Chair storage area. - Montana Owners Club

richfaa · 12-30-2013, 03:26 AM

The dinning chairs have a storage area in them. We had pretty much the same chairs in our 06 3400 and over 7 years they held a lot of stuff with not a problem.

The chairs in this 13 3402 have the same storage area. We had cleaned out the 'stuff" when we got the 13 3402 and only had the RV instruction manuals and other warranty stuff in two of the chair storage areas.

Both bottoms failed on the trip down to Florida. The brads pulled out of the bottom. They seem to be the same brads that pulled out of two wall panels on the way down. We "gorilla taped them and just got around to the repair. We weighed the contents.3.8 lbs in one chair 2.9 lbs in the other. Apparently that is too much for the bottoms to bear.
Good news is that the two empty ones did not fail. Problem solution do not store anything in the storage areas. We drilled bigger holes and used screws to secure the bottoms.

It does appear that the bottom panel on the chairs were cut a bit to small and the brads were to close to the end of the panel. They are all that way.

Check your chair bottoms in the newer Montana's if they have not already failed.

bncinwv · 12-30-2013, 03:42 AM

Thanks for the warning Rich. I will definitely take a look and see if some additional bracing strips are needed. Without looking, it sounds like it may be advantageous to attach a horizontal strip to the inside bottom of the chairs to the sides with wood glue or similar and tack the bottom to this strip. I do know that like you, everything that was in the previous chair bottoms are in the current ones, so we will definitely evaluate.
Bingo

**DQDick** · 12-30-2013, 03:42 AM

Didn't like ours so they hit the garage sale before we had a chance to find out. I always thought we were wasting money. Guess we didn't waste as much as I thought.

bncinwv · 12-30-2013, 03:49 AM

DW loves the storage area in the bottom of the chairs and we have always utilized the space in all of our models, if they need reinforced, I will do that. To each his own I guess, but I can remember both of us being impressed with the ingenuity of the feature when we were first looking at the 3400.
Bingo

Bigboomer · 12-30-2013, 03:51 AM

Yep we have had the same problem....gorilla glued them and used small flat head screws to secure them....

BB_TX · 12-30-2013, 04:29 AM

Thanks for the heads up. I need to check ours as I know they are all full of "stuff".

richfaa · 12-30-2013, 04:54 AM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by bncinwv

DW loves the storage area in the bottom of the chairs and we have always utilized the space in all of our models, if they need reinforced, I will do that. To each his own I guess, but I can remember both of us being impressed with the ingenuity of the feature when we were first looking at the 3400.
Bingo

It was a great feature. We had the space in all 5 chairs stuffed in the 06 3400 and they held for over 70K miles. In this one..... something changed.

Art-n-Marge · 12-30-2013, 05:46 AM

My 2006 must have used better fasteners. Stored mostly magazines and playing cards in ours and no problems yet. I wouldn't be surprised if they went cheaper with the hardware to make more profit. I hope nothing weighs more than a couple of pounds in them since when traveling and the lumps and bumps of the road can turn that into much heavier loads - 3 or 4 lbs turns into much more when bouncing around.

The worse thing that happened to a chair is the one at the desk got munched during a slide operation and my BIL didn't let up on the switch even as the crunching noise was heard. Splintered it like toothpicks. I should not have done the reset breaker modification, but oh well, I'd rather the slides not start/stop.

Overlord · 12-30-2013, 09:17 PM

In my opinion, the chairs bottoms are designed to do that. That way, if someone puts anything in the storage part that sticks up too high and then someone sits in the chair, the bottom will give out instead of springing the hinges, or pulling out the hinge screws, or splitting the frame where the hinge is attached.

.......but, then again, maybe I'm giving them way too much credit, and it really is just because they are too damned cheap to use anything else besides a few puny staples to hold it all together!!!

HOOK · 12-31-2013, 12:58 AM

One of our 2010 chair bottms failed, brads pulled out . I use small wood screws to repair them all and had no further problem. Haven't done it to new one yet, but it's on my mod list.

richfaa · 12-31-2013, 02:53 AM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by Overlord

In my opinion, the chairs bottoms are designed to do that. That way, if someone puts anything in the storage part that sticks up too high and then someone sits in the chair, the bottom will give out instead of springing the hinges, or pulling out the hinge screws, or splitting the frame where the hinge is attached.

.......but, then again, maybe I'm giving them way too much credit, and it really is just because they are too damned cheap to use anything else besides a few puny staples to hold it all together!!!

I like that rational. the holding tanks are designed to fail if we over fill them. Tires To fail if we put to much weight on them. wall panels to pop if we hit to many bumps in the road. Lights to fall off the ceiling if they vibrate to much. Frame designed to break if we are overweight. I like those warning systems...Smart those Keystone guys..

Wayne and Carolyn Mathews · 12-31-2013, 12:10 PM

Same problem--two of the chair bottoms started falling out not long after we got the rig. In one chair I had only 2 small, thin coloring books and a box of 48 crayons for the grandkids. The other chair had two decks of cards and a box of dominoes in it. The bottom panels of all 4 chairs appeared to be cut too small to fit the lower panels of the chairs; the brads put in to hold the panels in place were right on the edge of the panels, barely catching the chairs themselves. We fixed them with Gorilla Glue and small screws, although here and there the panels were too small to glue or screw them to anything.

I don't think we had either chair loaded too heavily. Poor workmanship seemed to be the culprit.

Carolyn

richfaa · 01-01-2014, 02:03 AM

Carolyn... exactly the same problem here. See what I mean about problems. We never heard about chair problems but we mention we had a problem and others chime in they had the same problem. Does keystone know, probably not. How can they fix a problem if they do not know it is broke. Let keystone know about the problem and all problems no matter how small.

TAKPAK · 01-01-2014, 03:32 AM

In our new 37 and a 1/4, we don't need to worry (much).....only two of the chairs have storage. The other two are "folding" chairs. But, that creates new problems....how to unfold. For some reason, they wanted (and the design lent itself) to be stubborn. The salesman tried to demonstrate it, and wound up breaking the chair.

So, he ordered a new one for us. Finally the service technician came out and showed us how to open it, but even HE had problems with it. Great design.....!!! Of course, the bottoms won't fall out....they don't have any!

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