Nuevo/Broadway Loo roll holder

I've had two problems with the loo roll holder in the van. One the roll coming off the holder during travel and two the holder itself coming off the wall.
The first was cured by the use of some heat shrink tubing, fitted to the open end of the holder, extending it enough to prevent the problem. 
The second was replacing the screws with two 3mm stainless bolts going through the wall into the cavity under the wardrobe. I used a piece of strip aluminium for support and nuts behind. I used the aluminium because the screw holes didn't align properly. So by using the drawer rail it has kept the screws perfectly placed.
There is enough space to do this.


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Like it, specially the heatshrink tubing.

My sort of lateral thinking. 

I find that if I squash the loo roll so it is no longer circular, it doesnt come off the holder.

Thanks Pete, I  am waiting for our toilet roll holder and the towel rail to fall off. As fitted to the Rienza the screws go into the wardrobe wall that is paper thin making the screws very short. 
I can see me putting reinforcing plates in the wardrobe when they fall off. The plates will be mostly behind the table when stowed in the wardrobe so won’t be too obvious.

Nice, that won't fall off.

My Loo Roll holder hasn't fallen off yet, the Shower Riser did on our first trip whist driving after about 5 miles. There is no access for a plate behind unfortunately and the back wall is a foam sandwich, the fixing screw rips a hole in the fiberglass 2mm skin. I asked A-S for their repair method recommendations, no reply, so I plugged the hole, successfully up to now.

The shower riser problem is not new to me. We had a riser rail and the bracket for the head was fitted to a stud wall. Of coarse the screws were into the plasterboard not the studs. After trying cavity wall plugs we had to use the sprung toggle type plugs.

As regards the shower riser, I had a similar problem with the press studs holding the mattress to the wall. I got round it by using a tool mounted hollow wall fixing. The problem was the screw head did not fit the press stud until I turned it down on both diameter and thickness until there was only just enough to engage the screwdriver. It works well even if it is a bit of a faff.

My side sofa seat cushion zips undid themselves - the type of undoing where you get the zipper on one set of teeth and not the other. The teeth gauge of the zips is quite inadequate but I suppose proper zips cost a penny haypenny more and that woud never do would it? I looked up on youtube how to get the zipper back on to the other half, I managed to do up 3" of zip, superglued the teeth together, waited two minutes for it to set, did the zip up another 3" and superglued it, and so on until the whole zip was done up again except for the inch near one end where I first got the zipper on. I figure if the upholstery is ever replaced they will cut the zip off anyway so it doesn't matter if it is glued shut. At least it won't fall apart of its own accord again.
If they sewed the strap for fastening the cushions to the popper on the wall on the other side of the zip, it wouldn't come undone because the pulling strain would be in the direction of pulling the two halves of the zip towards each other. As it is, when you pull on the strap you are pulling the zip apart and as the teeth are so tiny they just give way. Another case of a nil cost improvement - or of no brains in the thinking department. They don't have a thinking department, do they?

Meanwhile 1.2 MILLION people have died from Covid. 

Pete Taylor wrote:Meanwhile 1.2 MILLION people have died from Covid. 

Most of we Motorhomers know how to keep our distance Pete and as you are of a similar age as I am then be thankful that we never had to face this pandemic when we were in our prime.
None of us on this forum can cure it so why can't we continue to enjoy our chats?
We are not going to be infected online so if you don't like this forum just leave, we will miss you as much as you will us, I'm sure.

Calm down people.
We are trying to remember what it was like when we could go motorhoming! Now is the time we can get inside and underneath them and fix things. Usually things that should have been done properly in the factory. However, if they were properly built, we would have nothing to do with ourselves!
If we listen to the news we get the same old stuff every day and it's nice to think of something else. I could spout some statistics showing that the current unpleasntness is nothing like as bad as what even some of us when younger have gone through. But I won't. I'll go shopping, I'll fix my camper, I'll go for a bike ride and I'll go and do my volunteering work at Bletchley Park. If I am not allowed out of the house, I will find out in due course.

The problem with the loo roll holder is that the tang that is meant to retain the roll faces backwards instead of upwards. I took mime off the wall, put it in the vice and used an adjustable spanner close fitted to the tang and twisted it 90 degrees so it faces upwards. The toilet roll no longer falls of each time you walk out past it. The chrome finish was not damaged by this brutality. Don't use a hammer or they to do it in-situ - it will end in tears!

Dennis

Pete Taylor wrote:Meanwhile 1.2 MILLION people have died from Covid. 

With Covid!!

That's very different to dieing from it.

Let's at least be accurate.   

