We have a 1997 187TD. We've only had it for a few months, so I'm still getting things squared away so it can be used more often. We've camped in it twice, but during the second use, we had a cable snap. I'd looked at the cables before and saw no rust or fraying, but at the time had not seen the posts here about checking at the top pulley area for rust - mistake on my part.
We purchased new cables, loose ended, from J & R (nice folks there, thank you Rob) along with new seal material to fix that at the same time.
When I went to loosen the bolt under the top from the broken cable, the inside structure fell apart - that wood is rotted out. There was a little bit of a sag on that wall prior to all this, so I sorta saw it coming - but still a revoltin' development
Here's my proposed solution and question - I'm going to jack the top up past the bottom top edge, and brace it with 2x4's laid across the bottom to hold it up. I'll angle them a bit so they are not under the rail in question and allow me to tear it apart. This way I "may" be able to just fix the bottom rail, depending on what I find in my exploratory surgery.
Any thoughts, opinions, experiences trying it this way?
Thanks!
By the way - Hello! This is my first post.
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