It’s been about 9 months since I decided to do this upgrade to the Aliner. When I first went to the Hershey RV show way back in 2016 and saw other Rockwood and Forest River A-frames that had air strut assist left on the roof panels, I thought that looked like a good idea. I’ve never really understood how the springs worked on a regular Aliner. The springs on Chalet’s are a torsion spring and I’m not sure what the springs are on the Rockwoods and Forest Rivers. Anyways I originally bought my gas struts as they were specified in Dave Michael’s DYI article on the Aliner owners club page. It’s a good idea to read his article, as he gives a lot of theory in detail on the different types of struts and reasons for the different installs, and why he did it the way he did it. In a nutshell I think he attached and installed the struts the way he did because he didn’t need that much lift. He just needed a little extra because the springs were getting old. As a note, if you look around the DYI section of the Aliner’s owners page, you’ll see Dave has also changed the springs on his Aliner in the last 5 to 10 years. I think the indication is that we are all adding the gas struts after changing the springs shows that the springs don’t last like they should. I’m going to assume that eventually Aliner is going to find a better system for opening the the roof halves. But I am of course no RV engineer. I’ll put the link to Dave Michael’s article right here.

My current employer (probably not for long) builds fuel tanks for their large diesel tractor-trailers. When they build them they cut out the holes for the filler tube and the various pipes and hoses that go inside the tank. They throw these in a big dumpster to be recycled once they get 500 pounds or so, so I didn’t think they would miss 4 of them. And that is what I used for spacers for the lower attachments of the air struts. I found them to be approximately the right thickness and of course they’re aluminum, so they won’t rust or corrode much. I have a small tabletop belt sander that I used to smooth the edges around the corners after hand sawing them with a hacksaw. Fabricating those shims/spacers took much less time than I thought. It’s one of the things that delayed me starting the project. The other thing that delayed my starting the project is that I ordered 2 air struts and then I ordered 2 mounting posts and 2 end pieces. And if you read that just right it sounds like my math is correct, however each strut takes 2 mounting posts and 2 end pieces, so I was short a set of mounting posts and end pieces. Although of course reordering a 2nd set really didn’t take much time. What took up the most time was not realizing that I actually needed the other set before beginning to start work. I just hate it when I jump into a project and suddenly I realize I do not have all the things I need and it’s going to take a UPS delivery to get them. That happened when I was changing out my basement windows. Something else that is taken away some time that I should be working on videos and blog posts. I removed my old rotten and single pane windows and was going to rebuild/install new builders windows into their concrete holes in the foundation, but realized I really needed a tablesaw to rip wood to fit properly. I’m not sure why I have not finished that project yet though.  Too much stress at work I guess.

But anyway, back to the story at hand. The article indicated a method of finding the proper placement of the struts on the side of the Aliner by taking a strip of wood such as a yardstick as a template and marking the placement of the mounting plates(anchors on each end of the strut) and place a mark between those “end points” where the upper mounting plate would be when the collapsed strut is in its fully collapsed configuration. And then opening the roof and placing marks for the ending points in a possible place along the Aluminum extrusion and then marking the sidewall using the same bottom point mark, but the now use the collapsed strut mark on the template. Now Close the roof to see if the upper roof mark lines up with the collapsed sidewall mark. Let me say that again, you have a piece of wood with 3 marks essentially the bottom attachment point which is the very end of the template and then a mark at the fully extended strut, and a middle mark at the strut collapsed.  On mine at 15 inches that is the compressed length of the strut, and then another mark on mine it was 24 inches for the fully extended length of the strut. You hold the end of the stick against the side wall aluminum channel and hold it up against the side of the roof until the extended mark reaches the upper edge of the roof. And it can’t hit the roof at a complete 90° angle because that won’t work it’s gotta be down the roof a little ways and then you mark those two marks (Side wall Anchor and Roof Anchor).  Then using the anchor point on the side wall you just marked, use the middle mark to measure along the sidewall and mark that spot where the fully collapsed strut would come to rest.  Now, close the roof and see if that roof mark matches up with that sidewall mark.  If the mark on the sidewall is right below the mark on the roof, then you have found your mounting points. If the mark on the roof side is closer to the sidewall anchor point, then you need to move your sidewall anchor point a little bit closer to the end of the Aliner. If the mark on the roof side is farther away than the mark on the mark on the sidewall, then you move your bottom attachment point closer to the middle of the Aliner. In Dave’s article he says it took him 14 times of opening and closing the Aliner to find a good match between the roof mark and the sidewall mark. I tried it 5 times and because it’s not easy to open and close mine from the back, I determined a slightly  better method. I closed the roof of my Aliner and latched it down, then took a drywall square and ran a line every inch down the side of the roof edge and onto the sidewall edge. Covering the edge with tape makes removing the lines a lot easier (which I started to do in the project and then took it off because it got so marked up). Then I opened the roof, and again used the square to run a line again to the sidewall. You then don’t need to close your roof each time to match up the lines. If your anchoring point on the sidewall puts the roof mounting point on line 7 at on the roof, and line 7 on the sidewall is the collapsed distance from your bottom mounting point on the sidewall, then you found your spot. I gave it about a quarter inch less at the final mounting point just to compensate for the angle that this strut will be at when closed. And you don’t really need to have the stick/Template to do all this. Once you get the lines drawn on the side of the Aliner, mark your air strut with a piece of tape at the length it is when it’s fully compressed, and you can hold it against the side wall and the roof and find the spot where it works the best moving it around, then lower it to the sidewall lines and see if the tape matches up.

Once I got the one installed, I just measured where it was and transferred that to the other side. There was no fitting and testing and for the 2nd one. I did raise the roof up and down a couple times and checked it out to see how the compression was and how the opening was. I had a mild amount of fear that if I mounted it too far apart,  the roof might not open enough to lock with the rear roof. That proved not to be an issue, and I think from what I see the roof would flex quite a bit even if it was too tight. It’s a really nice system how the roof goes together.

So the other tidbits that you want to know before you do this.  You put the spacers on the lower half of the strut so that it holds it out away from the Aliner sidewall or it will hit the roof sidewall as it comes down. And you need more spacer for the front roof than the back since it goes OVER the back roof. In fact it may even hit it anyways if your trailer roof is a little loose like mine is. If I have the roof up and I push on it, it moves quite a bit side to side. But the important thing is when the roof is down and latched, you don’t want the air struts rubbing on the roof. And you can shim that away from the sidewall as much is you want. In fact I was thinking of using a 1 x 2 and bolts to attach the bottom. But I decided to go with the aluminum shims and rivets as they are more weather worthy. I also recommend that when you rivet the strut to the aluminum add a generous amount of caulk to the mounting fixture so there is a nice watertight seal between the mount and the A-frame. I didn’t do this but I was trying to get this done. If you’re still thinking about it, this would be a good thing to think about.

So this was a good project. It was really extremely easy. My original thought of reinforcing the side and putting them far down the side and using 3-4 foot long struts at 50 pounds each to help raise the roof may have been more spectacular. But this certainly does help out. The test of time will be to see if they cause any harm to the roof because after all there is now a much greater force on that side of the roof near where the springs already are. If I had used much longer struts they would’ve been quite a bit farther away from the end and may have been a bit gentler. Just something to think about. In Dave’s article he doesn’t explain why he picked that particular size/length of strut. I think if I had done it on my own I probably would’ve gotten 3 foot struts instead of 2 foot struts. Who knows, maybe they would not have worked. But I’m dying to find out. I may have to do the back roof now. :-0