Door Hinges

[Ed Keyes]

Have a 04, 25' Classic. The bottom pin in door hinge on the entrance door wants to come lose after a few hundred miles. Airstream repair dealer notched the pin and inserted a rivet in the hinge to hold in place. This lasted for about 800 miles and started to "rise" again. Called Airstream and the person I spoke with said he never heard of this problem before. Most of the problems he encountered were pins that were "frozen". His advise was to use a punch to return the pin and notch the hinge around the pin with a tool similar to a cement chisel. Just returned from 6K mi. trip and had to do this ever 200 to 500 miles. Anyone else had this problem ? If so, what did you do to fix. The only other thing I can think of is to have the pin notched in a machine shop, tap the existing hole in the hinge with a allen screw and insert. My concern with this approach is that the hinge looks to be cast aluminum and not sure it is strong enough to hold the screw.

[Condoluminum]

Ed-

If you search for hinge and pin above (search tab in blue bar above), you'll find some threads of others with same problem... Solutions range from:

1. Try toughest version of Loctite around hinge pin
2. Drill hole through hinge body and pin and use "Roll Pin" (small tubular pin of spring steel..)
3. Replace hinge unit with new one

There may be other options, but those are good starters...

John McG

[Kistler]

I was advised by the fellow Airstream owners here to use locktite and it worked. In my hinge pin case it was the upper hinge that kept working the pin out/up.

[Ed Keyes]

Thanks for your input.

[mudmuffin]

The locktight might work but then if the hinge had to be removed in the future it might be a problem. Drilling and inserting a pin would be the best solution.