Check Your TV Fasteners

[Powder Hounds]

Yesturday I noticed that our bracket mounted TV had lost one of the four screws that fasten it to the swing arm mounting plate. On closer inspection of the back of the TV I discovered that the reason for the missing screw was that the actual plastic on the back of the TV has cracked and broken away. Looking at the other three screws one had the same type of damage and was ready to fall out. With all the road vibrations I guess it was a matter of time.

So, I always have some exterior double sided tape in our rig along with some other fix it items. I tried the tape but a single strip was not thick enough to fill in between  the back of the TV and the mounting plate. You could just double up the strips to fill in the gap and contact both surfaces.  If your TV has not developed any cracking I bet this method would prevent any damage. But, then I found some heavy duty velcro adhesive strips with a ten pound rating, that would work. Took a minute to line things up and adhere the four peices of velcro. The thickness of the velcro when put together was perfect. It did take a few tries to actually get the velcro strips to connect fully but finally I got it. Installed the two remaining screws and voila. Can't see it having any future issues. Sorry no pics, I seldom carry my phone any more.

The double sided exterior tape and heavy duty velcro strips were purchased at our local Lowes.

Hope this helps.

[Merlin]

Great idea on the velcro. The Samsung TV we bought had only 2 of the mounting screws line up with holes in the bracket anyway. I'll augment that with velcro before our next trip.

[Powder Hounds]

The original mounting plate does not have the counter sunk holes that line up with the raised TV bolt holes. IMO this added more stress to those four bolts. You can easily figure out what can happen.

I removed the Velcro mod that I did prior and added an aluminum plate with the counter sunk holes. Things line up much better and the TV now sits flush rather than being raised. With some 3M double sided adhesive I feel much better.

I contact ASA (Jensen) and explained my dissatisfaction but they kindly told me that I was driving with the TV arm extended and over torqued the fasteners. Thanks for that ASA!