Press Studs

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Pulled press studs.


For many years press studs have been pulling out of the walls of caravans and motor homes. The solution has generally been a slightly larger screw or an adjacent hole, neither of which is really satisfactory.

So, I have tried to find an alternative answer. At first I used mechanical hollow wall fixings but in order to use them I had to machine the head of the screw down to fit the stud.


Now I think that I may have a solution or two. I managed to get an piece of scrap body and have used that for my experiments.

Going around the relevant part of Homebase there was quite a selection of fixings that may do the job. Many, though, were too long and were ruled out. I ended up with two fixings that will do the job but there are caveats.
The two that I chose were Plasplugs Hollow Door Fixings and Cobra Wall Drillers.
As you can see they work in different ways.

The Plasplugs go into 6mm hole and sit flush, however there is little grip in the thinness of the internal skin of the wall.

The Wall Drillers require a 7mm hole, not the 10 indicated in the blurb. It is also necessary to cut off the first  2 or 3 mm of the fixing. These do not go so flush as the Plasplugs and it is also possible to be a little out of true but do they have the advantage of quite a large surface area in contact with the inner skin of the wall, including a little on the inside face. It is necessary, however, to trim about 3-4mm off the point of the plug.

That said, with both fixings it is possible to find that the screw rotates them in the wall, which is not helpful. The best solution that I have come up with is Loctite 60 second glue and it seems to allow both to grip the wall well enough to get the stud refitted. This is where the Wall Driller shines because of the much greater surface area for the glue to work. Glue was applied to both fixing and surround to the holes. I used 3.5mm x 20mm wood screws with both fittings.


If you can zoom into the right hand picture you can just see that the stud stands a little proud but I don’t think that it’s enough to worry about.
Plasplugs do a similar piece to the wall driller but the head is larger and it has a greater diameter than the stud.

I did try several other makes but these two were the best that I found.

If anyone has better solutions I would love to see them.
Apologies if pics don’t appear. I’ll have to try later.

One problem I have is the self tapping screws coming out of the holes in the box section on the front of the pull out/lift up bed bases. You got me thinking and maybe if i poke Araldite into the hole then put screws back in - this may cure.   Thanks for getting me thinking !!

not sure if this helps, I changed some of mine to turn buttons, no strain when pulling the press stud off[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I stopped using the press studs when one pulled out of the wall of my Nuevo.  I then put up with the seat cushions ending up on the floor on longish journeys.  However, more recently I have discovered that if the metal seat bases are pulled out by an inch or so to the extremity of the cushions they are more likely to stay in place.

Caraman wrote:I stopped using the press studs when one pulled out of the wall of my Nuevo.  I then put up with the seat cushions ending up on the floor on longish journeys.  However, more recently I have discovered that if the metal seat bases are pulled out by an inch or so to the extremity of the cushions they are more likely to stay in place.

We had a problem with seats sliding off..... solution was to cut strips of the non-slip matting used in cupboards and stick to a number of the wooden slats to increase the friction. We have used the same technique on plastic containers in cupboards too

Totally agree and a great post on what is a minor subject when you talk about it, but in fact its bloody annoying in operation when they pull out.
Just done all of mine, and complimented the tedious work by buying a brand new bag of 200 plastic screw covers off Ebay for a few quid in grey. What a difference that has made.
It took ages, 50 + because, as you will all know once you unseat them after many years, you then either have to find a wider screw with the same diameter to drop into the stud and the exisitng hole, or re drill a new hole away from the original curtain lines!!
Luckily my wife wanted new curtains so we then re measured my new holes and studs and then the curtain lady made to measure so to speak!
They are not designed for wear thats the problem so any initiative like glue MUST be a bonus....thanks for the tips!

roli wrote:One problem I have is the self tapping screws coming out of the holes in the box section on the front of the pull out/lift up bed bases. You got me thinking and maybe if i poke Araldite into the hole then put screws back in - this may cure.   Thanks for getting me thinking !!

In my old Talisman, all the stud screws fix into wood. Where they had become loose it was because the wood had been getting wet and the screws had gone rusty. After fixing leaks and fitting new wood where necessary, I still had a few loose ones in the seat cushion base and side panel where the table was fitted. I fixed that problem by filling the holes with superglue and letting it dry before re-fixing.