughly analyzed. Build number, date shipped, date(s) of failures, location of failures, truck brand. Maybe that would be helpful. I think everyone here wants GFC to succeed. Currently, I am hopeful that GFC has solved this issue. I believe that they are working on this problem with every intention of taking care of us. But since time is in the equation, clarity may take a bit…
I really hope I don’t have failures, and I feel for those that have.
Peace.
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Yes my camper was built with the new sealant process. It was not a retrofit.
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