So – and i know this is a common thing for those of us of a certain age of motorhome – i finally think – hope – pray – I have sorted the step out…

A while back, I had been pulling my hair out, and trying to work out just why the bloody electric step kept failing….. as a part of my frustration, I decided to take the whole thing apart and have a close look at all the gubbins – and oh my – look what I found!

Two teeth, and they are the “hold” teeth at a guess – by that I mean that they would be where the ratchet sits when the step is up – are gone…. A close look showed that there is a good chance that these had been repaired before, but that left me with a problem – how to fix or how to source a replacement.

Now I don’t use social media bar for my motorhome groups…. And i posted up some images and sought inspiration / advice. Amazingly some one said I have one of those! Deep joy until I started looking closely… this was a farcebook profile that was empty – it had a picture of the alleged individual – John Waggins by name, and a profile picture – am not going to pass comment on the shaven headed, heavily bearded redneck but i did think some of my gay friends would get all excited at the Bear, and he told me that he was in Tucson Arizona.

Now call me a bluff old traditionalist, but I reckon there is more chance of finding an honest politician than finding parts for a 23 year old Laika in Redneck USA…. So i dug further and found that this profile had only just joined one of the motorhome groups a few days earlier, but he had commented on another persons posts that he had some parts….. so i chatted away and said i would send him the right measurements and he could work out postage…. And chatted with the Moho group admin…. Needless to say, his arse was banned – and also needless to say, an obvious scammer at work but Farcebook did nothing when reported…. Anyway……

So, the consensus was to use weld to build it up, then cut down – Number 1 son – or Sulk Senior as some here may know him, did offer to get a new one milled / made but, I asked Jo’s son – who works at a turning / milling unit – to see if he could help. I kindly offered him a free lunch with his mum so the part could be passed over – they met on the Friday and by Sunday afternoon he had dropped off this – having checked if i had some needle files for fine fettling!

Pausing only to let the horrendous windy squalls settle, I set about refitting it, and getting the step working again. When i had taken the step apart I had noticed that there was an awful lot of washers and spacers – and something rattled in my mind that it didn’t feel as if it had been correctly engineered…. But, having noticed just how much crud, debris and skanky muck was on the spacers and washers, i decided to give everything a good clean – starting with alcohol based hand gel, sandpaper and even assorted dremel bits – i was fairly certain all the spacing was wrong simply by how dirty things were!

I also noticed that some of the spacers were too snug to line up straight – so I used an old trick, taught to me by my father decades ago – using a socket head and a hammer to line up and secure:

But – once all offered up – something didn’t sit right with me – the motor was not in line with the cogs on the step and it seemed – well, just wrong! I then sat back and looked at the angles – and bugger me sideways – the bloody arms were not straight!

so, I reached for my finest, and largest Birmingham screw driver and delicately adjusted it so it was straight – if not a perfect 90 degree angle, some where a lot closer than it was!

Now it was straight, when i offered up the parts, i noted that extra spacers and washers were no longer needed – and the cogs now lined up as they should have done. I reassembled and refitted lock nuts – i do think that the idea i had of using wing nuts to speed up removal if needed had probably added to the problem… either way, the step now fits and moves well – and i think its more like it was when it left the factory!

The message learnt from this isto take time and LOOK at the problem – don’t assume that it was working as it should have been – and that is a big lesson for today!