By Chris Dougherty
Chris Dougherty is a certified RV technician. Here is a letter from a reader about misaligned RV cabinet doors that he received while he was serving as RVtravel.com’s technical editor.
Dear Chris,
We own a 2011 Forest River Sunseeker 3120 with cherry wood cabinets, and have found the one door on the closet is not closing tight at the bottom. The door closes tight at the top. Is there a way to fix this problem? —Gary
Dear Gary,
Thanks for writing in. The answer to your question is yes, the door or door jamb can be adjusted, but the key to determining the fix is to first find the problem.
Doors and door jambs not meeting all the way around can be due to a couple of things, including a warped door, a wrongly mounted door, a wall that’s not plumb, etc. The way I like to do this is to start by examining how the door operates in relation to the wall, and check all the pieces to make sure nothing has come loose or is broken. If all that seems OK, I check the door slab to see if it’s warped. Sometimes its easier to remove the door and lay it on a flat surface to determine this, although the way most doors are made today, warping is minimized or eliminated.
Next, if the door itself is OK, measure the walls of the closet to make sure they’re square. It’s not unheard of to find that the wall on one side of a doorway isn’t in line with the other side. This can be because the wall fastener failed, or because the wall was secured improperly. If this is the case, the wall has to be opened up and moved to the correct position and re-secured.
In addition to the above, other things to check are: 1) The alignment and positioning of the hinges; 2) Check to see if the wall is bowed in, as I’ve seen them bowed in the middle; and 3) See if something is hitting the door when it closes, causing it to be bowed out.
If the door slab has warped, a replacement can often be obtained from a surplus warehouse, or from your original dealer.
Related:
Secret storage? You have tons of it in your RV – just open that cabinet door!
##RVDT1770
As a former cabinet maker, I’ve used many tricks to getting doors lined up. The newer, concealed hinges often have adjustment screws to make a variety of adjustments. The older pin type hinges can sometimes be tapped with a hammer to tweak them, or unscrewed and moved slightly. If you’re not handy, try to get a carpenter or cabinet maker to take a look and make the adjustments.
Re: the door that doesn’t close at the bottom, I did not see whether the door is wood or plastic. Correction is different for all materials. Although the problem was discussed, I did not see much on the cure. If warped, “throwing” (by bending) the top hinge out can push the opposite bottom in, regardless of the material. Using the “retainers meant for meeting bifold doors will pull the two together. But, if it is wood, (and ALL wood will warp), there are ways to correct, such as weighting it down on a flat surface after applying damp towels on the back side.
I must have missed something! Fist the way the problem is written, it could be a sliding closet door, like the one on our 2017 Forest River Birkshire, this is easy to adjust by adjusting the roller on the bottom! Secondly if it actually a hinged door its most likely the spring loaded strut that holds the door open, when opened & closed when closed. I had to change out several of those spring struts with different ones that Forest River sent me. I chose to do it myself as the dealers techs are not inclined to even get close to fixing anything that resembles SKILL!!
Snoopy
Try putting thin washers behind the hinge, That’s improves some of the hinge adjustment. If it just and old school type hinge, move the hinge backwards.
Gary,
I believe the question might have been about how to adjust the hinges so the cabinet door is aligned to the cabinet. I have one that has become misaligned and sags, I’ve tried adjusting the screws on both the top and bottom hinge without success.