Thanks for the details LenS. I agree it would be even more helpful to see others, especially failed ones (preferrably first hand by an original owner who can speak freely without worry of warranty nullification issues, and fresh after it happened). Photos are wonderful. Macro face shots on each surface of the break would be helpful too - that lets you see how much ductile vs. brittle fracture occured (i.e., percent of area rippled).
There's one other roof failure reported at
http://www.sportsmobileforum.com/vie...4b31c240340e15. In that case it was an 11 year old manual lift top and one roller bolt broke while the owner was lowering the roof. No other information on the failure was provided. Additionally, a vendor on the site claims to have fixed more than one broken SMB roof and thinks they need stronger tubing and bolts.
To recap on this case though, owner (second owner?) was lifting (manually or with hydraulic lift?) roof (unloaded? how old? any previous accidents or work done on it?) while parked (on level or uneven ground?) when one scissor bolt broke. Owner noticed binding problems when previously lifting roof and shows some evidence of a plastic roller track snag. Don't understand the track config well enough yet to see what caught on it and how. During attempt to resolve break, owner broke second scissor bolt. Don't understand, probably missed it, but when and how did the roller bolt break? Note all bolts exhibit bending and brittle fracture at top of thread area, with a very small amount of ductile stretch displayed on the outside of the bend - suggesting failure was initiated by bending (stretching) the bolt, and then it snapped.
At this point, I wouldn't worry about imminent failure much either Jage, though I always use the support legs when the top is popped and it only takes one time for somebody to get hurt. Still don't like all aspects of the design. Those exposed tube hole edges bother me. Due to installation variations I've seen so far, we can't be sure what the bolt configuration was on the failed units. The roller bolt looks longer than the scissor bolt. It's still possible that the threaded portion nearest the shank got nicked by the tube hole - perhaps during the bending process.
LenS has a beat up washer at the roller arm connection and I'm curious about how that ocurred. Don't know that the unit is worse for wear, but it's an indication of something gone awry during the lift/drop process (e.g., chain folds up and unchinks, bending washer in process), or someone doing a bang-up install job (which I think LenS was indicating is what happened), or hard living going on in the van (e.g., heavy lifting of hard objects banged into washer). Also, cut-off scissor bolt end has left you short a couple threads for a sound nut connection. The nut is cut into some too. SMB did not do this on my rig. Is that a square lock washer beneath your scissor bolt head LenS?