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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
If you requested a call last week, I am just catching up, I was out all week with whatever I caught at SEMA and will get back to you. Email of course is best, because in the warranty process I need photos, etc to track the issue. I will create a Warranty Request process on the forum here for everyone to copy and send to me via email, so there is no back and forth and I can get right to solving your issue.
It has also been hard to just get out the tubes right away, they are a normal camper item now, so they are being slotted into production so they are going out as they can! If you shoot me an email to my personal box, mike@gfcengineering.com, I can get that rolling now! (if I haven’t)
While I, too, am concerned about the hinges of a camper I do not even have yet (which, in and of itself, is a little crazy to think about) I will say that when I emailed vagabond, they took nearly 2 months to reply to a simple question regarding wait time.
GFC has replied within a week nearly every time I have reached out, prior to forking over thousands of dollars as well.
@Borrego_Taco - I think my response to @glachow will answer your question. I’ve pasted it in below. In fact, the photo you posted shows exactly what I’m talking about. the foam on top allows that weld to push the hinge up at the ends. If the foam wasn’t (with the new sealing method) then the whole hinge would sit flat against the extrusion. The only reason the weld might need to be ground flatter would be if it’s so high that it prevents the hinge from being clamped fully after the foam is removed. This is something we would do if necessary when we reseal it.
Right now the reseal needs to be done at our shop. We are attempting to work out a method so that Mike can do these reseals in the field so that campers don’t have to be transported back and forth or even removed from the truck. The cure time for the sealant is seven days but the truck can be driven after one day as long as the panels aren’t opened until the sealant is cured.
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.
