| Before we headed out to Alaska in May of 2009, I wanted to make a rock guard to protecet the front of our towed. I discussed this with my good friend Manuel Esparza and we looked at some made by Roadmaster and we thought we could reproduce something that would compare to the function of the ones from Roadmaster. Sue and I stayed at Connie and Manuel Esparza's home in San Antonio for a week and Manuel and I came up with a good design. We went to Home Depot and bought some black landscaping material 6' wide X 50' long. We bought such a long roll, because we had some other people we were bulding the rock guards for besides us. |
| We measured 5' of material off the roll so we had a 5'x 6' piece of material. While at Home Depot we purchase about 4 pieces of 1/2 pvc pipe with 16 caps. We also purchased a grommet kit with 20 grommets from Academy. We needed the finished material guard to be 46" from rear end of motorhome to front end of the towed. We doubled the material over a 6' piece of pvc pipe and placed grommets along to edge to form a sleeve that the pvc fit into. |
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| We then cut 8" piece of 1" pvc pipe that Manuel had at his house. We slid the 6' piece of pvc through the middle of the 8" piece of 1" pipe. We had cut a small "window" in the middle of the sleeve we made with the grommets. The 8" piece of 1" pvc was then clamped/bungee corded to the rear hitch on the motorhome. |
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| We hooked my car up to the motorhome and made some more measurements. This is when we got the 46" width of the rock guard between the motorhome and towed vehicle. Manuel made some metal brackets that fit on the our Roadmaster tow bars. I will have pictures of that later in this article. |
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| We removed the rock guard and installed the remaining grommets along the 6' pieces of pvc. |
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| We then installed grommets along the sides of the rock guard. We did this because we had double the thickness of the material (2 pieces 6'x5') and this would keep the edges from flapping in the wind. |
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| We then reinstalled the rock guard between the motorhome and towed. We also wrapped bungee cords through the grommet holes to add some strength to the overall structure. We also put the pvc caps on each end of the 6' pieces of 1/2" pipe. The caps help keep the material from sliding on the pvc pipe. |
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| A closeup of the bracket that Manuel made to connect the pvc pipe to the Roadmaster tow bars on the front of our towed. We lock our tow brackets so the bracket Manuel made is locked also with a piece of 1" pvc pipe cut as a spacer. |
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| We purchased some clevis pins and clips at Home Depot. We then drilled the 1/2" pvc pipe and inserted the clevis pins through the bracket and pvc pipe. We put a flat washer and then the clip through the clevis pin. Here is a view of the front side of the bracket. |
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| View of bracket - back side |
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| Tow car side of rock guard |
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| Ready to test drive. |
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| We used this rock guard on our entire trip to Alaska and back with some degrees of success. I said some degree of success and I will explain why. The bungee cords we used to hold the rock guard to the motorhome got stretched out over time and we had to replace them. Also we had a bicycle rack between the motorhome and towed which allowed rocks to get on top of the rock guard. We built about 6 of these rock guards for under $100, so I don't think it was a waste of money to experiment with the rock guard. |
| Contact email: mdidelot@didelot.com |