Motor Home Steps

Well I got it done.  It wasn’t easy but it was doable.  Here’s what I did, it wasn’t rocket science but it did take a lot of doing.  I took the old steps over to my nephew’s house in Perkins, Oklahoma.  He, Mike Prough, has been a welder and is presently an inspector over the manufacture of storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma.  He has a pretty good metal working shop in his garage.  He cut out a rectangle in the mounting surface of the old steps using his grinder and a cut off wheel.

Then he cut off all the lower steps.

He also made me some plates with a 1/2 inch hole drilled in them and a 3/8 inch nut tack welded to them.

With these I came back to the motor home and bolted the frame (second picture)to the motor home using the plates with the nuts on top.

Now it was time to take the motor home over to Mike, where he was able to reach up through the frame and weld the little plates to the motor home.

Now all that was left was to take the old frame down and install the new steps which is all I wanted to do in the first place.

All this because Gulf Stream didn’t have any backup on the nuts.  Of course they didn’t need any, since all they did was start the nuts and then put the old impact wrench on and tighten them down.  No problem since they didn’t have to take them off.  This is what the frame that the steps bolted to looked like when I finally got the steps off.

you will notice that they had taken a cutting torch and notched out the frame.  This is not what I would call good craftsmanship.