Foretravel Owners' Forum

Would that be where one of the upright walls are in the basement ?

If yours is like mine, there is a gigantic steel plate underneath that plywood across the entire floor.  Wherever there is a screw through the plywood, there is also a hole drilled through the steel plate.

If yours is like mine, there is a gigantic steel plate underneath that plywood across the entire floor.  Wherever there is a screw through the plywood, there is also a hole drilled through the steel plate.

If a prior owner were to have added an accessory, seat belts, couch, etc., or replaced that piece of plywood in the past, and didn't put the screw back in the exact same place (and didn't drill a new hole), any new screw would hit the steel plate, and could actually lift the plywood off the ground as you "screwed it further in" if it wasn't firmly secured in several other places.  Find your screws in the problem area, and back them out a bit - if the plywood starts lowering, that's your problem.  Might even be the passenger seat.

I'm not a fan of the luxury vinyl.  I put it in my previous RV and each tiny imperfection showed, after I spent hours in preparation.  You will need a mirror smooth floor.  This week I saw a new product they just srarted carrying at Lowe's, 100% water proof click together flooring.  I will update this when I see the product again.

I am replacing the flooring with floating vinyl. When I removed the carpeting, I found a place behind the passengers seat where the subfloor is bulged up about half an inch.  I drilled a hole through it to check it and found no signs of delamination of the plywood or any signs of moisture. Has anyone run into this? How did you fix it? What would have caused this?

I am replacing the flooring with floating vinyl. When I removed the carpeting, I found a place behind the passengers seat where the subfloor is bulged up about half an inch.  I drilled a hole through it to check it and found no signs of delamination of the plywood or any signs of moisture. Has anyone run into this? How did you fix it? What would have caused this?

What is that light horizontal line running left to right?  It almost looks like someone has replaced that section of plywood and that the seam has been caulked/filled?

Rick,
Lots of interesting, random speculation, but between the only two owners of "Princess", the answer to where the "Hump" came from, is that it was caused by the front tire, passenger side, pressing hard against the overhead of the wheel well for extended periods of time as the coach tried to maintain level in our driveway in NH.  And that is something that FT denied — first as a problem and — second as anything that the coach suspension system design caused and — third anything that they felt any responsibility for addressing — even though FT MCC friends have relayed that they (FT) did patch several (perhaps as many as a dozen) floors that showed these symptoms, over the years.  There are many that will say that the coaches of this era will not be harmed when they are aired down and the tires press hard into the wheel well overhead.  I believe that is horsepuckey.  Somewhere along, sometime in 2001 but with certainty in 2002, FT changed frame and suspension dimensions. Thereafter, tires no longer touch wheel well overheads when the coach is "aired down".  In the susceptible years (1996 thru 2000 with certainty), I believe that there are many variables and when the variables happen to line up, flooring damage will occur.  Variables examples include side to side slope, end to end slope, front end vs. rear end slope ratio (greater slope in the front than in the back with a front end being at a higher elevation than the rear is the really bad combination to avoid), humidity, temperature, time of exposure to tire pressure on the overhead surface, particular coach plywood variables/characteristics (e.g - type of plywood, grain, finish, east-west vs. north-south panel orientation, etc.), perhaps insulation foam variables, to mention a few.

As you probably know, the "Hump" comes and goes with humidity — or at least it used to when we owned the coach.  It would be good for many months and then all of a sudden, it would show up for a while, usually for a few days or maybe a week or so.  It was usually after the coach had been inactive and shut up during humid and/or cold weather.  Eventually, I correlated it pretty precisely to inactivity and high humidity. 

The behavior puzzled me for years until we had close friends park a 2000 U320 40' FT in the same NH driveway location and they developed an identical bulge in their floor, over the course of a week (+) stay.  Now, because we didn't remove and dissect any plywood sections, I don't know if these were delamination events or just deformations of the plywood but it was identical in both coaches and both leveling systems pushed their front passenger side tire hard into the overhead, enough to be able to see the physical deformations in the wheel well overhead, once you got under the coach.  I documented all of this pretty extensively on the Forum in "to Dump or not to Dump" discussion threads.  For Example: (and there are others)

Dump Air Bags or Not? (http://www.foreforums.com/index.php?topic=14319.msg82845#msg82845)
Tire clearance issue (http://www.foreforums.com/index.php?topic=17418.msg116181#msg116181)
Controversey Over Leveling Coach (http://www.foreforums.com/index.php?topic=23268.msg180454#msg180454)

After it once occurred, our friend's FT coach, exhibited the same "on again, off again Hump" appearance behavior for the rest of the time that they owned their coach (many years, maybe ten or so). 

Our friends subsequently met someone that had a coach of the same general age (a 1999 U295 40'), that claimed to have injected glue into his delamination void thru a saw kerf and then lay in a pattern of wood screws to draw the floor back to level.  In at least three cases that I am aware of, FT made a lot more work of it, removing a large section of plywood flooring, sawing out that section at a dimension that allowed the sharing of 1/2 the width of the underlying floor frame members (just as Don has suggested), and then replacing the removed section with fresh plywood.

Because we always intended to have (keep) carpet in the living room, we never addressed it further than trying to get FT to show some responsibility for the anomaly and to offer a solution.  They would gladly do the work for us but would not accept any responsibility or help in any way in mitigating the cost.  They never admitted (to us at least) knowing why or how it happens.  They admitted to having done several replacements, suggesting to us that it had always been abusive things that owners had done to their coaches.

HTH,
Neal