Front rail came loose yesterday

I know I saw a thread on this, but I was not finding it when looking.

This weekend we had the front rail came loose. The bold, nut, and washer fell into the front locker. The nut was still on the bolt, just the double sided bolt unthreaded from the rail.

Getting to where the bolt threads through the hole in the hull is a PITA (pain in the a$$). You can't really reach it from the locker. Here is what I did.

1. Removed the speaker and untied the wires so I could set it out of the way.
2. Sprayed the nut with a little WD40 to loosen it up so I could run it down the bolt.
3. Held the bold with a pair of pliers and ran the nut down to the tip of the bolt to give me more to stick up through the hole and thread into the bottom of the rail.
4. Pieced together 4 standard extenders, an 11" extender, a swivel head, and a deep 1/2" socket. (see pic)
5. Stuffed a little paper towel in the deep socket so the nut and bolt would stick up high enough to poke the bolt through the hole.
6. I ran my left arm into the speaker hole so I could guide the socket with bolt seated into the socket and run it up through the hole.
7. Ran the bold through the hole and threaded into the rail.
8. Tightened most the way down. Then had to pull it out and remove the paper towel. Finished tightening alls own.
9. Tied speaker wires back up and put speaker back in the hole.
Attachment 20441

While there I noticed the back bolt on the rail was loose as well. I put my right arm into the speaker hole and guided the socket up on to the bolt. I was able to tighten that side up as well.

There is not enough room to ratchet a socket or box end wrench in the opening, so had to get enough extension to get the ratchet down in the locker part so I could swivel it.

I should have got some pics along the way, but spaced it and was not going to take all apart again to get pics. I did get a pic of the socket setup I had to use.

**** NOTE **** Lots of raw fiberglass. After about the 3rd time scraping my arm up on the opening, I then got smart and wrapped a paper towel in the opening to save my arms a bit. That seemed to work pretty well.

did the almost the exact same thing last month helping a friend fix his loose rail. It is a major pain in the !@#. If you just had 2 more inches it would be A LOT easier. My arm was all scratched up after finishing. Now he informs me the other side is starting to get loose:mad: