Kemerton XL owners, the toilet seat issue

In our previous Duetto a Velcro sticky dot kept the toilet seat up even if the van was parked on a slope. Males and females pee wise could manage their own toilet seat choice without drama, happy days.

Behind the toilet seat of our Kemerton XL there's a useful locker where I store lots of stuff however, the lid of this long locker lid prevents the raised toilet seat going much past the vertical. The consequences are that the toilet seat can drop down mid pee, that's unless I hold the seat with my second hand, my first holding what I hope is near and dear to us both.. I need a third hand to hold a torch at night to see the point to aim at. I trust you get the picture of you being in my position here.
My first solution was like in our previous Duetto to use a Velcro dot. In the Kemerton XL Ii keep the lid up but not the toilet seat. I then used some foam strip to prevent the toilet seat from detaching from the lid and falling back down, wonderful, problem solved for me. No, apparently females need to sit down on a toilet seat to pee, and they didn't tell me about all that at the school I went to.

I've sorted the toilet lid staying up with the Velcro dot, it's the choice of needing a toilet seat or no toilet seat that separates the men from the boys, no, the boys from the girls.

The Velcro dot solution only partially worked, the foam strip between the lid and the toilet seat only partially worked. I'm now looking at removing the locker lid behind the toilet to remove about a centimetre to allow the toilet seat and its lid to pass the vertical. If this doesn't work then at night I will have to hold the seat up with my other hand and hold the torch in my mouth, risking me dropping the torch down into the toilet's cassette,

I'd rather stand up to pee than sit down, but that is another option.

Free hand or your mouth by putting in a motion sensitive light to do away with the torch.

Sit down to pee, take the weight off your feet and avoid sprinkling!!

Tim

Put the light on!

As a Kemerton XL owner I find the simplest solution is just to lift the toilet seat & cover out of its location, do the business & then put back in place.

Hopefully next week when I have time I will remove the locker lid from behind the toilet and cut off 1cm to allow the toilet seat when up to rest more back away from the vertical. My concern now is how neat a job can I achieve with my saw. There is something else I will also attend to. When this lid is raises it slightly scrapes against the rearward bulkhead on the left, left as it is in time it will make a mark on the bulkhead. It only needs about 1/8" removing on the raised section of the lid at its front.

I had an opportunity today to revisit why our Kemerton XL's toilet seat crashes back down without warning when I'm having a pee.
3 reasons why the toilet lid and seat when lifted up doesn't fall away from the vertical causing instability for the lid and a sense of uncertainty for the pee'ee.
1. The lid on top of a useful metal lined locker that's behind the toilet seat is a tad too long and prevents the lid and seat going much past away from the vertical.
2. The toilet lid is prevented from going much past the vertical because the back of the lid impinges on part of plastic plug-in mounting.
3. The toilet lid is prevented from going past the vertical because of a curved bit of white plastic between the two prongs of the mountings.

Action 1. I removed the lid above the locker behind our toilet and with a slightly diagonal cut, I removing a strip at the rear of the locker lid, 1 cm at the rear going up to 1.15cm at the front. This would also stop most of the lid's movement that scraped against the rear bulkhead, yet still enough to hold the lid when up. It didn't fully work as much as I had expected. The Thetford toilet seat itself doesn't allow much fall away from the vertical.
Action 2. I used a Dremel type tool to remove a a small amount of plastic from the rear of the toilet lid. This was mostly as good as it has got so far.
Action 3. There's a curved bit of plastic between the two prongs that I can't do much about. It keeps the toilet seat and lid from falling any further back back and away from me.

The bottom line is that I have without doubt made progress, tor the toilet seat's lid and seat are away from me and should hopefully stop without warning the toilet seat from crashing down across my pee stream.

Remaining question here, do I adjust the Velcro button that I've got stuck between our toilet's lid and locker lid, or use a rare earth magnet? I may have done enough and my life can move on.

Update, we've just returned from a few days away and can report that removal of 1cm from the rear of the lid behind the toilet seat makes the raised toilet seat more stable and stops it crashing back down it without warning mid-pee. It looks like I've no need for a Velcro dot or any magnets.

I left 0.5 cm of lid overhang remaining that still allows the lid to be easily lifted up.

Ours doesn't go back as far as the storage box lid, it stops well short due to the shape of the hinge arrangement. It won’t even stay up if the van is dead level. 
Very poor design by Thetford.

OldWomble, in an earlier post I mention the three features which prevent the toilet seat from coming to rest away from the vertical. Removing 1cm from the rear of the lid and re-attaching the hinge helped but it wasn't enough. I then used a Dremel type tool with a small grinding stone on a stalk to cut away part of the rear of the toilet seat lid which allows the toilet seat further movement to fall away a bit more. Now when our toilet lid and seat are raised they don't come to rest against the locker lid behind.

I've just had another look and I could probable still grind off another 2mm from the lid, but it probably isn't necessary. You'll need to unplug the seat so it's detached to see what's stopping the toilet seat and lid from falling away from the vertical.. I agree ( as in 3 above), the seat lid finally ends up against a curved bit of plastic. After the locker lid was modified, it helped to remove a small amount plastic from the rear of the toilet lid (and a bit from the seat). It can have a biggish effect because it's near the pivot point. What I removed from the rear of the lid and seat followed a curved line.

When cutting the 1cm off the the lid after removing the hinge I used a fine drill to mark where the screws would go back and pencil marks top and bottom on the lid. The screws had to go back in the same holes. During cutting I first clamped an off-cut of shower board I had against the line of the saw cut so I went straight. It was all done on a WorkMate folding bench. From what you have written it seems that you don't need to cut anything from the locker lid as i had to.

It's one of the occasions where a picture covers things better than a thousand words.

Thanks R-V, I’ve had another go at it and it’s much better now. I did have to grind a bit away behind the hinge pin so I just hope it’s not weakened it too much! Such a pity a company like Thetford can’t design something a bit better than this, we just should not have to keep putting things right by modifying them!