2015 Vista 27N - One year old report

[lslblues]

One of my brackets fell off in less than 1 year on a 2018. Can’t believe they haven’t figured out a better way to secure these.

- The metal brackets that the hood latches into on each side of the front cap are just glued onto the fiberglass cap with epoxy glue. The flexing from driving can weaken the bond and these brackets can fall off. On mine before one fell off it started to feel loose so if the bracket is no longer solid to the gelcoat cap take action to get it properly reattached right away!

If the bracket falls away, the hood likely will open on it's own and hit the front cap below the hood opening damaging the finish, another reason to take action before it falls off.

Take some rope or nylon strap and tie each bracket to the front structure of the F53 chassis so that if one falls off they will hang by the strap and not fall to the ground and be lost, possibliy damaging radiator, a tire, something else under the chassis, or your toad in the process.[/QUOTE]

[Edbehl]

Hood bracket fell off while driving
Of course we ran over it and some others ran over it also while we pulled over to see what happened and pick it up off the street

I took the bent up bracket to a fabrication shop where they heated it up and reformed it to original shape AND ground off the paint and scored the back mating surface. While remounting the right one, I found that the left was also loose. I glued them back on with JB weld AND added two bolts on each bracket to ensure they cannot fall off again. I used stainless wide head hurricane shutter bolts which I painted to match the coach.

While repairing the hood latches I discovered that the three top brackets for the grill had also broken loose so I reattached with JB weld

After Three trips to Home Depot and a lot of JB weld today all appears to be secure

[lslblues]

Winnebago has had this issue for years. Sounds like you have a great solution. A better solution would be Winnebago mounting the bracket so every buyer doesn't have to solve this themselves.

[Edbehl]

Winnebago should have fiberglassed the brackets to the front panel instead of using epoxy just counting on the extruded mushroomed part of the glue to hold it


Doing it the way they did, they should have removed the paint and roughened the mating surface if they continue to use epoxy