I pushed on a small piece of clear silicone tubing I got from eBay to stop the toilet roll coming off, instead of your heat shrink tubing. I think both the toilet roll holder and the towel ring became loose very soon after we got the van. I pushed a small amount of long setting (hard) epoxy in all the screw holes, working it in with a cocktail stick, the screws now had something more substantial to grip on. So far everything is still holding firm.

Is the chrome thing on the washroom wall meant to have a towel ring in it? Mine didn't had one when I got it. Presumably it fell off when the last owner had it for 1800 miles and they never figured out how to replace it.

Yes we have a ring for a towel in our toilet compartment, though I should add it's not as good as having a bar. A ring crunches the towel up and so it doesn't dry as well. As it is our main towels don't dry too well either in our enclosed bathroom. In our Duetto they were hung up outside the bathroom and dried well enough during the day.

By the kitchen sink I got one of these over door towel rails, a 36cm one, reviews report the small ones are often too small for many. It arrived damaged in the post but I repaired it with JB Weld epoxy. I'm using a thin strip of foam to make up the difference in door thickness it was designed to fit. Originally the only place in the kitchen area to hang a tea towel or hand towel was the oven handle.

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I made up two over door hooks for the wardrobe, using small plastic hooks I already had and some old plastic track from some secondary double glazing that just fits the thickness of the door. We'll be able to put these on either the outside of the bathroom door or on the wardrobe door for our towels to dry. It's still early days, it's likely they'll be other small additions like these.

In our Kemerton XL currently for our personal towels we use two hooks above the middle of the rear doors. With some wood I fashioned two wood blocks that fit the metal loops by each rear door and mounted on each block is a clothes hook. It's OK just but there isn't that good a ventilation or heat when camping in the UK to fully crisp dry the towels during the day. Ian in ASOC who has a Kemerton XL showed me the wooden blocks he had made to slide into the outside sliding door track. They enables a folding wire clothes rack to be hung on the side of the van, I made a similar pair. I'll use some plastic foam pipe insulation to keep it away from the van. We've not used it yet thanks to Covid, the lockdowns, very few days away and the iffy UK weather when we have.

The first trip out in our Broadway, bought new in 2013, saw the toothbrush holder, cup holder and toilet roll holder fall off the walls. 
A couple of months later, the towel loop fell off the back of the door and shortly after that, the heated towel rail collapsed on the floor. I fixed everything myself, modifying all the fixing methods to ensure they stayed put. 
We also had the seat cushion press studs coming off the walls as well as the curling up of the wall joining strips. 
This was just the start of 3 years of ongoing repairs and modifications that just shouldn’t have been needed on a “prestige” vehicle. 
Still, it gave me something to do.....

I am beginning to wonder when this image of 'prestige' will end. Certainly in days of yore when A/S vehicles had oak doors, brass hinges and handles they were. Maybe the A/S prestige is achieved because of comparisons with worse makes. Maybe because they cost more, or because their flashy interior lights are flashier than others. So far as I can tell from show visits, glittering LED strips are a big selling point. I have seen all sorts of British motorhomes falling to bits when new in the showrooms before they are even registered. So if you can make your A/S not fall to bits before it is sold, it must be better than the competition.
One thing that A/S have got right though is that they don't fit electric beds! (speaking from experience, and having from necessity the email address of the bed designer in Italy and the production manager at Rapido in France )
I myself believe that the best quality of motorhome build years are behind us. I have recently bought an 11 year old German motorhome and apart from some drawer catches not working properly it is so seriously well built all I have found to do is waxoyl the underside and add a solar panel. The electrical wiring, the way the body is sealed to the floor and chassis, the plumbing and the furniture are aeons ahead of A/S in quality. The upholstery isn't as good though, but as I always say you can change the upholstery easily and cheaply (compared to the vehicle cost) but you can't change the furniture or much else.

gassygassy wrote:I am beginning to wonder when this image of 'prestige' will end. 

Maybe when they stop telling the world.

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Is it the luxurious bits the fall off or do they stay fixed and peel and fall apart like the locker doors.

When we bought our Broadway, the dealer kept telling us how AS hold their price against other motor homes, yet when we came to sell it, they offered us the lowest price out of all the dealers we approached. 
Any van can have faults, but it’s worrying when many owners report the same faults time after time. 
Our experience with our Broadway put us off buying another ( though, as a company, we found them very approachable  and helpful) 
Our latest German built van has had 3 issues in the 2 years and 20000 miles we have owned it. A leaking driveshaft seal ( fixed by Fiat in a day) a leaky bathroom tap ( fixed in 10 minutes) and a retainer that needed adjusting to hold open the sliding door that shuts off the bathroom from the bedroom. 
And this is classed as a mid range model!
Still, with all the faults in our Autosleeper, ( listed on another post on this site somewhere)  we still loved it and it never mechanically let us down. We also had many people throughout Europe complimenting it and commenting on how nice it looked.