Rock guard hold down clip repair

[vcrt]

Here's some photos of the repair I did on my Sunline rock guard. As I drove down the road, I would see the rock guard flipping up and down in my rear view mirror because the clips had lost their spring tension allowing the rock guard to lift. I found that the internal springs were no longer working so that the pins would drift out of the slots in the rock guard. Here's what I did:

Here's the original clip, showing the flange in the center of the button.

Starting with a 1/8" drill, then going to a 9/32" drill, I was able to remove the flange that held the button in place.


Now the button can be pulled off.


Here's the shaft removed from the housing with a remnant of broken spring,


It's important to clean out any remaining spring pieces from the housing.


These springs I found at Lowe's fit almost perfectly.


The springs were a little too long, so I cut them to the length of the shaft. Also, I found it necessary to enlarge the cut end that would be at the outboard side to keep it from slipping out through the hole in the housing. I then applied silicone grease to keep them working smoothly and to resist water from rusting them.


Here's the shaft with spring coated with the grease ready to install;


Before replacing the button, I used the 9/32" drill to counterbore the center slightly. This enabled the shaft to sit slightly further out from the button center for peening over.


Here's the finished job showing the peened over shaft end:


Hope this helps anyone with this problem.
Rich

[JB2004]

nice work !!! thanks for great pics and sharing

[Gene]

Great photo sequence, thanks for posting it.

[JohnB]

Rich,

Great job! and nice work. Thanks for sharing. I am going to add this to the "how to" section in the FAQ forum.

Thanks for sharing.

John

[bhenning]

How did you peen over the shaft end without the bracket coming off the trailer

[vcrt]

By using an old bodyman's method. Hold a piece of steel (a few pounds) on the inboard end of the shaft (actually I had someone else hold it) while striking the outboard end with a large (1/4" diam. will do) drift pin punch and hammer.
Rich

[JerryJ]

That was awesome thanks. Mine aren't broken yet but it's an 1985.
When you said those springs were available at Lowes it reminded me that I found another odd-ball product at Lowes for a little trailer fix. It too was a spring for another fix.

Thanks for your detailed description