Our new to us excella had a similar situation. I wonder if that was a result of traveling with it closed up on the side as described in the first post, on our first trip out with it we noticed the problem, and it didn't occur to us that it could be caused by being closed up during travel. We just replaced the hinge/screws and so I am interested in hearing results of this poll in order to avoid such a problem in the future. We'll travel with the table up if it seems to make a difference. Thanks for posting this.