Mounting TV Swing Arm To Wood Cabinet

[kcaravelli]

OK, there are a hundred posts on TV installs, but I have not found any where someone has chosen to mount their Flat Screen with a swing arm on the side of a cabinet.

I have a 32' LG which is not all that heavy. It is under 20pds.

I purchased a very nice swing are to mount is to the side of the upper large cabinet next to the door. This is in a 03' Suncruiser. This is the cabinet right next to and forward of the entrance door.

I was under the impression that the sides of these cabinets were solid wood....hah! NOT!

OK, so I'm now thinking that I may use some lag bolts and drill through the side of the cabinet which is nearest the passenger seat. This is where I am thinking of attaching a solid piece of wood that would give me more strenght to mount to. This would require some lag bolts through the cabinet. So essentially I would end of with a cabinet side of solid wood mounted with glue and lag bolts to the current cabinet.

I am not overly concerned about the cabinet holding the weight of the TV if I keep the cabinet light. I'm sure I have 20 pounds junk in it now.

This swing arm lets me simply lift the TV off the arm to store it for travel.

We doing this because we have gotten used to watching TV "straight on" frm the couch rather than bending our necks all the time.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this approach?

[bluepill]

Great idea! Like most of the MH's I've seen, ours has a dumb location. Must be the rookie engineers who get to spec. this stuff out.

If you are only supporting 20#, and only when at rest, it should not require any super strong support - but, of course, failure could be expensive.


Please post up photos of the project.


Thanks

[oldnotdead]

You might want to shoot some non-expansive foam into the cabinet wall. I'm not sure if you have access to both sides of the cabinet wall. If you do, you could use your corner bolts and some plywood to hold the cabinet walls from deforming after shooting the foam into a central hole. Since the holes will be covered by finish wood, the central hole will not show. This will hold the inner and outer walls together better, with less deflection from weight. OND

[skigramp]

If I understand your approach the arm will support the TV from one side of the TV ... so if you remember you high school physics you are building a lever that is about 1/2 the width of the TV with a 20# weight attached ... this will create more torque (force) than the TV would if bolted directly to the area where it is attached.

I don't want to discourage you from pursuing this approach ... but I think you should be calculating strong enough backing to support 40 (maybe 50) pounds instead of 20.