Gas Strut helps Overhead Medicine Cabinet Door stay open

This forum is for Born Free owners to detail modifications that they have made to their coach that might be of interest to other owners. Since this is a locked forum, submissions must be made to and approved by the forum administrator (email: bfadmin@bornfreervclub.org).
User avatar
dmews001
Posts: 23
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 5:33 pm

Gas Strut helps Overhead Medicine Cabinet Door stay open

Post by dmews001 »

We've made a few of improvements to our beloved 2007 BF26RSB, which I'll start sharing here on this forum. One of the things which bothered me was that the Overhead Medicine Cabinet Door - although supported by spring-loaded hinges on both sides - kept sagging when in the open position. Not so much a problem for my not-so-tall wife, but I managed to bump my head into the door a couple of times.

So I installed a gas spring on the inside of the cabinet door to add additional lifting support. I've attached a couple of pics here to show how.

The gas strut is from Attwood with the following properties:
- 7.5" extended
- 5.5" compressed
- 2.5" stroke
- 40 pounds holding power

Our cost was about $25 plus shipping.

I used a pair 90 deg brackets - also made by Attwood. The gas spring has snap-fitted, 10 mm sockets at both ends attaching to the brackets; meaning it can be removed if needed. One bracket mounts to the frame of the cabinet door while the other is fitted inside the cabinet frame.

Purchased from Jamestown Distributors: http://www.jamestowndistributors.com/us ... as+Springs. Here are the part numbers:
Gas Spring: ATT-SL31405
lower Bracket: ATT-SL46SSP37
upper Bracket: SL50BP3R-1

Note that the upper bracket (the one attached to the door) has a so-called "reverse pem". It is available from http://www.backtoboating.com/Scripts/pr ... product=87

The upper bracket is available in black-painted, so it blends nicely with the [black] gas spring. I was able to reuse one of the screws/holes of the original hinge. That left me with just one rather shallow hole to drill into the door frame - right next to the original hinge.

The lower bracket (inside the cabinet) was a little tricky to fit, as pilot holes must be drilled from inside the cabinet. Just be sure to measure the thickness of the cabinet wall correctly and select suitable screws shorter than the wall thickness for them not to protrude. That would of course ruin the entire job.

Install the upper bracket (the one attached to the door) first and then find the appropriate location for the lower bracket (the one inside the cabinet frame). This may take a few tries, as the gas spring wants to be in the extended postion while you need to measure the compressed position. I may go and measure the distance from the bottom of the cabinet to the lower edge of that bracket, but I'm not sure if all RSB26 medicine cabinets are made with identical dimensions.

Hope that is helpful to some [of the taller] people here.

--Detlef
Attachments
Improvements for Leapn Lions 001-texted-comp.jpg
Improvements for Leapn Lions 001-texted-comp.jpg (64.85 KiB) Viewed 11722 times
Improvements for Leapn Lions 003-texted-comp.jpg
Improvements for Leapn Lions 003-texted-comp.jpg (99.67 KiB) Viewed 11722 times
Improvements for Leapn Lions 007-texted-comp.jpg
Improvements for Leapn Lions 007-texted-comp.jpg (60.42 KiB) Viewed 11722 times
Last edited by dmews001 on Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Detlef & Ursula
2007 BF26RSB - painted

Return to “Coach Modifications”