I bought a couple of lift assist struts at Arcadia for our bed. Does anyone have a gouge on how far back from the hinge point to install the brackets on each end of the strut? My whole bed is made out of 3/4" plywood with a 6" mattress on it. So it's pretty heavy. I have the top hinged about 12" from the pillow end. Thanks.
The farther they are away from the hinge point the more weight they can support, just due to leverage. The trade off is the farther away they are from the hinge point the less height they get. My queen sized bed out of 3/4" plywood and a 6" mattress had the upper mount about 10" from the end of the bed, and the lower mount positioned for full compression of the strut when closed. It worked fine until I put a mattress topper on, then it was too heavy and needed a brace when up. I've since torn out the queen bed and replaced it with two twins.
Brian
i have the twins and am going to change to the queen as it is really hard to "get busy" in a twin bed... what do you do with the left over space,i would say at least a foot of space?
MLH, I hope you can make the lifts work I never could moving the struts around on mine so much it looks like I used a shot gun with so many holes and I finally gave up and went with a electric lift
good luck
Mounting the lower mount in such as way as to maximize the vertical angle of the strut when the bed is open will increase the amount of weight the strut can carry, again at a loss of height. If my grade 12 math is correct, if a 100 lb strut is at a 45 degree angle, it can support 70 lbs of load. If it's at a 30 degree angle it can only support 50 lbs.
Brian
i have the struts on both beds and they work fine. the mattresses were air type pillow tops so they were light. and very hard to sleep on.
Brian, I have no idea how struts work you take a Eagle bay door that weighs about 80 lbs it has 2 160 lb struts and are mounted on about 75 degree angle one goes bad and the door will fall go figure
good luck
It's all levers and angles and trigonometry and force vectors. When I was 20 and in electronics school I could do that stuff in my head, or with a slide rule... Now I have to draw pictures and figure out which side of the triangle is sine and which is cosine and then figure out how to work my calculator... I do the same thing to figure out spring rates and suspension geometry on my race cars.
Brian
Well I think I am smarter than a 5th grader but sine and cosine don't mean much to me. I would have the shotgun effect as stated above.
sorry my bad
John
I mounted my struts at the full end of the bed on the bottom side and then measured to a spot that would have them fully collapsed on the upper bed part . that leaves them almost horizontal when the bed is down. I can give the bed a small lift up and the bed will raise the rest of the way by it's own . Jerry
You could also try something like this http://www.firgelliauto.com/default.php?cPath=78 (http://www.firgelliauto.com/default.php?cPath=78)
Jerry how much clearance do you have when the bed is raised I was after about 4 foot not a problem for me to get a raise the length of strut but the way my pedestal is that was only 17 inches
good luck
I'll go measure and let you know
I have 26 " struts fully extended and 25" clearance when the bed is up Jerry